Qualitative inquiry on parental involvement in children’s education: Perspectives of parents, children, and teachers in select elementary schools in the Philippines

This is a qualitative inquiry looking into the experiences of parental involvement in the context of Philippine public elementary education. This paper has two goals. First, it aims to present the strategies that Filipino parents employ in order to influence children’s education. Second, it aims to examine unique involvement strategies among Filipino parents. Data of this paper were culled from 12 focus group discussions conducted in 5 provinces of the country. The results of the study suggest that there are parental involvement strategies unique to the Philippine context owing to the poor economic conditions of some Filipino families. While it is not directly related to education, making ends meet and providing food for the family’s table were seen as parental involvement strategies. To compensate for the limited direct involvement in education, Filipino parents looked for other means to be able to help their children excel such as exempting the latter from doing household chores, avoiding vices, and maintaining quality family relationships. It against this backdrop that this paper recommends that future quantitative studies on parental involvement in the Filipino parents’ context need to consider indirect parental involvement strategies as indicators or variables as these may have spillover impacts on children’s schooling. © 2020 National Institute of Education, Singapore