Parental involvement, in their lower primary pupils’ homework, in Laikipia East Sub County Laikipia County, Kenya

Abstract

Over time educators have often indicated that the critical responsibility carried out by the home and family environment determines the academic success of the child. The earlier parental involvement begins therefore, the more effective it becomes. While research indicates that parental involvement in children homework has many benefits like improving children’s academic achievement, fostering school–home feedback, fostering learners’ initiative, cultivating parental responsibility, as well as increasing learner’s skill, there is evidence that parental involvement in homework is low internationally and nationally. Locally, studies have not given much attention to the level of parental involvement in children’s homework mainly at the lower primary school level which forms part of ECDE. This study therefore will seek to identify the ways in which parents get involved in their lower primary pupils’ homework. It will also explore the factors that might influence this involvement including, parental occupation, educational level and parental gender although there exists other factors that influence parental involvement in homework. The study will target parents from public schools in the sub county. Two schools out of 43 schools will be sampled and twenty parents purposively selected to form the study sample. The study will be guided by Joyce Epstein’s theory of overlapping spheres of influence which recounts that most effective families and schools work have common characteristics. The study will adopt an exploratory approach using a descriptive survey design to gather information from parents. The aim of this research is to make recommendations for the formation of effectiveprograms on parental involvement in homework of their ECDE children suited to Kenyan public primary schools so that pupils, teachers and parents will derive the greatest benefits from the study. The study will adopt qualitative approach methodology and use interview schedules as data collecting instruments. Data will be analyzed using descriptivestatistics such as frequencies, mean, variances and standard deviation and the findings will be presentedbyuse of graphs and tables and pie charts.