(How) Can the inclusion of family and community wisdom help improve school attendance?

Answer

(How) Can the inclusion of family and community wisdom help improve school attendance?

Abstract

This study aims at finding out the benefits of including the family and the community wisdom in an effort to improve school attendance. The paper achieves this through an exploration of existing literature that helps in examining the intensity of the problem of absenteeism and the possibility of engaging the family and the community. Through the analysis, factors such as institutional structures and the family background play a significant role in determining the increased cases of chronic absenteeism, which then offers an incredible opportunity to analyze how well to include the family and community wisdom in this fight. Furthermore, the study also realized a remarkable impact on adult-student relationship in improving school attendance, thereby necessitating the creation of strong teacher-student relationship as well as parent-teacher relationships. Such will help in remaining sensitive to the factors behind the failure to attend the classes, thereby finding feasible solutions from the roots of the problem.

Literature Review

Chronic absenteeism remains a critical problem in our schools despite the measures put in place by the government to increase attendance. Students across primary and high school levels still express a high level of truancy, prompting school counselors to make efforts to help in understanding the compelling reasons behind the problem. Primarily, school counselors have a role to play in helping the student’s in their academic, emotional, and social aspects, which have a powerful influence on their performance and holistic transition into higher levels of learning. However, with increased absenteeism, it becomes challenging for the students to attain substantial success in academics, which has then made it necessary to determine how the inclusion of family and community wisdom can be instrumental in improving school attendance. 

Having been a substitute paraprofessional for the seventh and eighth graders for many years, attendance remains one of the primary issues that I have been battling for a while. Its influence on the students’ development and performance is as powerful, thereby creating a need to examine every possible avenue to remedy the situation. Several interviews and interactions with the education stakeholders back on the contemporary measures to curtail the problem with more suggestions on the inclusion of family and community wisdom in the schools to help raise students’ attendance. Nevertheless, another concern then remains how such inclusions will be a possibility and, if any, the importance thereof. According to Gary and Witherspoon (2011), there is a need to transition from family involvement to a family and community engagement, which creates a partnership through which an improvement on students’ achievement is a guarantee. That is, where schools and families intentionally opt to work together and develop strategies aimed at supporting and strengthening each other, both the students and the schools benefit (Gary & Witherspoon, 2011).

Since parents and the community in general have a powerful illustration of history and have the potential of putting everything into perspective, their inclusion offers a vibrant opportunity to improve the students’ attendance and ultimate performance. Most students have experiential concerns around issues such as culture, history, identity, and justice, which in most cases have presented learning bias. There are situations when students do not feel a sense of belonging within the institution or class, thereby prompting them to develop acute absenteeism. Nevertheless, through engaging the parents and the community, they can align these issues into perspective, thus creating a mutual understanding and intensifies a sense of belonging. Furthermore, making room to share this knowledge supports the development of student identities. This means that families and the community still have a lot to do to ensure improved classroom attendance and subsequent performance elevation (Wood & Bauman, 2017).

According to Kearney et al. (2019), school absenteeism has lasting effects on the children and adolescents, which in some cases spill over into adulthood. The most exciting part is the fact that in all these challenges, the family background and support remains a critical factor (Gottlieb, 2016). This means that finding a solution from the basics and the very roots of the problems will go a long way in developing a feasible solution. Besides, Kearney and co also point that attendance problems have a significant connection with the childhood experiences such as trauma, family and school violence, medical problems, and victimization (Kearney et al., 2019). This means that through the incorporation of the family and the community, their inputs will help in identifying the causes of these problems, thereby helping in the development of academic tolerance and more in-depth understanding (Li & Qiu, 2018).

Moreover, the relationship between family involvement and an improvement in students’ attendance does not only reflect in the American system, but also in other countries as well. For instance, according to Lara and Saracostti (2019), research in the Chilean education shows a significant level of influence of parental involvement in the affairs of their children since they help the teachers have a background of the challenges that the students undergo away from schools (Lara & Saracostti, 2019). This arises because of improved interaction between two critical socializing spheres, the family and school, thereby contributing to a positive development in the child’s socioemotional and cognitive development. It also points to an impressive revelation that such engagements are essential in boosting the children’s self-esteem, which subsequently creates remarkable school retention and attendance progress.

Primarily, families and schools act as the main actors in the construction of roles and forms of engagements, which then explains the possibility of lapses, where proper arrangements and commitments are lacking. That is, the family-school partnership will allow for the conceptualization of roles and relationships, and the impact thereof being the development of the children in a more profound way (Lara & Saracostti, 2019). Notwithstanding, Brown (2004) also alludes to the concept of differences in culture and identity when handling second language classes, which again points to the importance of community integration. This primarily forms the basis under which the community will play a role in sensitizing the students and the school, thereby providing for the use of more accommodative approaches in schools. Through such integration, the school, students, and the families develop a social relevance that considers cultural sensitivity, thus helping to create a commitment to anti-bias in education.

In most cases, mainly when dealing with second language learners, when communication is built on misinformation, stereotypes, and assumptions, often create distance between the students, families, and schools, thus a cause of severe absenteeism. Nonetheless, cultural matters are very sensitive that requires address with care and precision by the school to foster partnership and the desire to learn by the students. Therefore, when handled with respect and sensitivity, schools and families can create an engagement approach that provides an opportunity to live out the values of inclusivity and equity, which forms the center of anti-bias education, thereby increasing students’ attendance.

When commenting about the effectiveness of incorporating other measures to improve school attendance, Theodore Stripling applauds the development of the student-adult relationship that proves to reduce cases of absenteeism significantly (Stripling, 2019). Besides, by identifying the multiple factors behind the chronic absenteeism, Stripling (2019) provided a basis for which the policymakers can engage the family and the community for the betterment of prospects in the education system. Some of the factors explaining chronic absenteeism include family conflict and personal problems that the school can learn by engaging the community and the family. Through this, they develop a feasible mechanism to address the issue, thereby providing basic approaches to eliminate truancy. Furthermore, school structures can also influence the tendency to remain absent. These include the conflict with the school structure, which may incorporate child-teacher relationships and mode of discipline (Stripling, 2019). 

Through the numerous research articles, it becomes more evident that punitive measures are not very efficient in addressing absentee issues, which then gives room for positive behavior interventions for attendance. It increases attendance by reducing the social and emotional gaps exhibited by the students. This then explains the intentional efforts of the communities to improve student attendance aimed at limiting the effect of chronic absenteeism. Joshua Childs and Ain Grooms also affirm that by collaborating with other organizations, institutions find the strength to leverage their expertise and knowledge, thereby increasing school attendance (Childs & Grooms, 2018). It becomes more critical when the districts and schools develop a universal approach to the problem, with every party expressing goodwill to ensure a derivation of the best of policies for the education system.

Redding et al. (2011) provides a more detailed approach to the concept of family and community engagement in a bid to increase class attendance by focusing on the need to work together for the benefit of the students. It is only through these engagements that the parents can hold the institutions accountable. Through the engagements, the relationship between the parents and the students makes it possible to strengthen behavioral change with a proper foundation on the causes of the problems. Conversely, it helps in building capacity to support the school through community coordination, and support since the parents’ involvement alone is not sufficient to improve such difficulties (Redding et al., 2011). Some factors are communal rather than familial, thus requires the entire community to address them. Essentially, the primary goal of the community is to ensure mutual respect founded on the premises of healthy relationships and shared responsibilities, which makes the teachers play their part and let the family and the community also play theirs to ensure the ultimate success of the students both academically, socially, and emotionally.

In conclusion, the articles examined above offers inspiring reasons that make the inclusion of family and community wisdom beneficial in curtailing the problem of absenteeism. However, modernization of the approach remains a vital tool since 21st-century challenges require contemporary strategies to help in finding a feasible solution. Besides, the community has to transition and emphasize shared responsibilities between families, schools, and communities for efficiency in school reforms and improvement in the children’s performance. By building family-school relationships, the system moves a step further since it becomes easier to engage the parents both at home and at school for more profound sensitivity and elimination of educational bias.