World Cat and Eric Competency

Naive Question: What role does parent/community involvement play in a child's education? How can you create community involvement in an elementary school? What are ways to get parents involved?

I chose this topic because it is a reality of my everyday job. I currently have no regular volunteers involved in the library nor do parents typically get involved in any aspect at this campus. The only exception is three parents that are willing to help out for short periods of time during book fairs. The campus is a title one campus so I know that many parents are struggling to juggle work and parenting. I would like to know how important community involvement really is. I assume that the lack of parental involvement does not at all help these students, but I would like to know if it is proven to hinder their education.

I searched using the ERIC database first. In the beginning I came up with three facets or key terms, my initial terms or text words and thesaurus terms or subject headings.

Searching ERIC database:

Facets: community involvement, elementary school, students

1st Facet - community involvement
*initial terms - volunteers, parent involvement, participation
**thesaurus terms - participation, citizen participation, community action, outreach programs, partnership in education, family involvement, parent involvement, parent school relationship

2nd Facet - elementary school
*initial terms - schools, primary grades
**thesaurus terms - elementary schools, grade 1, grade 2, grade 3

3rd Facet - education
*initial terms - learning, reading
**thesaurus terms -educational outcomes, learning, student achievement

Boolean Statement:
(community involvement OR volunteers OR parent involvement OR participation OR outreach programs OR partnership in education OR family involvement OR parent school relationship) AND (elementary school OR grade 1 OR grade 2 OR grade 3) AND (education or educational benefits)

Search Results:

1. ss1 (community involvement OR volunteers OR parent involvement OR participation OR outreach programs OR partnership in education OR family involvement OR parent school relationship) AND (elementary school OR grade 1 OR grade 2 OR grade 3) AND (education OR educational benefits) - using subject headings

2. Result - 11758 results

3. Notes - I was overwhelmed with the amount of results I received from this search. After looking through many of the results, I realized that there seemed to be no real focus. The results were all over the place. I narrowed my search in order to provide the much needed structure.

1. ss2 (community involvement OR volunteers OR parent involvement OR family involvement) AND (elementary school) AND (education) - using subject headings

2. Result - 2676 results

3. Notes - I still had a broad range of results. However, I did find articles pertaining to my questions. I feel confident that I could find information that I needed from this search even with the vast amount; however, I decided adjust my search terms to really focus on the question. I made some changes.

1. ss3 (community involvement OR parent involvement OR family involvement) AND (elementary school) AND (student achievement OR educational outcomes OR reading OR learning) - using subject headings

2. Result - 153

3. Notes - 153 results is much less cumbersome to sort through than the previous searches. I found a several articles that fit my information need. I found the article: The Family - School Partnership: An Opportunity to Promote the Learning Competence of All Students. This article discusses the importance of family involvement for student success and ways in which to make it possible (Christenson, 2003). For me, it is important to find ways to involve families if it really makes a difference in student achievement. After all, the goal is to have students experience success.

Christenson, S.L. (2003). The Family-School Partnership: An Opportunity to Promote the Learning Competence of All Students. School Psychology quarterly. 18(4). 454-482.


Searching World Cat:

I re-examined my subject headings to make any changes needed while using a different database. I had to try different terms using the thesaurus in order to complete my search. Unlike using the ERIC database, World Cat did not turn up any subject headings when I entered community involvement, outreach programs or educational outcomes. I looked through all of the previous terms used and through trial and error developed my new searching statement.

1st Facet - community involvement
*initial terms - volunteers, communities
**thesaurus terms - parent participation, educational parent participation, volunteer workers in education

2nd Facet - elementary school
*initial terms - schools, primary grades
**thesaurus terms - elementary school, elementary school libraries

3rd Facet - education
*initial terms - learning, educational outcome
**thesaurus terms -academic achievement, success

Boolean Statement:

(parent participation OR educational parent participation OR volunteer workers in education) AND (elementary school) AND (academic achievement OR success)

Search results:

1. ss1 - (parent participation OR educational parent participation OR volunteer workers in education) AND (elementary school) AND (academic achievement OR success) - using subject headings

2. Results - 54

3. Notes - I decided to try and learn from my previous search through the ERIC database by focusing my statement the first time. It worked. The search yielded an adequate amount of relevant information without too much junk to look through. This search reinforced to me the importance of the developing that first search statement. By honing in on exactly what is needed, a lot of time and frustration can be eliminated. I found a study titled Accessing the effects of Parental Decisions about School Type and Involvement on Early Elementary Education that provided a great insight on my topic (Taningco, 2006).

Taningco, M.T.V. (2006). Assessing the effects of parental decisions about school type and involvement on early elementary education. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

Results:
The search process using both databases was beneficial. It is interesting to see the different outcomes when entering subject headings. For my particular search this time, the results from World Cat were more relevant with less junk. Although ERIC had information that could be used, a lot of irrelevant information had to be sorted through first.