Date of Award
4-2-2018
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctorate of Education, Ed.D.
College
College of Education
Department
Education
First Advisor
Audrey Rabas, Ph.D.
Second Advisor
Julia E. Britt, Ed.D.
Third Advisor
Toni Carr, Ed.D.
Abstract
This study at a single, international school in Mozambique with a diverse parent student population from 40 different nationalities and educators from 9 different nationalities used an ethnographic research methodology to investigate teacher perceptions of their preparation to foster the home-school partnership in an international school community. A sample of 21 teachers from nine different countries of origin represented the demographic breakdown of the school, including gender, nationality, years of teaching, years at site, and whether the participant was a parent of a school aged child. Open-ended interviews gathered participants’ lived experiences on practices for teacher preparation programs around identifying the world and revealed that preparation for the partnership is absent in the universities for the pre-service teachers. This study was unique in seeking to further understand informal preparation occurring at the school site by administration or through collegial support leading to greater preparation to foster the home-school partnership. The participant responses evidence that collegial support and a trial-and-error help many teachers learn the systems used at the school. Teachers who are parents have transferable skills with a depth of empathetic information to assist in developing protocols and teacher preparation. Most importantly, novice teachers are not receiving consistent preparation for their experiences with parents and, therefore, lack confidence in their ability to foster the home-school partnership. The findings of this study display the need for explicit teacher preparation for the partnership, especially for parent conferencing, based on the vision and culture of the school. With administration as leaders, the school can adopt a holistic approach to improving structures for teachers to become better prepared to foster the home-school partnership and develop a shared mindset surrounding the home school partnership.