ABSTRACT

This is a qualitative inquiry looking into the experiences of parental involvement in the context of Philippine public elementary education. This paper has two goals. First, it aims to present the strategies that Filipino parents employ in order to influence children’s education. Second, it aims to examine unique involvement strategies among Filipino parents. Data of this paper were culled from 12 focus group discussions conducted in 5 provinces of the country. The results of the study suggest that there are parental involvement strategies unique to the Philippine context owing to the poor economic conditions of some Filipino families. While it is not directly related to education, making ends meet and providing food for the family’s table were seen as parental involvement strategies. To compensate for the limited direct involvement in education, Filipino parents looked for other means to be able to help their children excel such as exempting the latter from doing household chores, avoiding vices, and maintaining quality family relationships. It against this backdrop that this paper recommends that future quantitative studies on parental involvement in the Filipino parents’ context need to consider indirect parental involvement strategies as indicators or variables as these may have spillover impacts on children’s schooling.

摘要

这是一项定性调查，研究菲律宾公立小学教育背景下父母参与的经验。本文有两个目标。首先，它旨在介绍菲律宾父母为了影响孩子的教育而采用的策略。其次，它旨在研究菲律宾父母之间独特的参与策略。本文的数据来自于在全国 5 个省份进行的 12 次焦点小组讨论。研究结果表明，由于一些菲律宾家庭的经济状况不佳，菲律宾有独特的父母参与策略。虽然它与教育没有直接关系，但维持生计和为家庭餐桌提供食物被视为父母的参与策略。为了弥补有限的直接参与教育，菲律宾父母寻找其他方法来帮助他们的孩子取得优异成绩，例如免除后者做家务、避免恶习和维持良好的家庭关系。正是在这种背景下，本文建议未来对菲律宾父母环境中父母参与的定量研究需要考虑间接父母参与策略作为指标或变量，因为这些策略可能会对儿童的学校教育产生溢出影响。