Qualitative inquiry on parental involvement in children’s education: perspectives of parents, children, and teachers in select elementary schools in the Philippines

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Parental involvement
• Filipino parents
• parental strategies
• children’s education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Holcim Philippines.

Notes on contributors

Melvin Allena Jabar

Dr. Melvin Allena Jabar is an associate professor of the Department of Behavioral Sciences of the De La Salle University College of Liberal Arts. The current director of the DLSU Social Development Research Center, he most recently led the research teams for the studies “Financial Literacy among Public Elementary and High School Teachers” for AXA Foundation, “Health Status, Health Seeking Behavior, Access to Insurance among OFWs” for the Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (PCHRD) and PhilHealth, and “Formative Research for Behavioral Modification Intervention” for the Population Media Center in Vermont, USA. He has also been co-investigator for the studies “Baseline and Impact Assessment of Health Literacy Project in Region VI” funded by Unilab Foundation, “Hospital Financing among Local Government Units” and “Effect of Devolution on Local Health Expenditure” for PCHRD. His other research projects were funded by UNICEF, the European Union, and Help Age International. His other research interests are in intercultural marriages, educational sociology, health social science, evidence-based policy intervention, and parental involvement.

Dr. Jabar obtained his Ph. D. in Asia Pacific Studies at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University-Japan, and his Master of Health Social Science from DLSU (with High Distinction). He has a BA degree in Social Science and a BS degree in Psychology. His recent publications include “Parenting Experiences of Filipino Mothers in Japanese-Filipino Intercultural Marriages.” in J. Zulueta (Ed.) “Thinking beyond the state: Migration, integration, and citizenship in Japan and the Philippines” published by the De La Salle Publishing. His two most recent ISI/Scopus publications are “Exploring marine citizenship among young people in select urban and rural villages in the Philippines” in Applied Environmental Education and Communication and “Local leadership and community matter: Establishing a transit station for exiting disaster survivors” in International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.