The Effect of School-Family Partnership on Teacher-Parent Communication at Secondary Education

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of school-family partnership on teacher-parent communication. The population of the study consisted of the parents of 4937 students studying in the 12th grade of Vocational and Technical Anatolian High Schools in five districts (Aksu, Kepez, Konyaaltı, Muratpaşa and Döşemealtı districts) in Antalya, Turkey. In order to represent the target population, the proportional distribution technique, which is one of the stratified sampling methods, was used. 450 questionnaires were distributed to reach the sample number, out of which 364 were completed. The tool used was, an adapted version of the School-Family-Community Partnership Scale, developed by Epstein et al. (2009). The validity and reliability analyses of the scales were established with explanatory and confirmatory factor analyses. The findings revealed that majority of parents were primary school, secondary school, or high school graduates. Decisions in the family were found to be made either jointly by the mother and the father or in some cases by father only. The level of mothers' decision-making regarding children were found to be low. It was also found that Parents go to school at least once and maximum four times in a year. However, parent of one out of ten students did not visit the school to get information about their child. The relationship between school-family partnership and teacherparent communication was found to be directly proportional and fairly high. In other words, a strong partnership between the school and the family increases the communication between the teacher and parents.