In summary, parent involvement in schools is a national goal that has led to research, which supports the link between parental involvement and school success. Parents of all cultures report their interest in school involvement, however they differ in barriers faced as well as their perception of what constitutes parental involvement. Culture and ethnicity add to the variation of views of parental involvement. Definitions of parental involvement have expanded from including involvement in school events, conferences, and PTA, to including home activities such as ensuring that children are ready for school, reading to children, home-school communication, volunteering, setting school-related rules, discussing school-related problems, and family socialization toward academic achievement. Barriers to parental involvement are found in all cultures and include lack of knowledge and understanding of what children are learning, lack of time, unawareness of opportunities, not being asked or having a chance to volunteer, low self-efficacy, unsafe school environment, and perceived lack of encouragement. Additional barriers faced by the African American parent include perceptions of racism and discrimination and reactions to this socialization process. Findings show that while there are multiple parent involvement policies and programs these may not address the different types of involvement that different parents are interested in. A study is therefore needed to explore parental involvement of parents of African American high school students. Academic programs are more successful. Winnail, S. C., Geiger, B. F., Macrina, D. M., Snyder, S., Petri, C., & Nagy, S. (2000). Barriers to parent involvement in middle school health education. American Journal of Health Studies, 16(4), 193-199. Geenen et al. (2001) reported findings related to different perspectives in a study survey of 308 African-American, Hispanic-American, Native-American, and European-American paren |
