VIABLE RESEARCH
Solving the Puzzle of Parent Participation in Education WHY SIFT THROUGH MORE THAN 25,000 RESEARCH STUDIES? TO GET AT THE TRUTH OF QUESTIONS THAT HAVE ENDURED FOR DECADES. NAMELY: WHAT’S THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO HELP PARENTS SUPPORT CHILDREN’S LEARNING FROM KINDERGARTEN THROUGH GRADUATION?
If research studies represent the jigsaw pieces to complex puzzles, meta-analyses assemble them into cohesive pictures that help resolve important questions. CYFS Postdoctoral Fellow Elizabeth Moorman Kim and CYFS Director Susan Sheridan, a Willa Cather Professor of Educational Psychology, are currently gathering those pieces to clarify the impacts of two intervention-based approaches for engaging parents in their children’s education. Moorman Kim and Sheridan recently received a U.S. Department of Education grant that will allow them to collect, analyze and draw conclusions from several decades’ worth of investigations into parents’ influence on K-12 student outcomes. Though many studies have suggested that parental participation can improve academic achievement, inconsistencies and oversights in definitions, methodologies and results
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From left: CYFS Faculty Affiliate Elizabeth Moorman Kim, CYFS Director Susan Sheridan and the University of Texas at Austin’s Tasha Beretvas are leading a meta-analysis of parents’ engagement in their children’s education. The project will result in the country’s largest database of research related to parental involvement and family-school partnerships.
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