Early Childhood Education Benefits

Based on the question given, my essay will be focusing more on the involvement of parents in early childhood education. As an educator, I find that involvement from parents in a young child’s education is something that is lacking in this day and age. The reason being for this may be due the fact that some parents may not fully understand what parental involvement truly is, some me not know what the importance of benefits to parental involvement are. Listed below are the explanations on what is defined as parental involvement as well as some of the importance, benefits, challenges and also a few suggestions on ways to involve parents.

According to an article titled “Family Makes a Difference” written by Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP)

Based on the article by the Mount Royal University, it is stated that the benefits for parental involvement for students, schools and the parents were discussed by Henderson and Berla (1994). They stated that the benefits that students obtain from having their parents involved in their studies are such as having higher grades and test scores, better attendance, more homework done, fewer placements in special education, more positive attitudes and behavior, higher graduation rates and greater enrollment on postsecondary education. They also moved on to discuss the benefits that are profited by the school such as an improvement on teachers morale, higher rating of teaches by parents, more support from families, higher student achieve and better reputations in the community. Through active involvement in their child’s education in the early years, parents do reap the benefits such as beginning to develop more confidence in the school, the teachers that they work with also have a higher opinion of them as parents and have a higher expectations of their children and parents also develop more confidence not only about helping their children learn at home, but about themselves as

There are challenges that are faced by the both the parents and the teacher. One of the challenges based by both parents and teachers are the diversity of cultures. Chen, Kyle & McIntyre (2008) started that is it not easy to arrange programs and project parental involvement, even more so when parents come from a different culture, race and language. Based on a study carried out by Denessen, Bakker, and Gierveld (2007) in four Dutch elementary schools, they found that some specific problem regarding ethnic minority parents are lack of language skills to communicate with the school thus giving the school full responsibility for their child’s education and not being interested in school matters. Some parents and teachers also face a language barrier where in some situations, parents are from other parts of the world. Another barrier to parental involvement is cultural barriers that include different lifestyles, values, culture, and experiences between teacher and parents (Morris &Taylor, 1998). Denessen et al, (2007) stated that cultural differences make parental involvement more difficult for teachers and school administrators. Another barrier to parental involvement is cultural barriers that include different lifestyles, values, culture, and experiences between teacher and parents (Morris &Taylor, 1998). Taken from a doctoral study by Charlotte M. Anthony from Walden