Attitudes and experiences of parental involvement in their children's homework

The theoretical part of the thesis presents the role of parents in the children schooling process with the emphasis on cooperation between school and parents as well as parents' involvement in their children's school work at home. The theoretical part also presents the role of the social pedagogue in elementary school since the social pedagogue plays an important role in establishing and maintaining good cooperation between school and parents. The empirical part of the thesis presents the research that was conducted on a sample of 139 parents of fourth and eighth grade. I was interested in how much time parents devote to children's school work at home, what views they have on those activities and to which extend they see these activities as a burden. The data were collected by the Questionnaire on attitudes and involvement of parents in their children's school work at home. The results showed that the parents spend twice as much time on school work at home in the fourth grade pupils compared to eighth grade pupils. Mothers are more involved in it than fathers. There was a medium strong negative and statistically significant correlation between children's school performance and the extent of time that parents devote to their homework and between the children's school performance and the rating of burden connected to their children's school work at home. The differences in the extent of time and the attitudes towards inclusion in the child's homework depending on the sex of the pupils were not confirmed as well as the differences depending on the type of family and the parents’ employment status were not confirmed. The results also showed which forms of involvement in the children's school work at home are the most distressing for parents. The parents of the younger children expressed that making something for school – like musical instruments, posters, papers, etc. – and performing experiments or preparing for a presentation was the most troublesome. The parents of the older children emphasized that the more stressful factor is to arrange time between the obligations of their job, other commitments and helping their children with their homework. The survey also shows that a professional reflection is required concerning the appropriateness of homework, at least for the younger schoolchildren. Furthermore, the results promote a more intensive cooperating with those parents that experience their involvement in their children's school work at home as a burden. These are mostly the parents of the less successful children of whom the school often has too high expectation as to eliminate their learning unsuccessfulness.