«Parents can have a positive influence on their children's attitude towards school»

Mrs Wolf, what role does parental involvement play in their child's success at school?

Parental involvement makes a big difference - especially in early childhood. It has been proven that the involvement of mums and dads improves children's academic performance and contributes to their overall success at school. They have many opportunities to do this. For example, they can help with homework or support their children with problems in class.

Parental interest has a positive effect on a child's self-confidence and motivation to learn.

They can also have a positive influence on their children's behaviour and attitude towards school. In addition, they can build a relationship with the teachers to improve learning. There is no doubt that parents' interest and encouragement influence their children's self-confidence and motivation to learn as well as their behaviour in class.

Can parental involvement also have negative effects?

Although the majority of research shows that parental involvement usually has a positive effect on children's education, conflicts with teachers and negative effects on the learning environment are also possible. Differing views between parents and teachers about how children should be taught, for example, can have a negative impact on learning success.

Developing a relationship between parents and teachers that supports the child's learning requires a good understanding of how the two sides can successfully interact with each other and with the children. This can improve intervention strategies, as new research by my team has shown.

Your research team and you have been using the Eduq+ programme for a year. What is the programme about?

We sent SMS messages to parents and teachers of children in 296 classes in 100 public schools in Côte d'Ivoire. These messages were specifically designed as «nudges» to encourage the recipients to become more involved in the children's education. Two messages were sent per week, with parents receiving different messages than teachers.

With the Eduq+ programme, we are encouraging parents to become more involved in their children's education.

Teachers received communications focussed on improving the quality of their teaching. Parents were reminded that investing in their children's education pays off. They were given suggestions for activities they could participate in with their children to support social and emotional development. In addition, the messages encouraged parents to take a greater interest in their children's school life by increasing contact with teachers.

With what result?

If parents and teachers received nudging independently of each other, the proportion of children dropping out of school was significantly reduced. However, if parents and teachers received the messages at the same time, this cancelled out the positive effects. Instead of feeling supported, teachers were demotivated because they had the feeling that they were also being monitored by their parents. This led to more teacher absences, which in turn increased the proportion of school dropouts.

The example shows that teachers can feel restricted in their ability to act in the classroom if they are excessively monitored by committed parents. This reduces their self-motivation. It also shows how fragile the relationship between parents and teachers is. Clearly, schools need to be more careful when involving parents and teachers and asking both sides to work together.

How can schools adapt their existing intervention programmes for parents so that these programmes optimally support teachers and promote their self-motivation?

Our research has indicated from the outset that excessive parental intervention has the greatest impact on highly motivated teachers who are already very committed to their students' education. In other words, additional monitoring by parents has a negative effect on those teachers who are already working hard for their students.

Schools play an important role in how interactions between parents and teachers take place. For example, they can moderate the requests for parents to contact teachers. In this way, schools can ensure more positive interactions that enable optimal support.

The pandemic and distance learning have dramatically increased the involvement of parents in their children's lessons. Parents have also experienced first-hand the challenges that teachers face in the classroom on a daily basis. Do you think that this experience has made parents more aware of how they can better complement the work of teachers in the future?

As with so much in this pandemic, it is very difficult to predict how the status quo will change. Some things will be different, how exactly is difficult to predict. But I hope that parents will show teachers more appreciation. That they will better appreciate the important work that teachers do to support and promote children's learning and development. I also hope that this will lead to more productive relationships between parents and teachers, where teachers feel respected and supported by their school community.