Since 1993 the OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation has initiated the “What Works in Innovation” project to offer policy-oriented studies in areas of emerging importance (CERI, 1997). One of those studies focused on parent involvement, Parents as Partners in Schooling, which shows that governments give families and communities more power to involve in the education offered by local schools in nine OECD countries. Under the influence of Confucianism, most of parents have valued the academic support for their school-aged children at home in Asian countries; however, the breadth and depth of parent involvement have changed since the 1990s’ education reform (Pang et al., 2003). In Taiwan, decentralization is one of the major characteristics of the recent educational reform. According to the Educational Fundamental Act promulgated in 1999, parents have the rights to select the form and content of education and to participate in educational affairs of local schools for the best wellbeing of their children. Besides, the Article 11 of the Teachers’ Act which was promulgated in 1995 requires one representative from the Parents’ Association to be included in the Teachers’ Review Committee which is in charge of the assessment and approval of teachers’ initial employment, renewed employment, and tenured employment in every school. In 2006, the Regulations of Parental Participation in Educational Affairs of Schools during the Period of National Compulsory Education were enacted. The number of parent organizations also increases. There are Parents’ Associations at school and county/city levels. The National Alliance of Parents Organization who aims to ensure parents’ rights to participate in education was established in 2002.

Parent involvement has also become one of the important issues in educational research. The rise in the number of research studies of parent involvement results in the need of knowledge aggregation. A research synthesis aims to describe, analyze and draw conclusions on the research evidence, and helps inform professional practice (Ring, Ritchie, Mandava, & Jepson, 2011). Synthesis of qualitative evidence usually uses the procedures of meta-analysis to statistically analyze a large collection of analysis results from individual studies (Glass, McGaw, & Smith, 1981). Synthesis of qualitative evidence seeks to synthesize or amalgamate individual qualitative reports that relate to a specific topic or focus in order to arrive at the new or enhanced understanding about the phenomenon under study (Paterson, 2012). Meta-analysis has been used to analyze the effects of parental involvement on student achievement (Fan & Chen, 2001; Hill & Tyson, 2009; Jeynes, 2003, 2005, 2012; Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2006). By contrast, what information or knowledge derives from qualitative studies of parent involvement remains unanswered or receives little attention. Only Weed (2009) conducted a meta-interpretive synthesis of qualitative parent involvement literature to answer the questions: What does it means to be a parent and what does it means to be involved. However, different conception and nature of parent involvement derives from different socio-cultural contexts. The present study aims to synthesize the findings of individual qualitative studies of parent involvement in Taiwan.

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