Examining teachers' parental engagement preparation : a scoping review and national survey

Parental engagement with children’s learning can have a significant positive impact on pupil outcomes. Yet, little is known about teachers’ preparation for this key part of their role. Hence this thesis sought to identify gaps in teachers’ parental engagement knowledge, skills, attitudes and training. Two studies were conducted. The first study was a global scoping review of previous attempts to train teachers for parental engagement. Using a comprehensive and reproducible search strategy, the review identified 348 relevant studies. Analysis focused on synthesising evidence about the training approaches, contexts, populations and methodologies that have been used previously. Two interactive outputs were produced to enhance the scoping review’s impact and usability; an evidence gap map supports users to identify gaps in the evidence-base and a publicly available web database enables users to search for training studies that are relevant to their own context. The second study was an online survey, examining the parental engagement knowledge, skills, attitudes and training of 1782 qualified teachers in England. Large gaps were identified: most teachers reported receiving no training in a series of key parental engagement skills, the majority failed to recognise the importance of parent-child interactions in their conceptualisation of parental engagement, and around 70% appeared to display deficit attitudes towards parents. Multivariate analysis showed that teachers’ parental engagement skills were associated with their self-efficacy, experience, workload, training route and other factors. The knowledge generated lays the groundwork for future evidence-based parental engagement training for teachers, by synthesising evidence from previous training attempts and pinpointing gaps in teachers’ current parental engagement preparation. Both studies also contributed to methodological progress, through developing promising new measures of teachers’ parental engagement knowledge and skills, and through the innovative, interactive approach to presenting the scoping review findings. Implications for researchers, policymakers and practitioners are discussed.