Parental involvement as the responsibility of the teacher

M.Ed.The focus of this study is parental involvement as the responsibility of the teacher. Aspects of parental participation are addressed as contributory factors towards successful learning of children at school. Therefore the school (teachers) carries a responsibility to make parents to understand their involvement in education and how to make their participation effective and visible. It is the opinion of the researcher that every effort must be made by teachers to enable parents to understand that their involvement at school is a significant influence in a child's life. The method used in this study is two-fold : Firstly it contains literature study on parental involvement. The researcher used this information to support her field of investigation and to make results based on factual information. Secondly it contains information derived from questionnaires completed by a number of teachers at different schools. With the information obtained from questionnaires the researcher was able to derive an information of teachers opinion on how much of their efforts are utilized to support parents with their involvement in education. The research as stipulated above, yielded the following results that a larger proportion of input is given by female teachers to parents' class visitation as an aspect of parental involvement as compared to male teachers; that teachers of different age groups, married or unmarried with children at school or without, give an input into parental involvement; that teachers using Afrikaans, English and African languages (Rest) as a mother tongue and also as a medium of instruction at schools, give a low input into visiting parents at home as an aspect of parental involvement; that teachers with the high educational qualifications give lesser input than those with diploma, std 10 and lower qualifications regarding parental involvement as the responsibility of the teacher; that principals, deputy-principals and head of departments give the largest proportion of their input on listening to parents as an aspect of parental involvement as compared to other teachers; that teachers at primary schools and that teach junior primary subjects are giving the largest proportion of input than secondary teachers; and; lastly, it was firther evident that although teachers indicate that they are involved with aspects of parental involvement, the aspect on home visiting was rated the lowest