Omani Parents’ Involvement in Their Children’s English Education

High levels of parental/guardian involvement in their children’seducation are often associated with a number of educational, social, and evenpsychological benefits. These include higher rates of school attendance, greatercommunication with the school or education provider, better social adjustment, andhigher levels of academic achievement including in the development of literacy skills.However, despite this, research from the Arab world on the relationship between parentalinvolvement and children’s development of English language literacy skills has tended toreport mixed results, with this also being the case in the Sultanate of Oman. To explorethis issue within the Omani context, the current study examined the potential benefits,challenges, and practices of Omani parents as these relate to their children’s Englishlanguage studies. A two-section Likert-type response scale questionnaire wasadministered to 391 parents of students in the country’s public school system. The firstquestionnaire section related to participants’ attitudes about parental involvement intheir children’s English studies while the second explored the frequency with whichparents engaged in activities related to their children’s English classes. Resultsindicate that Omani parents are generally aware of the importance of their involvementin their children’s development and believe that they should be involved in a number ofhome- and school-based activities. However, despite this, their actual level ofinvolvement in their children’s English language studies was somewhatlimited