Cooperation Between Parents And Teachers In Education

Obstacles to parent-teacher cooperation and ways of a healthy collaboration.

The interaction between the two structures of the educational process, parents and teachers, and mutual assistance can lead to achieving students goals. Nowadays, the need for close and honest cooperation between the school and the family is strongly realized and the parental involvement in the educational process is encouraged. Of course, this ideal collaboration and the positive atmosphere of communication often seem utopian, due to the problems and obstacles that arise. More specifically, parents often complain to teachers about their lack of understanding of their expectations and desires and do not spend the appropriate time for their child. On the other hand, teachers consider parents problematic and state that they do not cooperate easily as they do not give the right information about their child and do not accept their opinion, considering them inadequate.

The teacher develops a special relationship with the child, which often causes competitive emotions. In addition, teachers are often influenced by prejudices and treat parents as responsible. Another important barrier to promoting proper collaboration between parents and teachers is the differing views on values and social context, which can cause problems in the way we perceive reality. On the contrary, the desire to accept and recognize the child is a primary need for parents and they seek to show some exclusivity in the child-teacher relationship.

In more details, for its part, the family can cause a variety of problems, thus creating barriers to cooperation with teachers. Also, parents, due to various factors such as stress or workaholism or even stress, refuse to cooperate with parity. Finally, parents are under emotional and psychological pressure from their social environment and thus end up ignoring certain needs of their own. On the other hand,for teachers, the most important obstacle for parents to participate in school reality lies in the teachers` perceptions of the presence of parents in school and the way they choose to work with them.

Therefore, teachers in order to solve the above attitudes and problems it is necessary to accept the cooperation with the parents not only with its informative character but with a more substantial perspective. On the other hand, parents need to be able to provide the teacher with the right information and help with their work in order to deal with their child`s difficulty. In addition, it has been found that parental involvement in school reality in various school activities helps to improve their children`s school performance.

The above obstacles can be eliminated by recognizing and respecting the parity between parents and teachers. The triptych of successful collaboration, then, is about the right information, creating a positive climate and finding a common path in the decision-making process. Also, all members of the co-operation group must be prepared for any kind of disagreement or conflict, which they will willingly face, with the common goal of better educating and advancing the children.

More specifically, teachers need:

v To understand the desires and needs of the family environment

v To maintain a sincere and open attitude towards parents,

v To avoid labeling in their conversations.

v To also refer to the student`s strengths and not to his weaknesses.

v To choose dialogue as the main means of communication and to ask parents to inform them about their child, referring to their personal experiences and concerns.

On the other hand, parents must:

v In turn, understand the need and desire of teachers.

v To be possessed by honesty and maintain an open attitude towards teachers.

v To show acceptance of their child`s difficulties and to discuss them.

v To refer not only to the strengths of their child but also to talk objectively about their disadvantages.

v To choose the dialogue to discuss their concerns about their child with the teacher.

Thus, the dipole of the process of cooperation in educational practice, parents and teachers, it is necessary to re-approach the foundations of the communication climate that is created between them. Also, in the "building" of the relationship between them.