Family-School Communication: The Key Features at the Current Stage

Kristina Lyubitskaya - Research Assistant, Center for Modern Childhood Studies, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: klyubitskaya@hse.ruMarta Shakarova - Candidate of Sciences in Psychology, Specialist, Center for the Prevention of Religious and Ethnic Extremism in Educational Organizations of the Russian Federation, Moscow Pedagogical State University. E-mail: mshakarova@bk.ruA number of foreign studies in family-school relationships have shown that effective parent-school interaction is a crucial factor of parental school involvement, which, in its turn, has a positive impact on the whole schooling process. In Russia, there is little empirical data on the communication between parents and schools. The article describes the findings of an exploratory research that involved school administrators and parents of students at different levels of school education ( elementary, middle and high school) in a megalopolis of the Central Federal District. Interviews with parents and school representatives as well as parent questionnaire results are used to describe the most popular ways in which parents interact with schools, the main problems they encounter in such interaction, and the degree of parental involvement in school life. Direct contact with teachers is found to be the most efficient channel of parent-school communication. Parents see the main communication problems in disagreement about instruction and education issues and in the disengagement of schools or individual teachers. These problems become more acute in middle and high school. On the whole, the existing level of parental involvement in school is measured as low in this study.