Literature shows that parent involvement is associated with the cognitive development, academic achievements and well-being of children (Turney & Kao, 200; Okeke, 2014). When parents are involved in school, a partnership can develop between teachers and parents, allowing the child to be monitored by both parties (Crosnoe, 2010; El-Hilali & Al-Rashidi, 2015; Turney & Kao, 2009).

However, the engagement of parents is frequently assessed through a predominantly  one-dimensional lens, which centres on the school’s perspective (De Mets et al., 2018). In other words, schools prescribe what parents should and can do in order to be considered as 'involved parents', including expectations about presence during formal school meetings, checking the child's agenda, etc. Parents who do not meet these expectations are often considered as 'not involved enough' or as 'difficult to reach parents'.

Yet, research consistently demonstrates that parents want to be involved in their child’s education, but not all parents have the tools to do so or there may experience barriers.  This is particularly the case for newcomers who have limited or no knowledge of the education system in the host country. They may encounter financial, practical, cultural and social barriers that prevent them to fully engage in their children’s education (Schneider & Arnot, 2018). Common barriers include difficult working hours, the care of siblings, difficulties to support their child’s schoolwork, insufficient resources and knowledge and language barriers in overall communication.

To address the barriers that prevent migrant parents from being involved in school, this Erasmus+ project aims at bridging the gap between newcomer parents and elementary schools. This European consortium consists of seven partners from Belgium, Italy, Greece, Austria and Slovenia. The question underlying this project reads as follows: Can co-creative and interactive workshops in primary education, targeting newcomer parents bridge the gap between elementary schools and parents?

The project aims to provide non-formal education to migrant parents who are most often unfamiliar with the education systems of their new host countries. It strives to empower migrant parents by identifying, creating and applying tailored methods that help improve these parents’ host country language, digital skills and knowledge of the educational system, thereby enabling them to better

support their children’s learning, to effectively collaborate with school and to integrate in the local community.

The project also seeks to improve the professional knowledge of school staff concerning the challenges

of those parents and enhancing their culturally sensitive competencies in order to better support them. It does so by organizing dialogue with migrant parents, and by providing them with tools and training on

how to engage with and communicate with this target group. In this way the project makes a cross fertilization between elementary education

education and adult education. Moreover, via mobilities and international events, teachers get the chance to exchange with

and learn from colleagues in other countries.

Children are a secondary target group via cross-generational impact,

meaning that the improved knowledge and skills of parents will have an indirect impact on the children’s learning.

The customized workshops for parents departs from a non-traditional perspective on parental involvement, meaning that we move beyond deficit thinking and aim at mutual understanding between school and migrant families whereby existing knowledge and skills of the parents are recognized and valued. This creates opportunities for parents to explore similarities and differences between their new and origin countries and to build bridges between the two experiences. Methodologically, it adopts a co-creation approach to engage migrant parents in both the understanding of their real needs and the development of new models for the participatory empowerment of the migrant family unit.

In the first phase of the study, a literature study was carried out for each country, which included the latest figures and literature on the topic of parental involvement. Desk research was also conducted to collect best practices. At the same time, semi-structured interviews were conducted with migrant parents (n=75) to capture their needs in relation to their children’s education and their own involvement. In addition, elementary education teachers completed a survey about their experience with parent involvement of non-native or migrant parents at school (n=75). The results were compiled in a transnational report and served as the basis for developing the interactive workshops. As this project also wants to focus on sharpening teachers' cultural sensitivity, a training event was organized. In this training, teachers were trained how to communicate and set up interactive workshops with parents based on the principles of a learning community where all participants are equal. After the training program, a series of eight workshops were organized with migrant parents in five elementary schools (n=75). In the workshops, the joint methodology was used to increase empowerment of migrant parents and improve their language and digital skills, and knowledge of the educational system.Thereby enabling parents to better support their children’s learning. The interactive workshops were evaluated by implementing a short survey after each workshop both for parents and teachers. Facilitators were asked to keep an evaluation log where they could fill in the results of this survey, but also write down their own findings. Besides the logs, there was a midterm evaluation meeting and end-evaluation meeting organized. Based on the analysis of the logs, the mid-term evaluation and the end evaluation an evaluation report was made up. This report evaluated how the workshops have contributed to knowledge increase, language improvement and sense of wellbeing among migrant parents. To disseminate the lessons learnt, these will be captured in a handbook that will be widely distributed amongst a broader group of parents, teaching and social professionals. To enhance the impact and foster the sustainability, an online cross-border Community of Practice (CoP) was developed for elementary education professionals and facilitators of the workshops about engaging with migrant parents. This CoP helps improve the professional knowledge of school staff concerning the challenges of migrant families, enhances their culturally sensitive competencies, and strengthens the interactive pilots in the CoP, participants will exchange good practices, are able to post questions and share ideas.

Within this project, we reached more than 75 unique parents, across five different elementary school, by conducting the workshops. The workshops given addressed the following themes: Rapport building - teachers and parents; School system & School life; Communication with teachers & schools; Learning material for home & digital skills; Grants; Subsidies & digital skills; Parents' rights and obligations and Other. This project expects to empower migrant parents by offering the workshops grafted on the parents' needs. In addition, this project expects to see an improvement in digital skills, language skills and knowledge about the educational system in the migrant parents. Moreover, this project also indirectly hopes to benefit the children of parents with a migrant background by supporting their parents in guiding their learning process. We also expect to strengthen the culturally sensitive skills of the educators and other school staff. By disseminating all our lessons learned and materials on the CoP, the project seeks to inspire teachers to implement these techniques at their schools. We have created an online community within the CoP in which teachers, but also social workers and others interested can share experiences, consult best practices, comment on each other’s practices, etc. 40 teaching and social organizations participated in the CoP with more than 100 participants for the five partner countries.

Crosnoe, R., Ansari, A., Purtell, K. M., & Wu, N. (2016). Latin American Immigration, Maternal Education, and Approaches to Managing Children’s Schooling in the United States. Journal of Marriage and Family, 78(1), 60–74. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12250 De Mets, J., Peleman, B., Seghers, M., Vervaet, V. & Van Laere, K. (2018) Warm, welkom en wederkerig. Naar een goede ouder-schoolsamenwerking. Inspiratieboek voor kleuteronderwijs. Gent: VBJK / SDL / UGent. Schneider, C., & Arnot, M. (2018). Transactional school-home-school communication: Addressing the mismatches between migrant parents’ and teachers’ views of parental knowledge, engagement and the barriers to engagement. Teaching and Teacher Education, 75, 10–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2018.05.005 Turney, K., & Kao, G. (2009). Barriers to School Involvement: Are Immigrant Parents Disadvantaged? The Journal of Educational Research (Washington, D.C.), 102(4), 257–271. https://doi.org/10.3200/JOER.102.4.257-271