5th Teaching & Education Conference, Amsterdam

DO UNAPPRECIATIVE PARENTS INFLUENCE TEACHERS' WORK? A QUALITATIVE STUDY ON THE WAY TEACHERS' HANDLE PROBLEMATIC INTERACTION WITH PARENTS

ASNAT DOR

Abstract:

Background: Effective teacher-parent collaboration enhances children and contributes also to parents and teachers. However, teacher-parent communication is often limited, and in some occasions may lead to severe disagreements and conflicts. The current study was designed to reach a profound understanding of teachers' experience in their communication with parents, with special focusing on incidents they viewed as problematic. Methodology: For this qualitative study, semi-structured open-end interviews were conducted with 21 teachers. The interviews were analyzed using the constant-comparative method for qualitative data analysis. Findings: Teachers feel that they do well in their interactions with most parents, yet they all recall interactions in which they perceived as problematic and needed advice from colleagues. 16 participants recall feeling of unappreciation and ingratitude - as parents didn’t appreciate their work and good intentions in their working process with their children. Almost all of them said that this doesn’t affect their work with the children, however it reduces their interactions with these parents to minimum. Most of the teachers said they were worried that the school principle would not back up their decisions. Implications for practice: It is apparent that that teachers can handle many interactions with parents. However, in some cases, teachers might feel unappreciated by parents, and that might reduce their willingness to initiate contact with them. Based on the findings, it is recommended that to empower the teachers and build their confidence in complicated interactions with parents, they receive guidance as needed. This could be done through routine discussion meetings with colleagues as well as close attention on the part of school counselors and psychologists to teachers experience with parents.

Keywords: Teacher-parent collaboration, Teacher-parent communication, teachers' empowerment, unappreciation

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