Many decades of research have demonstrated that parental influence is significant for the development of positive social and academic behaviours in children (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Christenson & Hurley, 1997; Henderson & Mapp, 2002). When a child begins school the responsibility for the social and academic welfare of that child shifts to include the teacher. In the classroom, where a child’s behaviour is continually disruptive the teacher may experience significant stress.  In Australian schools, Clunies-Ross, Little & Kienhuis (2008) consider teacher stress and burnout a major concern. Parents of children with difficult behaviour also struggle, often with limited knowledge of how to manage it effectively (Brotman et al., 2011). A large body of research links poor academic performance and disruptive student behaviour to delinquency, drug use, criminal activity and incarceration (Bidell & Deacon, 2010; Pas, Bradshaw, Hershfeldt & Leaf, 2010). Therefore, connecting parents and teachers, two powerful influences in a child’s life, to positive interventions and support to produce more favourable life outcomes would be beneficial to the individual and for the social capital of the country.

With difficult behaviour negatively impacting on the social, learning and life outcomes of students, the New South Wales Department of Education (DoE) investigated the Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS) framework from the United States (Lewis & Sugai, 1999) to support a positive approach to changing behaviour. In Australia in  2005 the framework was renamed Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) and rolled out initially to 51DoE schools in the geographical region of Western Sydney with the number continually rising. New South Wales legislation and Department of Education policies recognise that parent involvement is instrumental to successful student outcomes (NSW Education Act, 1990; NSW DET, 1996, 2006(a)). Therefore, securing parental involvement in the Positive Behaviour for Learning initiative could only strengthen successful life pathways for children.

In Australia, and internationally, parent involvement in school has received abundant attention (Brock & Edmunds, 2010; Daniel, Wang, & Berthelsen, 2016; Wong, 2012), however this study is the first to investigate parent involvement in PBL. The main aim of the study was to understand how teachers and parents perceive parent involvement in PBL implementation and in school more widely. This research drew on collaboration and stakeholder theory (Janssens & Seynaeve, 2000) which was instrumental to understanding the approach schools take to parental involvement. While Australian schools accept the mandate of a shared responsibility with parents for the education of their children, tradition and tokenism  (Woodrow, Somerville, Naidoo & Power, 2016) often set the agenda for parent involvement. This research found these elements present in both the schools. Assumption was the main guiding factor schools used to validate their methods to involve parents in PBL and in school more generally. The time has come for a different approach to involving parents in school, based on contextual evidence which includes the perspectives of the stakeholders.

A qualitative method was chosen for the study as such methods reveal deep understandings of people’s experiences relevant to their context (Yin, 2016). This qualitative study investigated the involvement of parents in PBL in two DoE primary schools in South Western Sydney, Australia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the Principal, teachers, parents and students from each school. This semi-structured questioning technique affords opportunity for elaboration on critical points. Open-ended questions also prompted more detailed responses giving the researcher a clearer understanding of the perspectives being put forward. All participation was voluntary with all teacher participants and some parents being interviewed individually with all student participants and some parents being interviewed in focus groups. School artefacts were also analysed and cross-referenced with information from the interviews to substantiate themes drawn from the data. Each interview transcript and artefact were examined for emerging themes related to the research questions followed by a reductive process which produced main categories and sub-categories. The data was then interpreted, findings made and conclusions drawn to answer the research questions. The qualitative approach used in this study produced some interesting findings, the most notable being that while teachers believed parents were involved in the PBL implementation process, parents stated an opposite view. Barriers to and enablers of parent involvement were uncovered in the schools and compared to the literature. The research process led the researcher to explore models of parent involvement and reference elements within these to the enablers suggested by the teacher and parent participants. This ongoing examination of the data and the literature projected this study from an investigative phase to a creative phase.

As this is the first study of its kind in Australia the findings were uniquely positioned to examine parent involvement from these fresh perspectives. Through the examination of the qualitative data and the literature, this study resulted in the development of a new way of understanding parent involvement in schools. The findings from this unprecedented study contributed to the development of a model to improve parent involvement in schools generally, leading to involvement in PBL. A model for Schools To Improve Parent Involvement (STIPI) emerged from synthesising the literature and the teacher and parent perspectives of parent involvement in two South Western Sydney schools. The STIPI model followed a similar structure to that of the PBL framework and allows for adaptations to be made to support varying school contexts. The incorporation of a yearly cyclic review process acknowledges existing parent skills and family needs, and recognises that the new cohort of parents come with their own unique needs and skills. Valuing all parents and linking with their family context gives schools the opportunity to understand what skills parents have, what skills they would like to develop and most importantly nurture communication and relationships. The model for Schools To Improve Parent Involvement (STIPI) is based on a capacity building approach to give all parents the opportunity to become involved in the life of the school and the education of their children. It was not within the scope of the study to test the model however, the findings clearly emphasised the need to re-examine how parents are welcomed and integrated into the academic and social fabric of schools.

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