Cultural differences and attitudes towards parental involvement: A case study of early elementary school parents

Background. This research focused primarily on parents and their cultural attitudes and beliefs as it related to their role in their children's education as well as how they shared responsibility with their children's teachers and administrators.Purpose. The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes and beliefs of culturally diverse parents as it related to their role in their children's education. It also sought to understand their attitudes toward how they shared responsibility with their children's school and teachers. The study also looked to comprehend intentional and unintentional behaviors of teachers and how they affected parental involvement.Setting. A Pre-K through Grade Two public school in a multicultural community of the borough of Queens in New York City.Subjects. A random selection of six parents, four teachers and four administrators from within the identified school and district.Treatment. All focus groups, parents, teachers and administrators participated in an interviewing process regarding their views on participation.Research design. The design of this study was the use of three focus groups. The first focus group encompassed six parents from the identified school four teachers from the same school made up the second focus group and the third group consisted of four administrators. All data collected was qualitative. After the three focus groups were formed and interviewed, a transcription of the interviews was reviewed using inductive analysis to discover patterns, themes and categories from the data. After the researcher completed identifying, defining and elucidating the categories, a manageable classification/coding scheme started the analysis of the data through the creation of a framework which will be produced for the purposes of organizing and describing the data collected during the focus group reviews. Upon completion of said framework, the researcher reviewed the framework for convergence and divergence issues, determined substantive significance, cross-classified different dimensions to generate new insights about how the data can be organized and reviewed for patterns not immediately obvious in the initial inductive analysis. Thereafter, the researcher sought comparisons, causes, consequences and relationships that have developed out of this research.Data collection and analysis. Three focus groups provided qualitative data regarding cultural attitudes and beliefs in children's education.Findings. This study found more ways of involving parents in their children's education.Conclusions. Parental involvement benefited students' educational success educators that work collaboratively with parents find students perform better academically.