Keywords
Science Inquiry, Student Achievement, Parent Participation, Family Involvement
Abstract
Research has shown that there is a positive correlation with student performance when there are members of the family, primarily a parent, who are actively involved with the student and their education. The following action research plan was designed to determine how increasing parental involvement affected student performance in a scientific inquiry program. This was done by offering "parenting a middle school student" workshops, encouraging family run practices at home, and inviting parents to attend a class with their student. This research was conducted in a large middle school in a central Florida school district with two 7th grade classrooms. One classroom served as the control group, while the second served as the experimental group. The teacher researcher was responsible for increasing communication with the parents in regards to student behavior and/or performance. Implementation of increased communications are associated with keeping parents informed, however they only work to increase student performance if the parent uses the increased communication and applies the information to use at home. Analysis of the data indicated that there was no difference between the two classes. The majority of the invited parents in the experimental group did not participate in the parent workshops. Students in the experimental groups showed little or no difference in grades on the post unit exam or in their overall grades. Additional research with smaller sampling sizes would be a recommendation of this researcher. When working with an average of one hundred and twenty students on a regular basis, working with twenty five sets of parents to increase communication was a daunting task. The researcher would recommend having an experimental group of no more than ten for future ii i studies. Although a small sample may be sufficient for a descriptive study, it's recognized that a small sample will likely not have sufficient power to detect statistically significant differences if they exist.
Notes
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Graduation Date
2007
Semester
Summer
Advisor
Everett, Robert
Degree
Master of Education (M.Ed.)
College
College of Education
Degree Program
K-8 Mathematics and Science Education
Format
application/pdf
Identifier
CFE0001689
URL
http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0001689
Language
English
Release Date
September 2007
Length of Campus-only Access
None
Access Status
Masters Thesis (Open Access)
STARS Citation
DeNoon, Patricia, "The Effects Of Increasing Family Involvement On Student Achievement In Scientific Inquiry" (2007). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3137.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/3137