Family Dynamics

The state of family dynamics and the family interactions have important associations with students’ academic motivation, performance, and achievement.

  

According to Rand researchers (Grissmer, Kirby, Berends, and Williamson), the most important family characteristic influencing student performance is parents’ education. For example, students with one or two college-educated parents performed much better than students whose parents were not high school graduates. (rand.org) If the parents are educated, they will be able to create a supportive learning environment for their children. 

In the other hand, single-parent families who are not high school graduates and who have a low income will most of the time see their children’s performance decrease. Students in single-parent families have lower academic performance. They will be more tempted to follow peer pressure and they will end up drooping out from high school. Therefore, single parents may be unable to contribute to schools because of work commitments. 

In addition, today’s families spend less time together because both parents work outside the home and they often have more than one job. Parents have less time to become full partners in their children’s education. Working parents cannot always be home to ensure that the homework gets done. They do not have the time to verbally communicate in a loving and generous way their expectations to their children. Both working parents have no time to encourage children to read and to promote school attendance. Also, they have no time for school based activities such as attending PTA meetings, parent-teacher conferences, concerts, and other schools events.

 In the whole, one of the most important ways to improve students’ performance would be to increase parents’ and families involvement. 

Parent involvement makes an enormous impact on student’s performance and academic achievement. Effective teachers are fully aware of the benefits of parent and family involvement. When there is a greater involvement from parents, students’ performance do increase.

Facets of Educational Planning

Effective teachers should be concerned about what content should students study and how this content will be presented to them. The types of curriculum organization used in most of the schools are based on two perspectives, subject-centered and student-centered. I would like to discuss with you today the differences between student-centered and subject-centered curriculum as they impact instructional planning.

The concept of the student-centered curriculum has its roots in the philosophies of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel (Webb 2010). The student-centered curricula emphasizes the student’s freedom to learn, activities, and creative self-expression that engages the student in the learning process. 

On the contrary, the subject-area curriculum, which is supported by essentialists and perennialists, proposes the return to fundamentals. The curriculum is composed of a group of subjects which presented through lectures and discussions. Rote memorization and recitation are required of students. 

On the other hand, the student-centered curriculum emphasizes the students’ needs and interests by letting them use their creativity. The student-centered curriculum focuses on the individual learner by including a wide range of activities outside the classroom. The Progressives think that the student-centered curriculum encourages teachers to choose content which are suitable for their group of learners. This design involves more the teachers and it allows them to use their creativity. 

However, Essentialists think that teachers who are faced to a student-centered curriculum will not concentrate on the subject-matter mastery. Essentialists, who support the subject-centered curriculum, are persuaded that this design reduces repetition or overlap between grade levels. The knowledge will be exposed to students in an orderly manner. Teachers will be able to methodically assess pupil’s progress. Essentialists think that student-centered curriculum is too broad and too permissive. They believe that textbooks are developed for subject-areas and they provide a solid organization to teachers. 

But the student-centered designs explore the student’s own life or family history or local environment. The Progressives think that the traditional curriculum is fragmented and compartmentalized and that it fails in including the increasing number of English language learners. 

John Dewey encouraged balance between the student-centered and subject-centered curriculum. 

I believe that we should do the same. In curriculum planning and teaching, we should maintain a balance between the two curriculum designs. An effective teacher should adapt to the learning styles of students and considers student differences.

What do you think? parents, students, teachers...