Parental involvement through the concept of "educational niche"
Published:
Dec 12, 2017
Keywords:
parental involvement educational niche bio-ecological theory developmental niche
Abstract
Although the issue of parental involvement has been on the fore of the psychological and educational literature of over 30 years, the dialogue concerning its nature, functioning and benefits is still on-going. The lack of a clear and concise definition of the concept that could capture the multidimensional structure of parental involvement is one of the basic reasons for the difficulties in the empirical research that concern the measurement of parental involvement during the children’s educational carriers and the identification of its effectiveness . The paper draws from the bio-ecological theory of Bronfenbrenner and the model of the “developmental niche” developed by Super and Harkness to describe the child’s “educational niche”, a theoretical model that delineates the way the family and the school promote children’s school success and well-being. Parental involvement is understood as a multifaceted structure that has three basic dimensions. The first refers to its quantitative characteristics, describing the “what” and “how much” of parents behavior. The second dimension concerns the qualitative character of parental involvement which describes the relationships parents develop when they are engaged in their children’s education, mainly with the children and the teachers. The third dimension describes the developmental perspective of parental involvement which actually determines the character of the other two dimensions. In other words, it refers to the fact that parental involvement changes across children’s educational lives, taking different forms and having different intensity, extent and emotional blueprint. One of the basic characteristics of the “educational niche” is that it filters the influences of the eco-cultural context through its three components or subsystems, namely the physical and social settings of the family and the school, the customs and practices and the psychology of the parents and teachers. Within this line of thought, the processes in the “educational niche” are determined by culture and reflect the same values and codes of communication for the persons-members of the same socio-cultural group, in correspondence with the principles of the “educational niche”. Accordingly, changes in the boarder ecology may enter into the niche through different subsystem, each time. In order to bring balance in the system, there should be some kind of overlap or congruence among its components. This means that when changes are absorbed in one subsystem the others should follow. When these changes focus on a positive and collaborative interaction between family, school and the child, then educational and developmental outcomes are enhanced along with the prospect of each context to bring positive changes to the children’s lives.
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Penderi, E., & Petrogiannis, K. (2017). Parental involvement through the concept of "educational niche". Dialogoi! Theory and Praxis in Education, 3, 97–122. https://doi.org/10.12681/dial.14050
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