Parents' Engagement

Overview

Parents' (familial) engagement in young people’s learning is a vital, if often unacknowledged, element of any schooling system. Research has shown the importance of parents or other adults in supporting learning outside the classroom. This support can be in the form of reading with/to younger children, supervising homework, and perhaps most importantly, in conversations around learning and supporting young people’s beliefs in their ability to learn.

While the literature acknowledges the importance of parents’ engagement in learning, teaching staff often struggle to support this engagement. Most programmes which prepare teachers touch only lightly on this issue, if at all, as research carried out at Swansea, in conjunction with Bangor University, has shown. Parental involvement with schools (coming into parents’ evenings, for example) is often confused with parental engagement with learning (which generally takes place outside of school); it is the latter of these which seems to have the most beneficial impact on young people’s education.

It is also important that we understand how different families engage with learning and support all families to do so.

Welsh education has acknowledged the importance of parents’ involvement and engagement in learning for many years, leading the way with a Toolkit for Community and Family Engagement in 2016, and with current support for community-based schooling.

Current Research

Welsh parents needed for landmark study on screen time

The Study

Swansea University academic, Professor Janet Goodall, is part of a pioneering study into the impact of screen-time on 0 – 3 year olds, with the findings set to address the twenty-first century anxiety: is screen time perceived more as a benefit, or a hindrance, to early childhood development?

Professor Goodall is conducting the Wales-based section of the study – entitled Toddlers, Tech & Talk - Looking to interview parents in Wales to examine our relationships with digital devices in the home, with interviews available in up to 10 languages for parents who don’t speak English as their first language. Janet Goodall

The open, non-judgmental interviews will delve deeper into how and why parents are using digital devices with their young children, ultimately seeking to understand how parents’ opinions on the influence digital device use has on their child, particularly around language and literacy.

Led by Manchester Metropolitan University and in partnership with Lancaster University in England, University of Strathclyde in Scotland and Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland, the UK-wide project has already received 1,600 survey respondents and is now moving into the qualitative data collection phase.

Why it's Important

Parents in Wales are encouraged to get in touch to take part, sharing their experiences and opinions - all for the benefit of better understanding future generations’ relationship with technology, and predicting trends in digital engagement.

Professor Goodall said:

“There has been extensive research into the impact of screen time on older children, but our research group is hoping to plug the gap in the current understanding of digital device usage amongst toddlers.

“Overwhelmingly, public opinion tends to assume that screen time would have a net-negative impact on young children. Yet, this perspective doesn’t consider how digital devices can remove barriers to access for many services – such as libraries.

“We hope this research will improve our understanding of the nuances surrounding digital access. The aim of this research is not to tell parents what they should or shouldn’t do in their own homes, but rather to understand how and why parents use digital devices with children under three. Parents are raising children in a digital age, the vast majority of them using digital devices every day – so we want to find out how this filters down to the youngest in our society, to better predict how this will shape child development in future.”

Toddlers, Tech and Talk is all part of a wider effort from Swansea University’s Education department, in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, to better understand early years’ development in an increasingly digital society.

Women with child

Professor Sian Rees, Head of the School of Culture and Communication at Swansea University’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, said:

“By examining parents in Wales’ approach to digital devices in the home, this ground-breaking research may help to change the way we think about screen time for young children. Are there benefits many haven’t previously considered, and more widely, how is parenting made easier or more difficult in the digital age?

“Janet’s collaborative research, in partnership with universities across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, is representative of our ethos in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. We believe that research in this academic area is most impactful when rooted in a real-world context, consequently adding true value to our understanding of societal trends.

“We’d encourage parents across Wales to take part in the research, and would like to emphasise again that there will be no right or wrong answers – we simply want your honest opinions.”

Get in touch

To take part, parents can email j.s.goodall@swansea.ac.uk

Recent Activities

The ESRC funded project, Tots, Tech and Talk will have the formal launch of its findings on 30th October at an invitation only event in London.  The project spans all four UK nations; Professor Janet Goodall led the project in Wales, working with Mrs Sarah Timmins (Research Associate, Swansea University). 

Professor Janet Goodall is working with Neath/Port Talbot local authority to support their work around community focused schools, with a particular emphasis on supporting parental engagement with learning.

Working with Professor Sara Spear (St Mary's University, Twickenham) and her colleagues, Professor Goodall is part of a project investigating parental engagement in Catholic schools in England and Wales.  Building on Professor Goodall's 2023 paper on the subject, the project will look at the views and experiences of parents, school staff and members of the clergy.

Professor Janet Goodall gave keynote presentations at the Parents International’s Parent Summit 2022 in Amsterdam, and also at the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction’s Special Interest Group on Special Educational Needs, in Ghent.

Colleagues from Swansea collaborated with colleagues from Bangor University on a publication examining how parental engagement is treated in initial teacher education programmes in Wales (Goodall, J., et al (2022). Defining Parental Engagement in ITE: from relationships to partnerships. Wales Journal of Education, 24(2)).

At the request of Catholic School Parents Queensland, Professor Goodall spent three weeks in early 2023 working with school staff, leaders and parents in Catholic schools throughout Queensland, Australia.

Relevant Publications

Janet Goodall recently published 'What's Catholic about Parental Engagement?' in International Studies in Catholic Education.  This paper is founded in the work Professor Goodall undertook during an invited visit to Catholic School Parents Queensland, last spring.  The paper marries the academic work around parental engagement with the social teaching of the Catholic Church, to show an imperative for teachers in these schools to work with and support parents to engage in their children's learning.

Professor Goodall is editing a book for the Emerald Out of School Learning series, The Values of Out-of-School Learning: International Perspectives on Parent Engagement.  The book will focus on the values embodied in, and challenged by, learning outside of the school gates.  Contributions include chapters from well known authors in the field and PhD students and Welsh Government officials.  The book will be available near the end of 2025.

Professor Goodall will be contributing a chapter to a forthcoming volume, Parent engagement: From a source of inequality to opportunities for social justice (Springer).  Professor Goodall's chapter, Teacher beliefs about parents: Deficits, disregard and denial, will focus on the impacts of context and culture on teacher beliefs and how those play out in supporting (or not) parents to engage with their children's learning.

Goodall, J. & Lewis, H. & Clegg, Z. & Ylonen, A. & Wolfe, C. & Owen, S. & Hughes, C. & Williams, M. & Roberts, D. & Ramadan, I., (2022) “Defining Parental Engagement in ITE: from relationships to partnerships”, Wales Journal of Education 24(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.16922/wje.24.2.2

Goodall, J. (2022). A framework for family engagement: Going beyond the Epstein Framework, Wales Journal of Education 24(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.16922/wje.24.2.5.

Goodall, J. et al (2022). Defining Parental Engagement in ITE: from relationships to partnerships, Wales Journal of Education 24(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.16922/wje.24.2.2.

Goodall, J, and Greasley, S. (2022). 'Developing inclusive school communities through parental engagement’. In Black-Hawkins, K. and Grinham-Smith, A.. Expanding Possibilities for Inclusive Learning, Routledge, 77-90.

Goodall, J. (2022). 'Parental engagement: Problems, possibilities and pandemics.' In Relational Aspects of Parental Involvement to Support Educational Outcomes, pp. 22-38. Routledge.