Engaging Families In The Academic Lives Of Preschool Children: An Action Research Study

The practice of family engagement enables families and school staff to share responsibility for child development in a partnership characterized by mutual respect for the influential role each plays in a child’s academic life. Unsatisfactory outcomes of family engagement practices with families of preschoolers warranted the implementation of a family engagement intervention program central to this action research study. The Engage Every Family: Five Simple Principles framework guided family-school collaborative efforts to increase family efficacy for engaging preschoolers in developmentally appropriate learning activities at home. Engagement activities were provided in the form of virtual workshops and collaboration on social media. Mixed methods were used to examine the degree of participation in the family engagement intervention program and any changes in behaviors and perceptions of self-efficacy for engaging preschoolers. Data analysis of the record of participation revealed higher participation in engagement activities than in previous years. Manual coding of focus group transcripts and statistical analysis of self-reported rating scale responses revealed participants perceived mixed levels of self-efficacy for engaging in the academic lives of preschoolers. Participants ascribed a higher degree of influence on child achievement to the efforts of the school and a lesser degree of influence to family experiences. The study has implications for continued efforts to engage families and develop relationships essential for building self-efficacy to potentially shift family beliefs to a level of confidence for performing in parental roles supportive of child success. An investment of time and commitment is required to produce desired outcomes