Parents’ Perceptions of School Climate as a Predictor of Parents’ Participation in Their Children’s Education

Introduction: Parent involvement, which is defined as the attitudes, values and behaviors of parents supporting their children’s learning and education outcomes, has an important place in the education process of children. Many researchers acknowledge the important role that the strong positive link between home and school plays in children's development and education. However, many factors affect the participation of parents. School climate is one of these factors. Parent support and participation are considered important in a positive school climate. Thus, in schools with a healthy and open climate, school members can express their views more easily and contribute more actively to the educational process. Based on these thoughts, in this study, the extent to which parents’ participation in their children’s education is predicted by their perceptions of school climate. Methods: The research participants comprised 513 parents in Turkey, 413 women (80%) and 102 men (20%). Parental Participation Scale and Parents’ Perception of School Climate Scale were used in the study. Descriptive statistics, correlation and multiple regression (stepwise) analysis were used to analyze the data. Results: Findings obtained from the study showed that the level of parents’ participation in the educational processes of their children and their perception of school climate is high. As a result of the correlation analysis, it was found that only the Parent Participation Scale's “supporting child's socio-cultural development sub-dimension”, and School Climate Scale's “safety climate and academic climate” sub-dimensions had a significant and moderate relationship. In addition, as a result of the stepwise regression analysis, it was found that the safety climate and academic climate sub-dimensions significantly predicted the sub-dimension of supporting the socio-cultural development of the child. It was found that there were significant but low level relationships among the other sub-dimensions of the scales. Discussion: School climate refers to the social, physical and academic environments of the school, and in terms of school climate, activities in the school encourage students to feel comfortable and realize the learning process. In this respect, it is important that safety, and academic climate sub-dimensions are a significant predictor of the child's socio-cultural development support dimension. Limitations: The data in this study were collected from parents whose children are studying in primary schools in Pendik district of Istanbul/Turkey. In addition, variables with medium and higher correlation values were included in the regression analysis. Conclusion: School administrators and teachers should organize activities that will involve the parents in the education process in order to get the support of the parents during the education process. School administrators should create an open and healthy school climate while administrating the school, and should never ignore the impact of this climate on stakeholders.