Learning at home, learning at school, An action research project

About The Project

The core aim of the project is:

To provide policy makers and practitioners with evidence to assist them in developing school-promoted initiatives to encourage parents to enhance their children's learning and development in their own homes.

The project is concerned with schools' involvement in the widest sense - from activities that are planned and run by schools for parents directly, to those that are led by community partners and local authority teams. It includes both school-based and home-based practices, and seeks to explore the relationship between the two in bringing about positive outcomes for families.

The research has a particular focus on identifying methods for working with parents who do not usually participate, or who are considered in some way "hard to reach", and working with schools in disadvantaged local communities.

The key research questions include:

  1. How can schools promote the skills needed by parents to help at-home learning?
  2. Do these initiatives actually have any effect on pupil outcomes? How much do they cost?
  3. How useful do parents find these initiatives? Have their skills improved?
  4. Does parental involvement in these initiatives spill over to other areas of involvement with schools?
  5. How can schools encourage "hard to reach parents" to become involved in these schemes?
  6. How can good practice in this area be replicated and transferred?

Research partnership

ECOTEC Research and Consulting Ltd have been commissioned to manage the project, with a lead role for research design and reporting. ECOTEC is working in partnership with the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) and Professor John Bastiani. The partners will provide expert inputs to the research design, and development support for the project.

The research partnership is also working with a core group of six local authorities, who have been recruited to exchange good practice and test new methods of working with parents for the action research project. They are:

Methodology

The brief requires the research partners to test the extent to which well-established schemes can be replicated in other schools and local authorities elsewhere. This is to be achieved through a number of stages, as follows:

Stage one: assess the range of current practices in England, for schools supporting parents with their children's learning and development.
  • Methods: desk research, mapping survey, local authority consultations
  • Timing: Jan - April 2007
Stage two: consolidate five or six main 'types', and identify examples of local schemes for each of them that demonstrate good practice.
  • Methods: case study visits; data collection, qualitative interviewing
  • Timing: May - July 2007
Stage three: support the adaptation and transfer of these local schemes to a new set of 'host' local authorities and schools.
  • Methods: consultancy and development support
  • Timing: September 2007 - March 2008
Stage four: measure the processes, impact and outcomes.
  • Methods: mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, incl. interviews with staff and parents, embedded MI data collection for each scheme, and training for parents to conduct interviews as 'peer researchers'
  • Timing: throughout 2008
Stage five: disseminate the research findings.
  • Methods: reports and web-site
  • Timing: ongoing, with final reporting in March 09

The six schemes

Following the development stage of the project, six schemes have been identified for the action research stage. They are as follows:

Please refer to the scoping report for full details of the selection process, whilst further details about each of the schemes can be found on the corresponding 'scheme pages' of the web site.

The selected schemes will be transferred to a new setting, by 'pairing-up' the corresponding local authorities to exchange good practice. Each local authority has identified a number of schools to take part, which will be supported to 'host' the schemes (or elements of them) from the other local authority.

This process of transferring-across ways of working from one school to another is an important one for the research. It is envisaged that schools will combine the new methods with pre-existing arrangements for parental support, thus enabling the project to capture how effective practice is developed at a 'whole school' level. The findings will feed into the final report.