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Preservice teachers and parents: usinga reading course to change perceptionsand practiceJean Rohr a & Ye He aa Elon University , Elon, North Carolina 27244, USAPublished online: 25 Aug 2009.

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Educational StudiesVol. 36, No. 1, February 2010, 35–45

ISSN 0305-5698 print/ISSN 1465-3400 online© 2010 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/03055690903148530http://www.informaworld.com

Preservice teachers and parents: using a reading course to change perceptions and practice

Jean Rohr* and Ye He

Elon University, Elon, North Carolina 27244, USATaylor and Francis LtdCEDS_A_415026.sgm10.1080/03055690903148530Educational Studies0305-5698 (print)/1465-4300 (online)Original Article2009Taylor & Francis0000000002009JeanRohrjrohr@elon.edu

The authors sought to understand preservice teachers’ views about parents ofstudents who struggle with reading and about their own preparedness to deal withsuch parents. Research, including surveys, student evaluation and tutoringintervention, indicates that before their work with parents and students, preserviceteachers held strong beliefs about parents’ role and responsibilities with respect totheir children who find reading daunting. After a semester-long reading coursewhich provided opportunities to work with struggling readers and their parents,the preservice teachers in this study expressed beliefs that were contrary to theones they offered at the beginning of the course.

Keywords: preservice teachers; parents; struggling readers; perceptionpreparedness

Introduction

Teacher education and human development instructors often point to the fact thatparents are their children’s first and most important teachers. Knowing that parentsprovide the emotional, cultural and social supports that are vital to children’s schoolsuccess, we often encourage beginning teachers to ensure that parents are their alliesin the task of teaching, especially in teaching students for whom reading is a struggle.However, whether or not preservice teachers will work to involve parents in the class-room might ultimately depend on assumptions about parents in general and parents ofstruggling students in particular, and also how prepared they are to make parentalinvolvement a reality.

Interestingly, preservice teachers take a dim view of the level of involvement ofparents of students who struggle (Compton-Lilly 2000; Nieto 1996; Purcell-Gates1996), and generally do not feel that they are prepared to involve such parents in theirclassrooms (Hiatt-Michael 2001). This view of parents and the perceived lack ofpreparedness to deal with parents must be addressed for three important reasons: (1)The reauthorisation of the No Child Left Behind Act 2007 continues to highlight theneed for parental involvement; (2) The Title I legislation mandates parental involve-ment as essential to its initiatives; and (3) The Title I initiative calls for stipulations ofhow parents and schools will work to share responsibilities for improving studentachievement (US Department of Education 1994). As such, teacher preparationprogrammes and their preservice teachers can no longer afford to dismiss the role ofparental involvement because it is essential to student learning, and “because parents

*Corresponding author. Email: jrohr@elon.edu

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have the [legal] right to know what is happening in schools” (Ferrara and Ferrara2005, 77).

Therefore, a significant question for teacher preparation institutions is how can wemore effectively address the issue of preservice teachers’ preparedness for parentalinvolvement? More specifically, how, besides readings, discussions and the occa-sional parent contact at internships, can schools of education provide more meaningfulopportunities for preservice teachers to interact with parents of students who strugglein school? Our specific purpose in this study was twofold: (1) to understand how agroup of preservice teachers perceived parents of students who struggle with readingand (2) to understand how they perceived their preparation for involvement of parents.The following research questions guided the study:

● What do preservice teachers believe about the parents of struggling readers?● What are preservice teachers’ perceptions about their preparedness for interacting

with parents of struggling readers?● What will be the effects on preservice teachers of a teacher education course that

involves parents and struggling readers?

Background

Analysing the myriad results of educational research concerning parental involvementin schools, Fullan notices one general theme, “The closer the parent is to the educationof the child, the greater the impact on child development and educational achieve-ment” (2001, 198). The role of parents’ involvement in their children’s lives cannotbe negated. Parents are children’s first and most influential teachers. Fullan offers thatwhether or not the job they do is terrific or terrible, there is no doubt that parents havea vested interest in their children’s future and success.

Additionally, children’s attitudes towards school, their ideas about teachers andtheir feelings about the significance of an education begin with parents (Price et al.2001). In his work regarding social development theory, Vygotsky (1978) noted thatwhat children come to value, believe or accept as culturally important is transmittedfrom one generation to the next, from parent to child by the social interaction betweenthe two. These social interactions reap dividends even in the classroom. Results frommultiple studies showed that the frequency with which parents reported beinginvolved in their children’s reading practices was positively associated with children’sreading achievement (Adunyarittigun 1997; Fan 2001). West (2000) posits that whenparents involve themselves in their children’s particular academic interests, theirinvolvement tends to have a motivational effect on other academic areas.

Considering the role of motivation in learning, it is noted that parents are centralwhen it comes to inspiring their children. Parents know their children better than teach-ers do; therefore, they know what their children enjoy doing and what challenges bestprovide the children with pride and satisfaction (Hauser-Cram 1998). If children aremotivated to explore and delve into all the learning opportunities provided by school,it is likely they will begin to experience success as a result of their efforts (Harter 1975).As it relates to their children’s education, parents possess more power for getting theeducation system to reform than most parents often realise (Goodlad and Lovitt 1993).

Addressing the need for educational reform, Fullan (2001) notes that the relation-ship between parents and school is in desperate need of social reconstruction. As farback as four decades ago, Henry (1966) posited that it was essential for educators to

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become involved with their students’ parents and the families’ communities. Quotingfrom Rosenholtz’s research, Fullan (2001) observed that schools that are successfullyon the move are schools that had a firm grasp on the importance of involving parentsin the classrooms. Epstein (1994) submits that parents respond positively whenschools involve them in their children’s learning activities.

As such, it is extremely important that all teachers, and particularly preserviceteachers, learn to communicate with the diversity of parents represented in today’sschools. As Goodlad and Lovitt (1993) note the array of parents in our schools includeaffluent parents, highly educated parents, poorly educated parents, single parents,surrogate parents, foster parents, same sex parents, guardians from the legal system asparents, grandparents in the role of parents, minority parents, parents of students withdisabilities, immigrant parents, parents intimidated by schools or parents who are theintimidators at school. Because of the many different kinds of parents in our schoolstoday and the increasing numbers of parents and children from cultural backgroundsdifferent from that of most teachers, parent–school collaboration is undoubtedly moredifficult. Therefore, the idea of preparing preservice teachers to be able to effectivelycommunicate with parents could not be more providential (Weinstein 1996).

Nonetheless, several research studies have found that preservice teachers receivelittle training regarding parent involvement and interaction in their educationprogrammes (Hiatt-Michael 2001; Shartrand, Kreider, and Erickson-Warfield 1994).It is not surprising, therefore, that novice teachers often report that they do not knowhow to effectively incorporate parents into the classrooms once they are hired as in-service teachers. That task is further complicated when they need to interact with orinvolve parents of students who struggle or culturally diverse parents (Ferrara andFerrara 2005).

Not surprisingly, many parents – especially parents for whom English is a secondlanguage, parents of students with disabilities, minority parents and parents from low-income households – routinely have difficulty communicating with the teachers oftheir children (Goodlad and Lovitt 1993). Researchers notice that while the parent–teacher relationship should be strong and meaningful, it is instead often detached anddistant or even strained and distrustful (Weinstein 1996). Depending on the teacher andthe relationship, parents sometimes interpret certain teachers’ tone and manner,whether correctly or incorrectly, as condescending and patronising (Snow 2001). Inaddition, unintentional “faux pas” are created because of cultural ignorance andteacher unpreparedness in effectively communicating with a diverse parent population.

Unfortunately, limited, strained or ineffective parent–teacher relationships tend tolead to an adversarial, rather than what could be a strong and meaningful alliance(Lightfoot 1978). Nevertheless, several extensive reviews of research suggest strategiesfor improving parent–teacher relationships. Epstein (1994) recommends two importantways for schools to involve families: creating more effective forms of communicationswith parents and providing ideas to parents on how to help their children at home. Basedon research findings, Epstein notes that schools would be “surprised” at the level ofhelp they would receive from parents, if only parents clearly understood what the schoolrequired of them (Brandt 1989, 27). Epstein found that 58% of parents never reportedhaving received requests from teachers about helping their children at home.

Moreover, more than 78% of parents said they would definitely try to help withtheir children’s learning activities if only they were shown or informed about what todo (Epstein 1986). We know that regardless of race, religion or economic status,parents generally respond optimistically when schools reach out to them in a positive

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way (Gordon 1976). It does not require a great stretch of the imagination to see thatthe vast majority of parents want schools and teachers to treat them as equal partnerswho are interested in the educational welfare of their children (Lindle 1989).

In sum, the research studies highlighted in this article indicate a positive impact onstudents’ and teachers’ success when an effective relationship exists between teachersand parents. With this in mind, we undertook this study to understand better the tacitbeliefs of preservice teachers regarding the parents of students who struggle academ-ically and their preparation to effectively interact with those parents.

Method

Participants

Twenty-five preservice teachers, 16 elementary school students and 18 parents partic-ipated in this study. The preservice teachers were seniors at a small private universitylocated in the southeastern area of the USA who were enrolled in their last semesterof coursework before a student teaching internship. The elementary school studentswere mostly third graders who were drawn from four different elementary schoolswith which the university had either placed student teachers and interns or where theuniversity was involved in service learning projects. The parents were mothers andfathers of the students. In one instance there was an aunt in the role of parent, 14children were accompanied by one parent, mostly mothers, two children who wereaccompanied by both a mother and a father. There were four Caucasian parents, sevenHispanic parents and seven African-American parents.

Procedure

In the fall of 2008 the “Teaching Struggling Readers” course was changed from itstraditional theoretical format to one that took theory into practice. The change wasmade because having taught the course previously, the instructor came to the conclu-sion that the course could be more relevant and productive if preservice teachers wereactually to work with struggling readers rather than simply theorise about readers’struggles. As the course was planned, several stakeholders were identified. They werethe university, public schools partners from the area, preservice teachers, parents,students and a local library.

Thus, several principals and classroom teachers with whom we had professionalrelationships, either through service learning or student teaching placement, wereasked to select 25 third grade students who were having the most difficulty learningto read. These students were identified as those who could benefit from extra one-on-one reading tutoring – and whose parents would agree to attend the tutoring alongwith their children. Twenty-five students were requested because there were 25preservice teachers enrolled in the teaching struggling readers’ course. Third gradewas chosen because it is the first “testing” grade in our state.

Within three days, 25 parents quickly responded positively to the invitation. Afterthe responses, a letter was sent home to the parents, the letter read:

Dear Ms Smith:

My name is XXX, I am the professor in charge of the education course at XXXX Univer-sity called Teaching Struggling Readers. The goal of the class is to show our teachercandidates how to teach students who are struggling with reading and to have those

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teacher candidates work closely with the parents of our students who are struggling. I ampleased to know that your son, Doug, will be working with us. Together; we will identifythe struggles Doug is having and work toward improving his reading skills. Doug’s tutorwill be Tammika Jones. Tammika will show you how she is working with Doug, she willalso explain why she has chosen the lessons or strategies she is using. In addition, shewill provide lessons and practice materials for you to help Doug at home. We lookforward to working with you and Doug on Wednesdays from 6 pm–7 pm. We know youboth will be welcomed on our campus and in our classroom. I look forward to seeing youfor our first meeting on Wednesday, 10 September at 6 pm.

Regards,

XXX (Student and parent names are pseudonyms)

The tutoring sessions were free of cost; the course instructor supervised thesessions, which were offered in the evenings from 6–7 pm on the university campus.As such, the parents and students would become “members” of the university classalong with the preservice teachers. Parents were responsible for bringing theirchildren to the tutoring sessions every other Wednesday from September to December2008. Additionally, parents were asked to continue the tutoring with their children athome.

The course

The course was designed in two overlapping phases. Phase I covered reading theorywhile Phase II addressed practice. In Phase I, preservice teachers learned about thefive essential components of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary,fluency and comprehension) and how to successfully teach each component. Addi-tionally, as Fang (2008) suggests, preservice teachers looked beyond these fivecomponents and examined the complexities associated with reading expository texts.Preservice teachers were also taught how to administer the Yopp Test of PhonemicAwareness and Running Records, a record of reading behaviours developed by MarieClay (1985).

In Phase II, preservice teachers drew upon the knowledge they gained to tutor(one-on-one) a struggling reader and provide instructional information for the reader’sparent(s). The twofold reason for including parents was drawn from the research, i.e.,the need to address preservice teachers’ lack of preparedness to work with parents andconcern with the role that parents and caregivers can play in helping to improve theirchildren’s reading skills (Sylva, Scott, and Totsika 2008).

Accordingly, the preservice teachers in Phase II were required to work not onlywith struggling students but also to prepare lesson plans, notes and practice ideasfor the students’ parents. As such, parents would be able to continue a seamlesstutoring activity with their children at home on the days they did not come tocampus. Another aspect of the course was that on the first day of the tutoring, thedirector of the local library system was invited to the class to talk to parents aboutmaking library resources available to them. The reason for including the library wasto allow the children to have access to a wide variety of reading materials theywould not have to purchase. Additionally, they would have opportunities to re-readfor clarity and fluency as they practised at home with the same books they broughtto the tutoring sessions. Parents were invited to visit, tour and join the library withtheir children. Parents and students were encouraged to check out library books

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covering topics in which the students had interest. The director promised she wouldassist the parents with understanding the reading levels of library materials whenthey visited.

Survey

A survey instrument was developed to measure preservice teachers’ attitude towardsparent involvement and their perception of their preparedness to interact with parents.The survey contains eight items and uses a five-point Likert scale (strongly agree tostrongly disagree). Questions 1–5 measure preservice teachers’ attitude towardsparent involvement and Questions 6–8 intend to measure preservice teachers’preparedness (Appendix 1). Questions 2–5 and Questions 7–8 are reverse coded (i.e.selecting strongly agree indicates a negative attitude) to avoid participants providingsocially desirable responses to all survey questions. The content of the survey wasreviewed by two teacher educators external to the project to ensure the instrument’srelevancy and validity. The authors established reliability (internal consistency) forthe instrument using Cronbach’s alpha based on the data collected from 25 partici-pants in this study (α = 0.6).

The survey was administered in a pre-post manner. On the first day of class, beforepreservice teachers knew they would be working with parents, they were given asurvey that sought to uncover their views on parental involvement and their feelingsregarding their own preparation to deal with parents in the classroom. At the final dayof the course in December, the survey was administered again after preservice teach-ers had completed four months of tutoring and relationship-building with parents andstudents.

Results

Among all the eight survey questions, participants scored highest on Question 5regarding the relationship between parent knowledge background and their interest instudent learning. The majority of the participants disagreed with the statement, whichindicates that they do not think they are highly related. Question 3 was rated thelowest, which indicates that the majority of the participants considered schools wereput at a disadvantage if parents do not value reading. Question 6 was also rated low inboth pre- and post-surveys indicating participants’ perception of the lack of prepara-tion to interact with parents of struggling readers (see Table 1).

Comparing participants’ responses to the pre- and post-surveys, we noticed someinteresting patterns. Participants scored higher on all survey questions in their post-survey responses except for Questions 1 and 3 (see Figure 1). A paired sample t-testwas conducted to compare preservice teachers’ responses to the survey questions atthe beginning and the end of the semester. The results indicated that there was a statis-tically significant difference in participants’ responses to Questions 2, 4, 7 and 8

Table 1. Descriptive statistics of survey results.

Question 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Mean 3.86 3.6 1.8 3.44 4.24 2.14 2.44 2.84Standard deviation 1.07 0.86 0.88 1.40 0.94 1.29 1.09 1.23

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(Table 2). Before the course, four of the 25 preservice teachers responded that they“agreed” to Question 2, “Parents are mostly responsible for their children’s struggleswith reading”. After the course none of the students agreed with this item. Item 8 alsosaw significant differences in students’ perceptions. Before the course 60% of thestudents noted they agreed with Question 4, “Students who struggle with reading oftenhave parents who are uninvolved and uninterested in their academic activities”. Afterthe course, that number dropped to only 8%.Figure 1. Pre- and post-survey results comparison.Another area of significant change had to do with preservice teachers’ perceptionabout their own preparedness to deal with parents. Regarding their formal preparation,68% of preservice teachers responded positively in the initial survey to Question 7,“My teacher education programme could have done more to prepare me to interactwith parents of struggling readers”. After their work with parents and struggling read-ers, that number dropped to 52%. On the initial survey 60% of the preservice teacherssaid they “honestly do not feel ready to deal with a diverse population of parents”(Question 8). After their work with parents there was a corresponding shift in the otherdirection, in which 60% of the preservice teachers indicated the belief they wereprepared to work with diverse parents.

Table 2. Paired sample t-test results.

Question 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Mean 0.28 0.48 0.16 0.96 0.16 0.12 0.96 1.04Standard deviation 0.46 0.87 0.62 1.01 0.69 0.60 1.31 1.14t 2.06 2.75 1.28 4.71 1.16 1.00 3.67 4.58Significance 0.05 0.01* 0.21 0.00* 0.26 0.33 0.00* 0.00*

*α ≤ 0.05.

Figure 1. Pre- and post-survey results comparison.

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Discussion

The results from this study provided insight into the importance of creating opportu-nities for preservice teachers to work closely with parents. The preservice teachersunder consideration not only shifted their perspectives about parents of students whostruggled with reading, but they also shifted their perspectives about their ownpreparedness to involve such parents in their teaching practices. Generally, in teachereducation programmes, there is little or no opportunity for preservice teachers to workwith parents, besides perfunctory participation at the occasional parent meeting duringfield placements. With the opportunity presented to them in this course, preserviceteachers noticed the human stories that emerged among the participants as they beganto develop as professionals. With the unfolding of the parents’ stories, the tutoring,teaching, learning and parenting, the horizontal and vertical levels of learning beganto intersect. It is our belief that it was at this intersection that the preservice teachersin this “Teaching Struggling Readers” course gained the most knowledge.

Doubtless, the preservice teachers might still have learned all the required infor-mation without the parent–student component of this course. They would have alsolearned how to administer assessments and diagnose reading difficulties. However,they would not have learned how to use these skills while working regularly on a one-on-one (and in a few cases two-on-one) basis with a student who finds reading dauntingand with the parent(s) of that student. They would not have had the opportunities tostretch themselves and work through the fears and uncertainties they encountered. Theywould not have had the opportunity to learn from parents, ask questions of parents and,as the research suggests, address their own anxieties about having to deal with parents.In addition, they had the opportunity to witness first-hand the power of the triangulationof teacher, student and parent.

Not surprisingly, the parents and children in this reading course brought a certaindepth to the class preservice teachers that could not have achieved from the traditionalcourse structure. In her evaluation, one preservice teacher summed it up this way:

I have seen that it is vital to have parents as a part of your team and that having theminvolved is not as intimidating as I thought it would be. I also realize how importantperseverance is when you are working with a child who is struggling so hard with hisreading. If the child sees that you are working hard with him, and his mother is workingjust as hard, then he feels really supported, my tutee really saw that.

From their work with parents in this course, these preservice teachers are beginning torealise that parents will go to great lengths to ensure their children succeed in schools.However, they do not come to our education programmes already knowing this infor-mation. The fact is some come to our education programmes suspicious of parents oreven intimidated by them (Goodlad and Lovitt 1993). When it comes to parents andparental involvement in schools, we are asking a new generation of teachers to do agreat deal in the classroom. This new generation of teachers must leave our teachereducation programmes knowing how to effectively communicate with and involveparents of students with disabilities, parents of students with behaviour concerns,parents of a growing racial, cultural, ethnic and linguistically diverse student popula-tion, a growing number of non-traditional parents and, in this economic environment,parents with varying socio-economic needs.

Additionally, we are requiring that our new teachers become innovative as theycommunicate with and involve parents in ways their predecessors did not have to, and

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in ways they often do not see practiced by many of their cooperating teachers. Assuch, as teacher educators, we will need to provide many opportunities for our preser-vice teachers to learn how to work more closely with parents in general, and parentsof struggling students in particular. From our work with the 18 parents in this study,we believe with Epstein (1994) that parents are eager to help their children if schoolswill help them understand what they should do.

In summary, we posit that encouraging preservice and novice teachers to allythemselves with parents in the education of children is productive only if those teach-ers feel confident in their abilities to involve parents. It is our belief that the buildingof such confidence must begin at the teacher preparatory level. Our work with parentsand preservice teachers has caused us to conclude that if they are willing to makeminor changes to existing programmes, schools of education can occupy a uniquespace in which to include parents in the teacher preparation endeavour. The plethoraof research highlighting the success of parental involvement in children’s education,and preservice and novice teachers’ lack of preparedness to involve parents shouldcompel us to examine how we might revision our education programmes in ways thatinclude parents as vital partners in the education process.

Notes on contributorsJean Rohr is an assistant professor and the coordinator of professional development schools atthe School of Education at Elon University, Elon, North Carolina. For the past five years, Rohrhas conducted research on teacher vision and preservice teachers’ perception of parentalinvolvement.

Ye He is an assistant professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Higher Educationat the School of Education at University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her research interestincludes teacher cultural competency development, field experiences, teacher beliefs andteacher professional development.

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Appendix 1. Survey

1 I would welcome a great deal of parental involvement in my classroom.SA 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, SD

2 Parents are mostly responsible for their children’s struggles with reading.SA 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, SD

3 Schools are at a major disadvantage in teaching students to read if children do not see readingvalued by their parents.SA 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, SD

4 Students who struggle with reading often have parents who are uninvolved and uninter-ested in their academic activities.SA 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, SD

5 It is unfair to expect parents with limited knowledge to show much interest in their children’slearning.SA 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, SD

6 I feel very prepared to interact with the parents of my struggling readersSA 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, SD

7 My teacher education programme could have done more to prepare me to interact withparents of struggling readers.SA 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, SD

8 I honestly do not feel ready to deal with a diverse population of parentsSA 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, SD

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