Working with parents and carers of highly able learners
Parents and carers have a lasting impact on their children’s lives. They can have a significant influence on their children’s achievement by providing early experiences which encourage children to enjoy and develop their learning. By exposing their children to new experiences, by engaging with them through talk and discussion, by giving them encouragement and support, parents enhance their children’s ability to think creatively and critically and stimulate their curiosity about the world (Lowe, 2022).
Children learn first from their parents. They are their first educators. Parents who spend time with their able child are more able to attune to their child's interests and respond by offering appropriate enrichment opportunities. Parenting today is a challenge and being a parent or carer of a child of high ability presents even more challenges in today’s world. Sadly, some parents feel a sense of isolation and have more anxieties about raising children than perhaps previous generations did. The role of parents continues to evolve as a result of factors such as care-giving arrangements, an increased number of parents in employment and a growing culturally diverse population. Fast paced modern living, reduced community networks to rely on for support and less extended family involvement in child rearing, contribute to isolated families. Whilst it might be argued that schools provide greater support for parents and much more information on what to do at home to support academic learning in school than ever before, many parents of very able children are still in need of information and support.
Research is clear that parents’ attitudes and behaviours significantly shape a child’s feelings of confidence, self-concept and resilience. The aspirations they have for their child’s success are linked to the development of personal fulfilment, educational achievement and good citizenship (Weiss, H. B., Caspe, M. & Lopez, M. E. (2006). Parents and families have been described as “the most critical component in the translation of talent, ability and promise into achievement for gifted individuals”. (Olszewski, Kulieke, & Buescher, 1987, p. 6). Yet parental involvement has not been defined well in the literature. It has been associated with parents’ behaviours; aspirations for their child’s academic achievement; communication with their children about school; participation in school activities; communication with teachers and rules at home which are considered to be education-related (Harris & Goodall, 2007). Parental involvement takes many forms including good parenting in the home. Essentially this means the provision of a secure and stable environment, intellectual stimulation, discussion, good modelling of social and educational values and high aspirations.
The majority of parents are willing to work in partnership with their children’s schools and other education services. A 2021 report by Parentkind showed that 85% of parents want to play an active role in their child’s education. This figure suggests parents’ interest in meaningful participation with their child’s schooling is near universal. The extent of parental involvement, however, diminishes as children get older and progress through school. The challenge is how to optimise this partnership to provide more support to enable able young people to realise their potential.
The impact of parental involvement and family support on student achievement
A review of international evidence confirms that ‘parental involvement in the form of at-home good parenting has a significant and positive effect on children’s achievement and adjustment even after all other factors shaping attainment have been taken out of the equation…the scale of the impact is evident across all social classes and all ethnic groups’ (Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003, p.80).
According to Harris and Goodall (2007), parental engagement means parental engagement in learning, rather than parental involvement in schooling. This distinction separates involvement in school life (e.g. attending Parents evenings or school fetes, which is being reactive to school), with engagement in their children’s learning which is viewed as proactive). Parental engagement is supported by discussions between parents/practitioners and focuses on how families can build on what they already do to help their children’s learning. Goodall and Montgomery (2014) also confirm parental engagement as active and meaningful involvement in children’s learning. Strong links between school or early years setting and home are vital to promoting parental engagement in children’s learning. Such learning takes place in a variety of settings including childcare settings, schools and in the community through family learning and learning at home.
When parents are involved in their child’s education or engaged in their learning, they make a positive difference to their lives. Children do better on a wide range of measures. These include:
- Better behaviour
- More confidence and greater self-esteem
- Higher attendance rates
- A lower risk of exclusion
- More enthusiasm about learning
The scale of the effect of parental involvement on achievement is significant (Dufur, Parcel, & Troutman, 2013). It has been shown that whilst school and family involvement are important, the role of the family is stronger when it comes to academic success. Hattie (2008), for example, estimated that the effect of parental engagement is equivalent to two to three additional years of learning over a pupil’s school career.
Research (Social Market Foundation, 2016) suggests that there are key areas where parental engagement makes the most difference to children’s attainment. They are:
- talking with children at home, at all ages
- reading to children in the first five years
- showing an interest in schoolwork
- being in control – feeling able to insist on routines such as homework before screen-time and regular bedtimes.
What works well for highly able young people and their parents
In the gifted education literature, Keirouz (1990) identified six concerns of parents of gifted children and suggested that these areas should be used as the basis for future research. The concerns included family roles and adaptations, sibling relationships, parental self-concept, neighbourhood and community issues, educational issues and the development of the child. Similarly, Reichenberg & Landau (2009) stressed the families’ influence on the child’s cognitive development, especially in the early childhood years.
In terms of what might be effective frameworks for parents of gifted children, Bronfenbrenner’s (2005) Ecological Systems Theory offers potential. In this, microsystems are the setting in which an individual lives, made up of family, peers, school and neighbourhood. Mesosystems are the relationship between microsystems such as family experiences to peers or school. Exosystems are social settings which are not as immediate but still have relevance for the individual and include policies and positions taken by organizations supporting the needs of gifted children. Macrosystems are larger cultural principles that impact on the individual, such as societal attitudes to and understanding of gifted children and lastly, chronosystems which are the environmental events that affect the individual over their life span.
Another potentially rich theoretical framework is Achievement Goal Theory (Ames, 1992). This theory examines the motivational climate that parents create at home and provides a structure for explaining and predicting gifted students’ academic engagement and behaviours. According to Ames, the motivational climate includes situational factors created by significant others (i.e., parents, teachers) that influence how children define competence. Situational factors emphasize self-referenced competence (e.g., rewarding personal effort and improvement) to create a mastery climate, whereas situational factors that emphasize normative competence (e.g., rewarding high ability over effort, or assigning tasks that promote academic competition and social comparison) are conceptualized as a performance climate. Stressing a mastery climate has been linked to many positive outcomes, including enhanced intrinsic motivation, whereas emphasis on a performance climate has been associated with increased academic anxiety and lost confidence (Elliot, 2005).
Schools should feel optimistic about working with parents and have a willingness to do so. Schools and parents have a shared priority to deliver the best outcomes for their children. Evidence suggests that three areas are particularly worth schools focusing on:
• supporting parents to have high academic expectations for their children
• developing and maintaining communication with parents about school activities and schoolwork
• promoting the development of reading habits
Evidence suggests that delivering parental engagement initiatives effectively can be challenging, partly due to demands made on parents’ time. Schools therefore need to plan, support, and monitor how they work with parents particularly carefully (Education Endowment Foundation). Examples of practical ways to engage parents include: contact in the playground, at the gate or out in the community; breakfast or after school clubs; fundraising and/or events; sports day, concerts, assemblies, community activities or family learning opportunities.
Positive partnerships between school and home are crucial. Weston (2023) highlights the importance of trust and shared values in such partnerships. It is important that everyone understands their role in achieving this. She says that parents’ must believe in their own abilities to support their children’s learning. They might feel motivated to help their children but might not be confident. They need to feel they can effect change. Highly engaged parents want assurance and value being given strategies to support their children.
Two-way communication is also vital. Language used in all communications with parents should be free of educational jargon, easy to read and understand, using pictures where appropriate and possible. Suggested ways to enhance communication with parents and families include: sharing ‘good news’ stories about what children and young people are learning or involved in; using local media channels e.g. radio, newspapers, magazines, posters etc, to let parents know what is happening in the setting or school; using electronic methods such as text messages, emails, blogs or social media; use of parent-to-parent contacts such as ‘snowballing’ (where one parent agrees to bring along or introduce another), meeting at the gate, parents' nights, information sessions led by parents; one-to-one direct conversations and communications with parents; sharing key facts such as the research findings on the difference parents make and knowing your local community and adapt communications accordingly.
Well-being for parents and carers
There is no doubt that parenting very able children has many rewards, but it also has its own challenges. Such children can exhaust parents with their mental and physical energy and parents need to understand a child’s individual traits and have the patience to support them. It is common for parents to become ‘peacekeepers’ due to their child’s high sensitivities, clumsiness, emotional immaturity or outspoken sense of fairness. Many parents have no idea their child is more able and presume all children are similar and meet the same milestones. It is worth realising that many ‘gifted’ young people actually lag behind their peers in some areas, for example, poor physical coordination, lack of organisational skills or weak academic achievements in some subjects. The organisation Potential Plus UK recommends parents learn about the nature of high ability so that parents can prepare the family accordingly. They highly recommend that parents nurture themselves and their friendships. In order for parents to be better able to support their more able child, they advise:
- Prioritising emotional and physical health
- Taking breaks
- Eating and sleeping well
- Finding friends and family members who will understand and support without seeing things as a competition or criticism
- Building wider parent-support network within a gifted home education forum, school community or through membership of organisations and support groups
- Taking care of their own needs, not (just) the complex needs of the child
(High Learning Potential Parenting: Understand Your Challenges - Potential Plus UK)
Consistently, research confirms that supportive, effective parental education improves children’s self-esteem, attitudes to learning and achievement. As partners in learning, this enhances children’s wellbeing, especially mental health, and reduces anxiety and helps children to reflect on their strengths, talents, passions and future careers.
References
Ames, C. (1992). Classrooms: Goal, structures, and student motivation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, pp. 261-271.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (Ed.). (2005). Making human beings human. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Castro, M., Exposito-Casas, E., Lopez-Martin, E., Lizasoain, L., Navarro-Asencio, E. and Gaviria, J. J. (2015) ‘Parental involvement on student academic achievement: A meta-analysis’, Educational Research Review, 14, pp. 33–46.
Desforges, C. & Abouchaar, A. (2003) The impact of parental involvement, parental support and family education on pupil achievement and adjustment: a literature review. Research report. Department for Education and Skills, No. 433
Dufur, M. J., Parcel, T.L. & Troutman, K.P. (2013) Does capital at home matter more than capital at school? Social capital effects on academic achievement. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 31: pp.1–21.
Elliot, A. J. (2005). A conceptual history of the achievement goal construct. In A. J. Elliot & C. S. Dweck (Eds.), Handbook of competence and motivation (pp. 52-73). New York, NY: Guilford.
Goodall, J. & Vorhaus, J. (2011) Review of best practice in parental engagement. London: Department for Education.
Harris, A. & Goodall, J. (2007) Engaging Parents in Raising Achievement: Do Parents Know They Matter? Research Report DCSF-RW004. University of Warwick. Department for Children, Schools and Families.
Hattie, J. (2008) Visible Learning. Abingdon: Routledge.
Lowe, H. (2022) Supporting your child with high ability: guidance for parents and carers. NACE blog. April. National Association for Able Children in Education
Keirouz, K. S. (1990). Concerns of parents of gifted children: A research review. Gifted Child Quarterly, 34, pp.56-63.
Olszewski, P., Kulieke, M. J., & Buescher, T. (1987). The influence of the family environment on the development of talent: A literature review. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 11(1), pp. 6–28.
O'Mara, A., Jamal, F. et al. (2010). Improving Children’s and Young People’s Outcomes through Support for Mothers, Fathers, and Carers, C4EO.
Purdy, N., Harris, J., Dunn, J., Gibson, K., Jones, S., McKee, B., McMullen, J., Walsh, G., and Ballentine, M. (2021) Northern Ireland Survey of Parents/Carers on Home-Schooling during the Covid-19 Crisis: 2021, Belfast: Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement
Reichenberg, A., & Landau, E. (2009). Families of gifted children. In L. V. Shavinina (Ed.), International handbook on giftedness [Part Two] (pp. 873-883). Heidelberg, Germany: Springer.
Sammons, P., Toth, K., Sylva, K., Melhuish, E., Sirah, I. & Taggart, B. (2015) ‘The long-term role of the home learning environment in shaping students’ academic attainment in secondary school’, Journal of Children’s Services, 10 (3), pp. 189–201.
Social Market Foundation (2016) Family matters: The role of parents in children’s educational attainment. Available at: www.smf.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Social-Market-Foundation-SMF-Fa...
Weiss, H. B., Caspe, M. & Lopez, M. E. (2006). Family involvement in early childhood education, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Family Research Project.
Weston, K. (2023). “Effective partnerships with parents.: What does ‘great’ look like and how might schools evaluate success?” NACE Webinar, January 2023. National Association for Able Children in Education
