J Child Fam Stud (2012) 21:705–707
DOI 10.1007/s10826-012-9573-5
BOOK REVIEW
Hornby, Garry, Parental Involvement in Childhood Education
Springer, New York, 2011, 137 pp
Sandra E. James
Published online: 16 February 2012
Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
Don’t let the small size of this book fool you. Garry
Hornby has managed to cover a lot of ground in 137 pages.
This book is a concise yet comprehensive guide in building
partnerships between parents and teachers, increasing
parental involvement in their children’s education. His
background in educational psychology, counseling, and
teacher education gives him an objective perspective on
one of the most important relationships that impact a
child’s education—the one between parent and teacher.
Chapter 1 covers the importance of parental involve-
ment in their children’s education and gives some exam-
ples of the positive benefits that are derived from having a
partnership between parents and the educational system.
The merits of parental involvement include benefits for
children, parents, and teachers. Parental involvement offers
children the opportunity to have positive changes in their
attitudes, mental health, and behavior as well as an increase
in school attendance. Improvement in parental-teacher
relationships, teacher morale, and school climate are
reported by teachers to be positive results by parents being
more involved in their children’s education. For parents,
the satisfaction of knowing that they can affect positive
change can give them more confidence in their parenting
abilities as well as more interest in their own educations.
Acknowledging that there is a gap between the rhetoric
on parental involvement and the reality of the typical ways
that it is practiced in the school system, Hornby points out
that for the most part, parental involvement has been lim-
ited to attending fundraisers and PTA meetings instead of
participating in a true partnership.
S. E. James (&)
American Health and Wellness Institute, 3399 Peachtree Road,
NE, Suite 400, Atlanta, GA 30326, USA
e-mail: sjames@ahwinstitute.com
The role of psychologists in promoting family–school
partnerships and facilitating the involvement of parents in
their children’s education is considered. Common attitudes
of professionals to working with parents are outlined and
the attitudes, knowledge, and skills considered to be nec-
essary for working effectively with parents are identified.
This chapter includes a very informative discussion
about the role of the school psychologist in facilitating
parental involvement. The leadership role that the school
psychologist can play is instrumental in bringing together
the school administration and teachers with the parents of
students. Examples of activities used to support increased
communication between these two groups are providing in-
service training to academic professionals that suggest
ways to involve parents in students’ schoolwork, and
working with parents to ensure that they have the infor-
mation needed to effectively collaborate with schools.
Hornby identifies many common attitudes that school
professionals hold toward parents and suggests that these
attitudes can sometimes prevent the development of
parental involvement. Some of these attitudes include
viewing parents as problems. Seeing parents as adversaries,
vulnerable, not capable, less intelligent, in need of coun-
seling, or being the cause of the child’s problems can lead
to a negative outcome. This chapter not only gives exam-
ples of these attitudes but also discusses the competencies
and attitudes that aid in working effectively with parents,
including specific skills, knowledge, and a working model.
Chapter 2 addresses the various barriers to effective
parental involvement, including factors that are related not
only to children, parents and families but also relationships
between parents and teachers and societal issues. Expla-
nations of how these may contribute to the discrepancy
between the rhetoric and typical practice where parental
involvement is concerned are explored.
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Some of the issues that prevent parental involvement are
factors having to do with the children. The age of the child,
for example, causes parents to change their levels of partic-
ipation in the child’s education. Where a parent may be
involved to some extent at the elementary school level, as the
child enters adolescence it is typical for parents to decrease
their participation in school events based partly on the per-
ception that their teenager no longer wants the parent
involved. Other factors include the child’s performance at
school. Learning difficulties and disabilities, as well as
behavior problems, may intimidate the parent and feel that
they are not equipped to deal with these issues as well as the
professionals. Parents that have children who excel in school
may not see a need to be actively involved. If the child is
gifted and the school is not providing enough stimulation for
advanced opportunities, parents tend to disengage because
they lose confidence in the school system.
Barriers that arise from family factors are due to the
parents beliefs about how the teacher is or is not offering
invitations for involvement in their child’s education, the
parents own beliefs about parental involvement perhaps
based on their own childhood experiences, and their own
level of education. Societal factors include economics,
gender, and culture differences. The interaction between
parents and teachers is affected by the differing goals,
agendas and attitudes of both groups. This chapter provides
much insight into the complexity of the reasons behind
levels of parental involvement and the influences of the
many factors to consider.
Chapter 3 moves into describing specific models that
can guide the practice of parental involvement, taking into
consideration the parents’ abilities and needs, as well as
ways that schools can evaluate their own practices and
identify not only strengths but areas that need further
development.
This chapter provides an objective overview of several
approaches to the practice of parental involvement. These
include the protective, expert, transmission, curriculum
enrichment, consumer and partnership models. I appreci-
ated Hornby’s in-depth explanations of these models and
their strengths and weaknesses.
Identifying the seven principles of effective partnerships
between teachers and parents: Trust, respect, competence,
communication, commitment, equality, and advocacy,
Hornby illustrates the importance of establishing an
effective partnership between the two groups, and con-
cludes that the partnership model is the most effective of
the ones described. He also points out that other inter-
ventions that may arise from other models continue to be
appropriate in schools, such as adopting use of the expert
model when specific treatment is indicated in the cases of
physical or emotional abuse, or providing parent involve-
ment projects which uses the transmission model.
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J Child Fam Stud (2012) 21:705–707
This chapter contains a checklist of questions to be used
by schools when reviewing their polices and procedures to
ensure that parental involvement is supported which I
believe is one of the most helpful sections of the book.
In the next two chapters, Hornby presents surveys of the
practice of parental involvement in school systems in New
Zealand, England, and Barbados. Chapter 4 covers ele-
mentary school findings and Chapter 5, secondary school
findings. Each of these chapters show how the schools
surveyed differ widely in their practices and points out the
weaknesses that are found throughout the system. Findings
of surveys are across eleven aspects of parental involve-
ment, specifically policy formation, acting as a resource,
collaborating with teachers, sharing information on chil-
dren, channels of communication, liaison with school staff,
parent education, parent support, encouraging parents into
school, involving diverse parents, and professional devel-
opment of teachers. Both Chapter 4 and 5 also contain case
studies of English and Barbadian schools that highlight
weaknesses in these particular school systems.
Chapter 6 is a discussion of implementing major parental
involvement practices that have been identified as areas that
need more consistency in their use. Several different strat-
egies are identified as being useful and each one of these is
thoroughly explained. These strategies include informal
contacts, parent–teacher meetings, a variety of written
communication, telephone contacts, home visits, and using
technological advances such as e-mail, school websites and
text messaging. This chapter provides a lot of practical
advice and examples of how these strategies can be devel-
oped and utilized to encouraging parents into the school
atmosphere, such as organizing informal events that will
provide a welcoming and non-threatening environment that
makes the entire family comfortable, thus increasing the rate
of success. Rapport between parents and teachers can be
built and fostered through appropriate structuring of the
parent–teacher meetings, and reviews of the meeting com-
pleted by teachers after such meetings, including discussion
with the children, collaboration with colleagues, and plans
for following up allow for the best possible outcome.
Chapter 7 outlines the interpersonal skills that teachers
need to develop in order to work effectively with parents.
This chapter is a good review of not only skills that
teachers typically have, such as verbal presentation and
explanation, but also the skills needed to effectively relate
to parents such as listening, counseling and assertiveness.
The basic types of listening skills are explained. Assertion
skills such as responding to criticism from parents, giving
constructive feedback, and making requests are important
for teachers to develop so that parents will be more likely
to communicate their own needs and abilities in the area of
parental involvement. The benefits of and skills needed for
group workshops are explored in this chapter.
J Child Fam Stud (2012) 21:705–707
Chapter 8 focuses on professionals other than teachers,
and the roles that each play in supporting the school system
in developing effective involvement activities for parents.
This chapter emphasizes that there are key components
involved in improving the level and quality of parental
involvement, which are dependent on changes that are
necessary on all levels of the environment. This ecological
perspective, including government, the education system
itself, the schools and the individual teachers illustrates the
challenges that lie ahead in developing true partnerships in
an atmosphere that may not make this a priority.
707
I found this book to be very helpful in addressing the
factors in building effective partnerships between families
and schools. As a parent, I particularly liked the practical
advice given to both teachers and parents, and the emphasis
that was placed on the idea that effective communication
between these two sets of individuals depends on mutual
respect and understanding. Individuals working in the
school system would benefit from reading this book as it
presents many ideas that could be easily implemented in
their practice and potentially reap great results.
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