Week 8, Blog Post

Week 8, Blog Post: Literary review

            This week I brought all of my research together to create a literature review. My topic was: How can teachers form healthy relationships with parents that get them excited and actively involved in their child’s education? I had collected many articles, journals and books that pertained to the topic. For the assignment I chose the best ones that I felt described the topic clearly and with creditability. The hardest part of the assignment was the APA style of writing. Over the last eight weeks I have been struggling with citing my sources using APA. I went to an APA workshop offered by Brandman and it helped me a lot. I also used citation machine.net which was very helpful and recommended by other students. I had two of my friends proofread my report for mistakes which was very helpful.

            The topic of parent involvement in my line of work is extremely important. Part of my job is to encourage parents to get involved in their children’s education.  The parents first teach their children the foundations that they need for learning and developing. The teacher builds on the foundation to prepare them for the next level. It is so important for parents to know that their children still need their guidance throughout their education. Being positive role models for their child is the key to helping them to learn and grow. Teachers can only guide the parents and the children for as long as they are in their care. After they go on to the next grade the teachers change but they will always have their parents there for educational support.

            From this assignment I have learned that most parents are looking for invitations from teachers and their children to volunteer in the classroom. I also learned that there have been several studies completed on this subject. From these studies they have found that most parents do not feel like helping in the classroom because they don’t think that they can actually make a difference in their child’s education. The article titled, “Positive Relationships between Parent School Involvement and Public Inner-City Preschoolers’ Development and Academic Performance” (1999), found a direct link between higher academic performance in the children whom had parents that volunteered in their classroom. I feel that the old saying that it takes a village to raise a child is a true statement. In preschool classrooms where there are twenty children and only two teachers and no parent volunteers the children will have less communication experiences then they would if there were parents. The other great part about having parents in the classroom is that they can bring in some great ideas that help teachers understand more about the different cultures in the community. 

Citation

Marcon, R. A. (1999). Positive relationships between parent school involvement and public school inner-city preschoolers' development and academic performance. School psychology review, 28(3), 395-412.

Week 7, Assignment 2: Blog Post

                This week’s assignment was to create an annotated bibliography. After researching for 7 weeks about my research question I have gained a greater appreciation for databases. Without them I would have been sitting in a library for hours looking through books and articles. For this assignment I added two new creditable sources to my annotated bibliography. I found Dr. Becky Bailey’s book on my own personal book shelf. I was looking for ideas for what to say to parents to get them excited about being involved in their child’s education. Her book is written like a guide for parents and teachers to come together for what is best for the child. The article that I used was titled, “Why do parents become involved in their children’s education?” (Walker, Shenker, Hoover-Oempsey 2010). This article contained several new ideas about my research question. The framework that they used to guide their inquires was called the Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler’s model of the parent involvement process. I decided to research this model and print it for further reference. During my research I have come upon references to the Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory which suggest that the child’s environment has direct influence on the child’s development. For my final project I would like to get a better understanding of this theory. The aspects of my research report that I hope will interest a wide audience are suggestions for communication between parents, teachers and children. Communication is the key to establishing trusting relationships with parents. I also believe that learning about the families cultures will help teachers enormously when attempting to form positive relationships with parents.

My Research Question: How can teachers form healthy relationships with parents that get them excited and actively involved in their child’s education?

Bailey, Becky (2003). There’s Got to Be another Way: Discipline That Works for Parents

   and Teachers. Oviedo, FL: Loving Guidance, Inc.

Dr. Becky Bailey is an author and an inspirational speaker who encourages parents and teachers to work together for what is best for the child. She has written several books in regards to effective collaboration between parents and teachers. Learning about the family’s culture is of upmost importance when creating a parent, teacher and child bond. This book encourages parent and teachers to learn new ways to work together to agree upon effective ways to provide discipline and structure for children in the home and classroom. When parents and teachers work together for the child, many behavioral concerns begin to subside. This book provides exercises to practice that encourage children to participate in effective ways in the home and classroom. Dr. Beck Bailey says, “So, this book is a joyous journey from control to structure, from perfection to acceptance, from resentment to forgiveness, from apathy to action and from fear to love” (Bailey, 2003, p. viii).

Berk, Laura E. (2001).  Awakening Children’s Minds. Oxford, New York: Oxford

            University Press.

Laura Burk is a professor of Psychology at Illinois State University, with more than 30 years of experience with researching and teaching about early childhood development. This book was written for the adults who are currently involved with children ages 2 to 8 years old. Communication is the key to effectively educate children to help them reach their full potential. Parent and teacher communication is extremely important for the child’s educational success. Laura Burk Says, “Early education marks the dawning of children’s capacity to interact skillfully with others, to reflect on their own thinking, and to plan and guide their own behavior”(Burk, 2001). When parents and teachers are able to form healthy relationships and communicate about the child’s needs and developments regularly they are more likely to help the child reach their educational goals.  

Bruckman, Marlyn & Blanton, Priscilla W. (2003). Welfare-to-Work Single Mothers’

Perspective on Parent Involvement in Head Start: Implications for Parent-Teacher Collaboration. Early Childhood Education Journal, 30(3), 145-150. Doi: 1082-3301/03/0300-0145/0

Marilyn Bruckman works for the School of Family, Consumer, and Nutrition Sciences at Northern Illinois University. Priscilla W. Blanton works for the department of Child and Family Studies at the University of Tennessee. This article addresses the parent involvement portion of the families Head Start experience. This study was conducted to further the research of how the Head Start parent involvement portion effects the way parents get involved in their child’s education. The focus of this study was on how single mothers felt about the program and how the communication with teachers affected their level of participation in their child’s education. The type of involvement included, extending classroom learning experiences with the home, classroom parent volunteers, going on field trips with the class, taking leadership roles in the Head Start Policy Council and attending monthly parent meetings. The article says, “Research shows that parents respond positively to schools that are intentional in their attempts to collaborate with them” (Bruckman, 2003, p.147).

Hindman, Annemarie H., &Morrison, Frederick J. (2011). Family Involvement and

Educator Outreach in Head Start: Nature, Extent, and Contributions to Early Literacy Skills. The Elementary School Journal, 111(3), 359-386. Doi: 10.1086/657651

Annemarie Hindman is an assistant professor of curriculum, instruction, and technology in education at Temple University in Philadelphia PA. Frederick J. Morrison is a psychology professor at The University of Michigan. This article is about the relations between parent involvement and the development of early literacy skills in Head Start children. From this empirical study they have found that parent involvement in the child’s education can increase the child’s levels of literacy development and interest in books. The article says, “Head Start is shaped by Bronfenbrenner’s ideas about the central roles that both teachers and families play in child development; as such, a cornerstone of the program is outreach to families to encourage their involvement in children’s learning and schooling” (Hindman, 2011, p.360). This quote has sparked my interest to do more research on Bronfenbrenner’s ideas about parent involvement and how he got involved with Head Start.

Petrie, Jessica T. & Holloway, Susan D. (2006). Mothers’ Representations of the Role of

Parent and Preschools in promoting Children’s Development. The Author(s), 8(2). Retrieved from http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v8n2/petrie.html

Jessica T. Petrie received her PH.D. in Human Development from the University of California, Berkeley. Susan D. Holloway is a faculty member in the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. This article is about a study involving mothers of preschoolers and how they feel about their role in their child’s education. The study took place in San Francisco involving 185 mothers form 21 public preschools. Out of the 185 surveys filled out, 16 of the mothers agreed to be interviewed for further study. The mother’s beliefs’ about their self efficiency were split into two groups’ high self-efficiency beliefs’ verses low self-efficiency beliefs’. They were also categorized by working class mother’s verses middle class mothers. The study found that many of the working class parents checked in with the teachers informally to get advice on discipline for their child. They also discovered that the working class mothers responded to the teacher’s advice more often than the middle class mothers. The conclusion of the article states that, “Learning more about the areas in which mothers feel confident and those where they lack confidence is key to understanding and supporting their parent involvement efforts” (Petrie, 2006, p. 9).

Walker, Joan M.T., Shenker, Susan S. & Hoover-Oempsey, Kathleen V. (2010). Why Do

         Parents Become Involved in Their Children’s Education? Professional School

         Counseling, 14(1), 27-41. Doi: 10.1096/24095462956

Joan M.T. Walker is an associate professor at the School of Education, Pace University in Pleasantville, NT. Susan S. Shenker is the assistant professor in the Department of Counseling and Development at Long Island University in Brookville, NT. Kathelln V. Hoover-Oempsey is associate professor in the Department of Psychology & Human Development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. This article is about the direct connections that parent involvement has on the child’s ability to form positive personal goals and motivations in their education. Parent modeling is a key factor for influencing children to become motivated to take an active role in their own education. Parents can encourage their children to do homework and get good grades but without positive modeling the children may never develop the positive beliefs of participating in their own educational goals. The focus of this study was on how school counselors can encourage the positive bonds between the teachers and families in the upper grads but it is also true for preschool. This article focuses on how teacher’s invitations to parents can encourage active parental involvement and in turn encourages children to be an active participant in their own education. The research was guided by the Hoover-Dempsey and Sadler’s model of the parental involvement process which has guided me to learn more about this model.

Julie’s Blog Post Week 6: Academic integrity, plagiarism, intellectual property and copyrights.

This week’s assignment was very enlightening for me. I was under the impression that if I heard something I agreed with, I could use it as if it is mine. Well that is not the case. Common knowledge is a belief or understanding that has been used in at least five or more resources and can be easily proven. When someone comes up with a new idea and publishes it that idea becomes their property and therefore gives them the right to charge fees for copies and to press charges if they are plagiarized. I must admit that I am guilty of plagiarism. I have used and copied other people’s ideas from books and the internet and signed my name to the paper. I have to admit that I was aware that it was wrong. My only defense is that I was ignorant, and too lazy to look for ways in which to use other people’s ideas and give them proper credit.  I feel that the creative commons license is a fair way for consumers to use other people’s intellectual property and yet still give them credit for the original thought. The organization lables the articles with symbols that represent they ways in which the author wishes to share the information with the consumers. Open access databases are convenient for looking for information about subjects, but due to copyrights and loss of revenues many of the articles are unavailable without a fee.  Since I have read this week’s assignment I have now begun to recognize the symbols in research journals that represent a copyright or paten. I’m still not sure if there are any types of intellectual properties that cannot be used or cited and if they have special symbols to alert viewers. I guess top secret government information would probably have safe guards and special Icons warning viewers not to copy or share. To ensure that I abide by the academic integrity rules my goal is to gain more knowledge about proper citation and how to avoid plagiarism.

Resources:

Badke, William(2011). Research Stratigies: Finding your Way through the Information Fog.
          Bloomington, IN: IUniverse.
Creative Commons. (n.d.). About the licenses. Retrieved from
          http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

           

Week 5 Assignment 2: Blog Post

This week’s research assignment was about searching for empirical research articles relating to my research topic titled, “How can teachers form healthy relationships with parents that get them excited and actively involved in their child’s education?” Empirical means that the research has been verified or proven by observation or experiment. To start my search for empirical research journals pertaining to my topic, I selected an education subject specific database. A subject specific database helps the researcher to narrow the search to articles only relating to that field of study. The leatherby library offered three education specific databases to choose from. I chose the Education Full Text database. I entered the key words parent involvement and preschool and education. I clicked on peer reviewed, full text and entered the years 2000 to 2012.  I wished that they also had the option to select empirical research and primary source, but that would be too easy. To find out if the article I selected was from a primary source empirical research, I had to look for several clues. The first clue is in the abstract of the article. It states the reasoning and methodology for the research. The second clue would be a list of tests or measures the researchers used to prove their findings. The third clue would be a list and quantity of the subjects that were studied. After all of this I found an excellent article titled, “Parent-school relationships and children’s academic and social outcomes in public school pre-kindergarten.” It was published in, The Journal of School Psychology, (2010). This research studied two dimensions of parent-school relationships they are parent school involvement and parents’ perception of the teacher’s responsiveness to the child and the parent. After categorizing the children’s parents involvement levels, they compared their research tests scores and concluded that the children whose parents were activity involved with the school had better scores in academic and social skills. The scores were not drastically different. I feel that all of the children in a classroom benefit from having parents present. As a parent volunteer I know that I have helped many children just by being there to answer questions and to model positive social skills.

Article Cited:

Powell, Douglas R., Son, Seung-Hee, File, Nancy, San Juan, Robert R. (2010). “Parent-school

            Relationship and children’s academic and social outcomes in public school pre-

Kindergarten.”  Journal of School Psychology 48, no. 4:269-292.

            DOI:10.1016/j.jsp.2010.03.002

This week’s assignment was to find two Peer reviewed journals or articles that related to my research topic. A child development professor suggested that I try the JSTOR data base to find more articles about education. JSTOR is located under the general database in the Brandman Leatherby libraries. There I found an excellent article called, “Family Involvement and Educator Outreach in Head Start: Nature, Extent, and Contributions to Early Literacy Skills.” (Hindman & Morrison). This article is about a survey called, Family and Child Experience Survey ( FACES) , that was conducted on 3,100 parents and children, their teachers, and their site directors. It was conducted to reveal if the current Head Start parent involvement program was effective. The other article I found using the EBSCO Premier Data Base is titled, “Welfare-to-Work Single Mothers’ Perspectives on Parent Involvement in Head Start: Implications for Parent-Teacher Collaboration.” (Bruckman & Blanton) This article is about the efforts of the Head Start programs to provide information to families about their child’s education and to encourage a parent teacher collaboration that benefits both the child and their families. This study focused on families headed by single mothers.

 Finding a research topic was not hard for me, but narrowing my topic to a single question is challenging. From this week’s article search, I am now leaning towards finding a question that relates to Head Start, teacher family collaboration and a new way to get parents hooked on helping their children be successful in school. I cannot remember what was said to me by my child’s Head Start teacher that got me hooked. I think it was just an invitation said with a smile.

Resources:

Hindman, Annmarie  H. and Morrison, Fredrick J. (2011) “Family involvement and Educator

            Outreach in Head Start: Nature, Extent, and Contributions to Early Literacy Skills.” The

Elementary School Journal, 111, No. 3: 359-386.

             Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/657651

Marilyn Bruckman and Priscilla W. Blanton(2003) “Welfare-to-Work Single Mothers’ Perspective

             on Parent Involvement in Head Start: Implications for Parent- Teacher Collaboration.” Early

             Childhood Education Journal, 30, no.3: 145-150

 http://www.springerlink.com.libproxy.chapman.edu/content/n982v25240465323/

This week’s assignment was about finding books related to my research question. This assignment was focused on how to search for books in the Brandman University Library and Google books data base. It also gave me helpful information about how to choose a book that offers reliable information about the topic. While doing the research for my topic I realized that there is many books out there related to my topic. It is refreshing to see that many teachers want to share their experiences in the child development field.

During my search for books on the Brandman University I ran into a problem with being able to acquire the actual book in time for my research. I found an excellent document written about my subject and I could view it on the website but it was not available to copy, and renting it would have taken longer than a week. So I decided to try searching in Google Books. On Google books I was able to type in three words related to my research and several books came up. Here I found a book titled, “Awaking children’s minds: how parents and teachers can make a difference”. The author of this book, Laura E. Berk is a distinguished professor of psychology at the Illinois State University. I went to my local free library’s web page and I found and requested a copy so that I can use it for my research. My research goal is to gain a better understanding about how to encourage parents to get involved in their child’s education and to help educate them about the importance of having a open relationship with their children’s teachers. I am also looking for ways to help parents be advocates for their children when concerns come up about their developmental milestones.  

http://www.blackwellreference.com.libproxy.chapman.edu/, This document titled, “Children and Inequality”, is about the downfalls parents sometimes face when they are working long hours in inflexible jobs and are unable to take an active role in their children’s education. Low income families typically have limited education and also grew up in a low income family. Occasionally these parents are preoccupied with working to put food on the table and are sometimes intimidated by the school systems.  “Social class inequalities can affect parent’s ability to advocate for their children in the schools (Wrigley 2005)”.

The most valuable advice that I received from this document is to get educated about how the school is ran and to encourage parents to get know their child’s teachers. “When parents cannot easily be advocates, children’s troubles or minor transgressions may become way stations out the door, as institutions are freer to push them out then they are with better defended children (Wrigley 2005).” I feel that this statement is true for all families. I have a passion for informing parents about how important it is to be an advocate for their child’s education. It is important for parents to expect an open door policy from teachers and staff working at their child’s school. This document encourages parents to learn ways to communicate effectively with teachers so that they can be advocates for their children’s education.

http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/sr/approach/pfcef This document is from the Head Start Approach to School Readiness guide that teachers and administration of Head Start use for reaching the highest level of efficiency when educating parents. I agree with the statement, “Continued family engagement is important throughout the school years. Longitudinal studies of low-income children show that high family involvement offsets the risks of children growing up in low-income households and in households with low parent education.”(Dearing 2006) The information in this document is research based and statistically proven to be highly creditable.

Work cited:

Document 1:

Wrigley, Julia and Joanna. “Children and Inequality.”  The Blackwell Companion to Social    Inequalities. Romero, Mary and Eric Margolis (eds).  Blackwell Publishing.2006 Blackwell Reference Online. http://www.blackwellreference.com.libproxy.chapman.edu/ 

Document 2:

Parent, Family, and Community Engagement Framework. Head Start Approach to School Readiness. HHS/ACF/OHS. 2011. English. http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/sr/approach/pfcef . 4 Dearing, E., Kreider, H., Simpkins, S., & Weiss, H. B. (2006).

Hello! My name is Julie. I am currently attending Brandman University to get my BA in Child Development. I work in a local Head Start with 3 to 5 year olds. I discovered Head Start in 2003 when my middle son Matt was assessed for speech and language by the county. They discovered that he was speaking at a 2 year old level but he was 4. So he was started on speech and occupational therapy and he was invited to attend Head Start due to his disabilities. I am happy to report that Matt is currently a 6th grader and is doing well in school. Ironically enough in 2006 I had my son Mike assessed for speech and he qualified for Head Start also. At that time I thought that there must be something wrong with my parenting so I decided to volunteer in his class to see what I could do for him at home. I loved being in the class room and I decided to attend MJC and learn more about child development. My son Mike actually had to have surgery on his tongue which extended the length of his tongue and he began to speak at his age level very quickly. My whole family has benefited from the Head Start Program. Head Start is the reason why I am still attending college.
       
         I am creating this blog for my LBSU 302 class titled Information fluency and Academic integrity. From this class I hope to learn how to cite information sources without plagiarising them on accident. There is so much information on the world wide web, but being able to decide truth from fiction is sometimes a challenge for me. I think that this class will help me with future classes and my job. The topic for my blog will be about parent education. I am passionate about being a supportive and loving parent and I hope to pass this on to other parents in my community. As a Head Start parent I learned that I have rights as a parent to what happens to my child in the public school system. I know that every child does not have an IEP or Individual Educational Plan that is recognized by the teaching staff but through healthy communication you can let the teachers know what your child's educational goal is and ask them for help to achieve the outcomes that you desire.