Critically Evaluate the Importance of Working With Professionals and Families in Schools - Essay Example

?Running head: Importance of Working with Professionals and Families in Schools Importance of Working with Professionals and Families in Schools Insert Name Insert Course Insert Tutor’s Name 18 November 2013 Importance of Working with Professionals and Families in Schools Introduction Research shows and clearly indicates that when families and other community professionals are involve in learning, most of the students in the school usually perform well and tend to do better in their class work. This is because when professionals and families are involved in the learning process, most children, including those with special needs, tend to have more interest in school; they even usually like to be in school most of their time. Therefore, school leaders and heads should find a way of incorporating professionals and families in the activities of the school in order to provide better development of their students. Again good relationship between the community and the school is one of the methods that results into good performance to students in their final examinations. Family and Professionals Strategies This relationship among the students, the teachers, families, and professionals can be achieved in a number of ways if the school wants to integrate it in the learning process of the students (Skouteris, Watson, and Lum, 2012). To begin with, the school and the general community can come together and have partnership in various activities that would lead to beneficial outcomes and positive effects on the part of their children. For examples if possible, it would be appropriate and good for the teachers and parents to hold educational conferences and seminars with an aim of developing better relationships and strategies that can help them to produce holistic students who are all-rounded. Again, for good relationship to be achieved between various families and the school, it is good that the parents and other professionals in the community be involved in various school programs and services, and even be involved in various school councils to promote more supportive learning. It is also important and beneficial if families and professionals can be involved in programs such as community health services provided locally. In addition, it is also important if families and professionals can be involved in after-school programs and activities in order to enable their children to collaborate well with all including leaders and other important people in the community. Role of Interdisciplinary Teams, Nature of Multi-Agency, Families, and Professionals As long as the school leadership recognizes other community members, families and professionals in the school activities and development, positive results will be achieved. According to Cheminais (2009, p.8), multi-agency collaboration is advantageous to children as it allows integration of skills and expertise in school programs, thus enhancing value addition and preventing barriers to learning process. The teachers and the school leadership should consider moral leaders and other role models in the community to ensure that their students develop morally, and to promote strong connections between the students and the larger community. Besides, corporate members and government leaders should be considered for partnership with the school to provide more external support to the students. When this is done, the students will feel well secured and valued, hence promoting the value of education in the school and in the community or society in general (Cummings, Todd, and Dyson, 2007). For school to develop faster, the leadership must ensure that there is improvement in the education standards in the school and ensure that the students welfare is catered for; this can only be achieved through involving community resources in learning. Therefore, including professionals and families will enable the students to understand properly the social, political, and economic environments that surround the school, thus giving them more knowledge and proper awareness of their surroundings. Furthermore, it is only through families and professionals that the school will be able to make students have more understanding about their culture and the legal environment that bind them as students from other community members. Again, it will be of importance if the students are allowed to engage themselves with community professionals and families in order to learn their technical and professional skills (Fitzgerald and Kay, 2008). This will enable the students including those with special needs to learn as well as to integrate community resources in learning. Through this interaction between professionals and the students with special needs, the students will be able to apply directly and physically what they learn in theory into real life experience. Another important reason why families must and should be involved in the schooling system is that students with special needs have different interest, and may see themselves as valued hence have more interested in learning. This is because, when families and professionals are involved, there is possibility that there would be areas of common interest that the families share with the students (Hiatt-Michael, 2005). It has been found that, when families are involved in their children learning, positive outcome is usually realized. Therefore, it is important that families be involved in all the activities and learning programs that students with special needs undertake in order to promote better and successful learning to all the students. It is through involving parents and families in the learning process that the parenting skills will be enhanced, thus enabling good support to the students. Moreover, if the families and professionals are involved in the learning process, in most cases, learners benefit a lot as more collaboration is seen between the community and the school, thus allowing community resources to be used in learning as well as enabling the community to support the students in various services such as health and social services voluntarily. When families and professionals are involved in the matters concerned with school decision making and problem solving, problems are always solved faster and properly, since more skills and knowledge are merged together. Again, when families and professionals are involved in the learning process, there would be more communication taking place between the students and their family members, thereby making the students with special needs to feel at ease and enjoy the learning process. It is also always recommended that proper involvement of community professionals and students earlier in the students learning, as the students will have to meet them during attachments and internship. Involving parents in children learning is very important, as this will enable them to know and assess their children needs. Since the parents are the ones responsibly in paying school fees, it is important that they be involved in the students’ learning in order to feel free to contribute in the event of supplementary services that the teachers may want to introduce to the students as a way of promoting their learning and academic performance. Again, when parents are involved in their students learning process, it would be very easy for them to evaluate the students’ performance when checking from their report cards; this will provide easy manual assessment of the learners by their parents and other family members (Cheminais, 2009). Procedures for Assessment, Reporting and Recording Learners’ Needs Learning is a continuous process and student does no stop learning when they are out of school. Therefore, it is important that families and professionals be involved in extracurricular programs taking place in schools in order for them to help the teachers in planning and budgeting for students’ needs and services. When families and other professionals are involved in the students’ learning activities and programs, especially the after-school activities, the students will be able to use community resources freely and provide their families with regular feedback about the extent of their after-school programs and activities. In addition, engagement of families and professionals will enable learners to have learning environment, which is supportive, safe and with their social, health, emotional and physical needs having been taken care of (Hiatt-Michael, 2005). This will motivate learners with special needs to work hard and to have good academic performance. Families’ involvement is usually important in student learning and teaching mainly because it promotes social skills of the students. This will enable students to achieve positive results and develop social competence and skills. Again, visitation, phone calls, and face-to-face conversations can be used as some of the methods that can improve student and their families’ interaction when the students are in school. Families are also very effective in provision of guidance and counseling to the students with special needs, hence they should be regularly involved in the learning process. Since people always have individual differences and different family backgrounds, it is important that families and professionals be involved in the learning process to provide negotiation and guidance procedures to students with special needs. This is important, as the professionals will provide ethical guidance with professional standards that will make learners appreciate their individual differences as well as family and cultural backgrounds. Therefore, it would be advisable that teachers be ready to involve families and professionals in the learning process in order to understand the learners’ cultural values, beliefs, and family customs (Garber, 2010). Ethos and Organisation of Learning Support Settings Over the years, most researches have shown that professionals and families’ involvement in the learning process always leads to increase in the students’ performance and achievements. This may include better school attendance as well as having attitudes and behaviors that are more positive towards learning and other activities (Gasper, 2010) .In fact, the community involvement in learning usually makes students see the link between what is learnt in class and the real world experiences, which later produce meaningful and successful learning. It is through partnership between families, professionals, and schools that the students’ assessment procedures, evaluation strategies, and implementation plans are developed (Hiatt-Michael, 2005). It is also usually important that the students’ different needs be put into consideration, for example, those students who are slow learners should be helped by teachers, professionals and their families. Therefore, through a collaborative effort, the school, the professionals, and the families can come together to ensure that students with special needs are well catered for, thereby improving their educational standards and performance (Cheminais, 2009). The school should develop a program to ensure proper assessment of students’ needs. In addition, communication procedures involving the families, the professionals, the school and the larger community should aim at providing proper support to students with special needs including volunteering and giving of community resources and services according to their needs and individual differences. Therefore, it is important that the school provide the families, the professionals and even the larger community with important school documents including school calendars and other school policy documents in order to enhance proper involvement of these groups in various school programs (Skouteris, Watson, and Lum, 2012). Nature of Parenting Styles and Attachment Theory Parents should be involved in their children learning process in order for the students to be able to improve in their learning standards and be able to develop positive social and emotional behaviors. It is important to note that some children perform well in school life either academically or socially or both depending on contribution made by both the family and school professionals. This is attributed to the attachment theory that provides that, “children whose caregivers are available and responsive, as compared to those who are not, are expected to to develop positive expectations about others and be better equipped to apply relationship principles such as reciprocity” (Bornstein, 2012). Therefore, even when the children are in their learning places, they tend to develop good learning mechanics due to the indirect or direct influence from their families as well as peers. It is also important that family attachment with the children should begin early in life of the children, as it is more likely to influence later behaviour and social connections of the children as they grow. This attachment should go on even during schooling in order to instill the child with confidence and support needed in social interactions, which will in turn lead to improved learning capabilities (Trodd, and Chivers, 2011) Again, through parents’ regular communication with their children, there would be regular attachment between them, thereby making the children feel comfortable and happy in the presence of their parents; this will make learning enjoyable and completion of assignments will be easy, as children will be free with their parents to share information due to proper and good attachment. Besides, it is important for parents to adopt good and appropriate parenting styles that will produce trust and mutual benefit between them and their children. These positive attachments and positive parental styles will enable the children to learn faster and properly, as they would not be stressed up - their parents will meet all their needs (Siraj-Blatchford, 2097). The partnership of schools, professionals, and families will enhance support, guidance, and motivation, thereby allowing students to improve their performance. This will promote learning to all the students including those with special needs. Again, multi-agency in the community should be involved to give more support to the students where necessary. These multi-agencies can also help in providing guidance and health solutions to students. Furthermore, interdisciplinary teams can also be involved to provide for the students’ needs where necessary, thereby producing all-round students. Generally, the parenting practice and child-rearing styles adopted by families have a great influence on the child’s learning behaviour later on in life. Indeed, parenting practices tend to is more objective in that, it is geared towards molding a child’s behaviour towards a certain goal. Therefore, a parent would be aiming for excellence in a child’s school performance and in such a case, provide an atmosphere for achievement of that goal. Here, the parent would use strategies such as helping the child in learning process through private coaching, helping the child in his/her homework of even visiting the child in school (including during parent meetings) frequently to establish the behaviour and performance of the child, especially with engagement of school professionals. However, in relation to child-rearing style, a child will adopt behaviour depending on how he/she is treated by the family. For instance, a child brought up in authoritarian kind of parenthood would portray different social and school characteristics (and performance) compared to a child brought up in a balanced parenting. In matters of learning, children brought up through concerted cultivation style of parenting tend to perform well socially and in school due to the close attachment and guidance they receive from parents. Here, parents organize educative lesson tasks for their children where children learn valuable skills driven towards their social and behavioral development. Therefore, when parents adopt parenting style that promotes positive behaviours to children as well allowing children to learn at their own pace without being too hard on them, there is a possibility of good performance in school life both academically and socially (Anning, Cottrell, Frost, Green, and Mark, 2010). Learners’ needs and planning of how to provide for their needs should also be put in place. The students’ learning environment should also be conducive for maximum benefits in learning (Garber, 2010) Conclusion Involvement of families and professionals in the learning process is important, as it results into positive benefits including improvement in students general performance. Again, the discussion above has detailed the importance of community involvement in learning process as well as how to promote community involvement for maximum benefits in the learning process. Lastly, the discussion has elaborated that parental attachment and students’ needs assessment is very important in the provision of better learning and performance of students with special needs. Therefore, it is important that all these be put in consideration while teaching and learning in the context of students with special needs, including involvement of proper communication and negotiation. 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Hiatt-Michael, DB 2005, Promising Practices for Family Involvement In Schooling Across The Continents, Greenwich: Information Age Pub. Siraj-Blatchford, I 2097, The team around the child: Multiagency working in the early years, Stoke: Trent ham Books Limited. Skouteris, H, Watson, B, & Lum, J 2012, 'Preschool Children's Transition to Formal Schooling: The Importance of Collaboration between Teachers, Parents and Children', Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 37, 4, pp. 78-85. Trodd, L and Chivers, L 2011, Interproffessional Working in Practice: Learning and working together for children and families. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Read More