A study of attitudes and beliefs of teachers and site council members toward parental involvement within the framework of four models of home-school relations

The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes and beliefs of faculty and site council members toward the type of parental involvement model desired in their schools and to assess whether or not a consistent opinion of parental involvement existed between the two school role groups. This study investigated the prevalence of four models of home-school relationships developed by Swap (1993). The four models are the Curriculum Enrichment Model, the Partnership Model, the Protective Model and the School to Home Transmission Model. Participants of the study consisted of faculty and site council members from five selected schools in an urban district in Iowa. A modified Delphi technique was used for this study in that the two-round questionnaire based on Swap\u27s models was developed by the reader for the purpose of assessing rather than achieving consensus. Three research questions were investigated in this study: (1) Did consensus exist within each role group on the type of parental involvement model for their individual school? (2) Was there a difference between the opinions of faculty and site council members regardless of their school in what they believed to be the best type of parental involvement? (3) Was there a difference in the opinions of faculty and site council members in what they believed to be the best type of parental involvement for their individual school? Descriptive statistics were reported and chi-square was used to further analyze the data. Chi-square values were reported at the .05 significance level. The principal findings of this study were: (1) Although the criterion for consensus was not met within all role groups there was evidence of agreement between site council members and faculty members at each school. (2) There were no statistically significant differences in the beliefs of site council members and faculty members among schools. (3) There were, with one exception, no statistically significant differences in the beliefs of faculty and site council members at each school. (4) A significant difference in the beliefs of faculty and site council members did exist at one school on the Protective Model. Implications of the data and recommendations for practices that could be implemented by schools were suggested. Implications for practice and recommendations for future studies are drawn from the findings of this study