Family Counts: Effects of Home Visits on Parent-Teacher Relationships

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to determine the effects of teacher home visits on parent participation in school, the quality and frequency of parent-teacher communications, and the parent-teacher relationship. Framed by the ecological systems and social capital theories, the; study examined a parent-teacher relationship survey, school communication and participation data, teacher interviews, and a parent focus group discussion using the constant comparative method. The study was completed in the Western United States at a rural charter school where parent engagement was historically low. Findings from this study clearly suggest that teacher home visits have a powerful, positive effect on the quality and frequency of parent-teacher communications, increase parent engagement in collaboration, confidence, and support of teachers, and improve parent-teacher relationships in substantial ways. These benefits led to an analysis of the program for best practices by participants and the researcher, and resulted in a number of recommendations for the school organization, parents, and teachers. The researcher recommends teacher home visits as a way to bridge the gap between home and school and establish foundational trust between teachers and families on which positive, authentic, mutually beneficial relationships can be built.

Running head: FAMILY COUNTS 1 Family Counts: Effects of Home Visits on Parent-Teacher Relationships Aimee DiBrienza Westminster College FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 2 Abstract The purpose of this qualitative case study was to determine the effects of teacher home visits on parent participation in school, the quality and frequency of parent-teacher communications, and the parent-teacher relationship. Framed by the ecological systems and social capital theories, the study examined a parent-teacher relationship survey, school communication and participation data, teacher interviews, and a parent focus group discussion using the constant comparative method. The study was completed in the Western United States at a rural charter school where parent engagement was historically low. Findings from this study clearly suggest that teacher home visits have a powerful, positive effect on the quality and frequency of parent-teacher communications, increase parent engagement in collaboration, confidence, and support of teachers, and improve parent-teacher relationships in substantial ways. These benefits led to an analysis of the program for best practices by participants and the researcher, and resulted in a number of recommendations for the school organization, parents, and teachers. The researcher recommends teacher home visits as a way to bridge the gap between home and school and establish foundational trust between teachers and families on which positive, authentic, mutually beneficial relationships can be built. Keywords: teacher home visits, parent-teacher relationships, school engagement, parent engagement in school, parent-teacher communication, family engagement FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 3 Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 2 Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ 3 Chapter One: Introduction .................................................................................................. 5 Statement of Topic .......................................................................................................... 6 Potential Significance ..................................................................................................... 8 Theoretical Framework ................................................................................................... 8 Limitations .................................................................................................................... 10 Statement of Researcher ............................................................................................... 10 Chapter Two: Literature Review and Conceptual Framework ......................................... 13 Theoretical Framework ................................................................................................. 13 Parent Involvement in Education .................................................................................. 17 Parent-Teacher Relationships ....................................................................................... 20 Home Visits .................................................................................................................. 24 Implications for This Research ..................................................................................... 27 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 29 Chapter Three: Methods ................................................................................................... 31 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 31 Methodological Approach and Rationale ..................................................................... 31 Setting & Participants ................................................................................................... 32 Data Collection ............................................................................................................. 33 FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 4 Data Analysis ................................................................................................................ 35 Trustworthiness ............................................................................................................. 37 Ethical Considerations .................................................................................................. 38 Chapter Four: Findings ..................................................................................................... 40 Perceptions of Separateness .......................................................................................... 40 Opening the Doors ........................................................................................................ 46 Home Visits: A Better Way to Open the Door ............................................................. 49 Realistic view. ........................................................................................................... 50 Trust. ......................................................................................................................... 54 Goal agreement. ........................................................................................................ 57 Communication. ........................................................................................................ 59 Effects of the Open Door Relationship ......................................................................... 65 Chapter Five: Conclusion ................................................................................................. 69 Recommendations ......................................................................................................... 69 School organization. ................................................................................................. 69 Strategic relationship building. ................................................................................. 73 Implications for Future Research .................................................................................. 75 References ......................................................................................................................... 77 Appendix ........................................................................................................................... 82 FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 5 Chapter One: Introduction A year and a half ago, I sat on a couch in the home of a prior student whom I had failed, looking across the coffee table at her parents. Pictures of the family stared down at me from the wall behind them, featuring the smiling face of the girl who had been in my classroom for a year and had made no measurable improvement in her below-proficient reading. I had been assigned to interview the family of a student, and I had chosen this family because I knew beyond any shadow of doubt that I had not done enough for her. Despite, or perhaps because of my nervousness, her parents smiled a lot during the interview, and I learned remarkable things about the child -- things I felt guilty that I didn't already know. But the most important thing the interview gave me was not information, it was connection; I felt a deep connection to the family, to their difficulties and their dreams, to their gratitude and their joy in raising this child, with all her struggles and strengths. I left their home connected to them more deeply than I could have imagined. I was changed. I had always considered myself an excellent teacher. I worked hard, I was intelligent, forward thinking, and analytical. Students consistently tested with higher levels of proficiency in my class than they did in other classes, and my curriculum was organized, interesting, and efficient. Leaving the family's home on that day, I felt humbled and ashamed of how cerebral I had made the act of teaching. I realized that I had treated relationships with the families of my students as extras, and I committed myself to reorganizing my priorities to place the family first. It dawned on me that no amount of planning, procedure, or teaching was as important to the long term development of the child as the relationships which framed their lives - relationships with their parents and siblings, with their teachers and friends, and with their communities. While I recognized that I had built strong relationships with students throughout my teaching career, I FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 6 had never paused to think about the way their worlds overlap and sometimes collide. Family matters to the child, but it should matter to the educator, as well. Family should matter to the school and to teachers who wish to truly understand and guide their students. What we do as educators in a classroom makes a tremendous difference, but it isn't enough by itself. To really change the life of a child, an educator must build a relationship with the family. I had finally learned that family counts! Statement of Topic In addition to the myriad things teachers do to help children succeed within the walls of their classrooms, teachers all over the world make efforts to build relationships with their students' parents. As a classroom teacher of nineteen years, I have learned many important and impactful things from my process of relationship building with parents, but it has not been easy. Teachers are often overwhelmed by the work load just keeping up with student work and planning for the classroom. For some teachers, the addition of outside of school requirements feels like too much to ask. Parents are getting busier and busier, and it is often difficult to find time to communicate adequately with parents. In addition, many teachers are intimidated by parents and many parents are intimidated by teachers (Lin & Bates, 2010), an ironic situation which often causes one or both to resist and procrastinate open communication with the other. Keyser (2006) claims, "Many excellent teachers struggle with even the simplest day-to-day communications with parents" (p. 3). As if those realities aren't challenge enough, I now find myself in an administrative role hoping that I will be able to assist the teachers in my school to build the kinds of relationships with parents that will make communication and collaboration between parents and teachers norms at school. This is a tall order, especially considering that the relationships I hope to build are not my own, but those of teachers and parents with minds, FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 7 priorities, and lives of their own. How does an administrator facilitate strong parent-teacher relationships? I believe that simply asking teachers to communicate with parents is not enough. With long term relationships as the goal, even encouraging teachers to visit the students' homes would be unsustainable unless school-wide efforts are implemented which will last beyond the current school year. According to Sagor and Williams (2017), "when people see their leaders acting on data, it demonstrates the leader's commitment to the instructional ethic of monitoring and adjusting" (p. 116). Therefore, to effectively lead the teaching team to build stronger relationships with parents, I must show a direct correlation between family outreach program implementation, ongoing data collection, and analysis of the data which leads to program improvements over time. For the school to improve its relationship building practices, everyone must believe that family counts. I have envisioned a Family Counts program which will include voluntary home visits and subsequent collection of multiple forms of data, the analysis of which will provide feedback necessary to improve the program over the course of the year and hopefully provide a structure that can be sustained over many school years going forward. With this research, I seek to discover whether home visits can improve the involvement of parents in the school and the quality of parent-teacher relationships for the benefit of children, families, and teachers. My aims are to:  Determine the effect of a teacher home visit on subsequent parental participation in parent education, the Parent Teacher Organization (PTO), volunteerism on campus, and school events.  Discover trends in the quality and frequency of parent-teacher communications, and compare those trends between parent-teacher groups who have or have not participated in home visits. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP  8 Explore the responses of teachers and parents to the process and effects of teacher home visits. Potential Significance Jiles (2015) claims that as of 2005, between 400,000 and 500,000 families may be receiving home visits from teachers each year in this country (p. 84). Home visits have become increasingly significant factors in relationship building between home and school, and the movement continues to grow due to its measurable social, behavioral, and sometimes academic benefits for the children (El Yaafouri-Kreuzer, 2017; Henke, 2011; Kayser, 2017; Kronholz, 2016; Stetson, Stetson, Sinclair, & Nix 2012). However, the focus of this study was not on the immediate, measurable benefits for the child; instead, this study sought to discover the effects of home visits on quality of the parent-teacher relationship, which is treated more as a happy side effect than the goal of most extant research. The study did build upon an evidence-based assumption that home visits and improvements in the parent-teacher relationship will benefit children, but its primary aim was to analyze benefits for the adults in the equation. I believe this is information which teachers and perhaps parents would like to see, and it has implications for the job satisfaction, emotional well-being, and retention of teachers in the school. Theoretical Framework The study is framed through an ecological systems lens, which theorizes that a person's development is linked inextricably with the microsystems in which he grows, such as home and school for children, as well as the mesosystem created by the interaction of those microsystems (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Exosystems including the parents' workplaces and siblings' classrooms and the macrosystem that is the community's overall culture also have parts to play in their development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Teachers work hard to help make the microsystems of the FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 9 classrooms as intentionally perfect as possible. As an administrator, though, I know that working to perfect microsystems is not enough. The effects of the mesosystem of home-school interactions on a child can be profoundly positive or painfully negative (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), and can be seen in both the home and at school. It is the duty of the teacher and the school to work to improve the mesosystem, as well. Taken one critical step further, the teacher and parent also participate in micro and mesosystems which logically must affect their development and well-being. While Bronfenbrenner (1979) does not specifically address potential effects on adults, his ecological systems theory can be extended to parents and teachers. Any teacher can tell you of interactions with parents which have effects, for good or ill, upon their emotions and actions within the school. As a school administrator, I believe that emotional health is critical to teacher success, and that parent-teacher relationships can be a source of tremendous well-being or crippling frustration for a teacher. This study was aimed at discovering in what ways an administrator can best support communicative, collaborative parent-teacher relationships for the expected benefit of children, parents, and teachers. The cumulative resources, experiences, and actions of a community form a macrosystem, according to ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), but they are also central to the framework of social capital (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988; Rogosic & Baranovic, 2016). Social capital theory indicates that all members of the system, in this case the school community, have access to a community well of experience, resources, and well-being. The implications of social capital are that children and adults all benefit from increased collaboration and strengthened relationships within the system (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988; Milner, 2017; Posey-Maddox, 2013; Rogosic & Baranovic, 2016; Stevens & Patel, 2015; Wang & Fahey, FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 10 2011). Strengthening the parent-teacher relationship can only improve the social capital of the entire community. Limitations Due to an extant body of conclusive research, this study did not seek to rediscover or analyze effects of the home visit program on the child, either academically, socially, emotionally, or behaviorally. It did not make connections between positive parent-teacher relationships and student outcomes, and did not analyze reasons for less healthy parent-teacher relationships. Because of the size of the participant group, which consists of volunteer parents and teachers at a rural school with 500 students, the results of this study are not generalizable. Participation in the home visit program was voluntary in this study, therefore results will not predict effects of a mandatory home visit program, such as have been implemented in a number of school districts, nor will the results of this study predict long term effects, due to the relatively short period of time for which data was gathered (eight months). Statement of Researcher As a classroom teacher, I always felt that building strong relationships with parents was helpful in ensuring the success of my students, but I struggled to make time to communicate with parents beyond the newsletters which outlined my curriculum and school-wide programs. I was intimidated by the prospect of calling parents on the phone, and often procrastinated phone calls which I knew were necessary. The explosion of email as a communication tool was welcome and allowed me to communicate from a ‘safe' distance, without the factors of improvisation and emotion which are so often present in telephone and face to face interactions. I was not alone. Many of my fellow teachers felt and acted in similar ways. Over time, however, I learned that parents are not so different from their children. In fact, parents struggle with feelings of FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 11 inadequacy, not knowing how to respond to their children, and the same bewilderment that teachers feel when children are difficult to read and reach. The truth is that no matter what obstacles, reasons, or excuses stand in our way, children, parents, and teachers all benefit from a positive relationship between home and school (Dawson & Wymbs, 2016; El Nokali, Bachman, & Votruba-Drzal, 2010; Garbacz, McIntyre, & Santiago, 2016; Garbacz, Sheridan, Koziol, Kwon, & Holmes, 2015; Keyser, 2006). I have grown to love working with parents and I realize that the unique relationship between a parent and his child's teacher can be the most powerful tool in the teacher's repertoire, though it can feel daunting and tenuous. Sarah LawrenceLightfoot (as cited in Keyser, 2006) describes this precarious hinterland well: "There is no more complex and tender geography than the borderlands between families and schools" (p. 4). In my journey of professional growth, I have embraced the concept of the spiritual preparation of the teacher as described by Dr. Maria Montessori (1949). Spiritual preparation includes a reflection of one's motivation, methods, and attitudes toward children, learning, and the educational process. I have reflected often throughout my career as an educator, but I feel that one of the most powerful reflections happened during that family interview when I realized that teaching is the work of an intelligent heart, not solely the intellect. To be fully prepared to teach, a teacher must recognize the role that her relationship with the family will play in the child's development. Spiritual preparation means facing one's feelings of inadequacy, intimidation, and discomfort, accepting them, and then building relationships anyway. As an educator and researcher, I am committed to exploring that territory where home and school meet because I believe parents and teachers are partners, educating the child best when they work together. I approached this research with empathy for the difficulties relationship-building can present for teachers in terms of time and emotional investment, and with an acceptance of the FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 12 misconceptions many teachers have of families and many families have of teachers. I am biased by my belief that relationship building between home and school is critical for student success, and by my hope that it will also benefit teachers' feelings of being supported and respected by families, because such a connection would validate the efforts of the school program we have implemented and provide evidence that "Family Counts!" FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 13 Chapter Two: Literature Review and Conceptual Framework When questioning the effects of home visits on the parent-teacher relationship, it is critical to examine current research. This chapter will discuss key ideas central to the research question, including ecological systems and social capital frameworks which are used as a lens through which to view generally recognized forms and trends in parent involvement, the nature of the parent-teacher relationship and the role congruence plays in its effects, a growing body of conclusions about home visits, and finally, the potential effects of these upon the classroom teacher. Gaps in the literature will also be addressed, as they call for further research. Theoretical Framework Ecological systems and social capital theory are two theoretical frameworks through which a study of family-school relationships can be analyzed. According to both of those theories, the interactions and overlapping of home and school environments create value and can have significant effects on a person's life (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988; Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Posey-Maddox, 2013; Rogosic & Baranovic, 2016). Bronfenbrenner (1979) states that "human development is a product of interaction between the growing human organism and its environment" (p. 16). He describes environments such as the home and the classroom as microsystems, the collected "activities, roles, and interpersonal relations experienced" by a person in a specific setting (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 22). These microsystems have generally consistent characteristics which affect the person's experience, but they are not the only variables which come into play as the person develops; just as critical to a person's experience are mesosystems, which can be described as the interactions and relations between microsystems, and exosystems which exist just outside of a person's experience but which have effects in the person's life (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). An example of an exosystem in a child's life might be the FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 14 job site of a parent or the classroom of a sibling; it is a setting which the child may rarely to never visit, but which has a significant effect on his experiences and interactions. According to Bronfenbrenner (1979), the greater culture in which a person participates is a macrosystem, and it includes belief systems, values, and ideology, as well as cultural structures, and affects the person's development as powerfully as the microsystems, mesosystems, and exosystems do. These systems are expressed visually in Figure 1. Parent's Work (Exosystem) Home (Microsystem) School Social Group (Microsystem) Sibling's Classroom (Exosystem) Individual Neighborhood (Microsystem) (Microsystem) Activities (Microsystem) Community Culture (Macrosystem) Figure 1. Ecological Systems Theory. This figure shows examples of microsystems, exosystems, the macrosystem, and the significant mesosystem with which this research is concerned. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 15 Applied to a child in a school context, this theory can help give form to observations by focusing attention on not only home life and classroom culture, but the ways in which they interact. Specifically, ecological systems theory offers an explanation for well-documented effects of the parent-teacher relationship on a child's social, emotional, and sometimes academic growth (Chen, Anderson, & Watkins, 2016; Dawson & Wymbs, 2016; El Nokali, Bachman, & Votruba-Drzal, 2010; Garbacz, McIntyre, & Santiago, 2016; Garbacz, Sheridan, Koziol, Kwon, & Holmes, 2015; Lin & Bates, 2010; Vickers & Minke, 1995). While there may be a paucity of research regarding the application of ecological systems theory on teachers and parents, I believe it is important to apply the model to both in order to get a true sense of the effects of the interactions between home and school. It is logical to assume that, given the body of research documenting effects of the parent-teacher relationship on children, there may be significant effects for parents and teachers, as well; they are as much a part of the micro-, meso-, exo-, and macrosystems as the child is, and are also developing human organisms. I believe it is important to value their experience, as well, particularly because their contributions to the educational experience are so formative. These contributions, combined with the total resources, experiences, and education of the school community, can be described as social capital. Social capital theory was posited by two separate theorists at roughly the same time, Bourdieu in 1986 and Coleman in 1988. Differences exist in each man's theory, but both theories generally suggest that a group such as a school possesses resources including the combined education, social connections, experiences, skills, and momentum of its entire body of stakeholders (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988; Milner, 2017; Posey-Maddox, 2013; Rogosic & Baranovic, 2016; Stevens & Patel, 2015). This social capital can be exercised by the organization when its members focus their efforts on achievement FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 16 of common goals, whether social or economic. It is available for the use of the group, but also has effects which are more difficult to measure, such as subtle but powerful influence in the values, mindsets, and social mobility of its members (Rogosic & Baranovic, 2016). According to comparisons made by Rogosic and Baranovic (2016), Coleman's version of social capital theory includes the reality of rational action - choices that an individual makes consciously to access social capital in a way that will benefit him; Bourdieu's theory, in contrast, claims that social capital is the primary determiner for social mobility and causes replication of the existing social order. When applied to the current study, both social capital theories have relevant application; parents and teachers make choices which they believe will benefit themselves and the child, and they access the collective resources of the educational community, whose social, educational, and economic resources determine the extent of those benefits for them and for the children. Bourdieu (1986) carefully describes the necessary "unceasing effort" of institutions or communities to "produce and reproduce lasting, useful relationships" for the benefit of all members of the society (p. 22). Coleman (1988) also explicitly defines social capital as a product not of members of the society themselves, but of the "relations among persons that facilitate action" (p. 100). Social capital theory and ecological systems theory combine well to explain the resources and relationships which provide structure to a child's development, and to the experiences of parents and teachers who are a part of that complex system. The complex networking and interactions of teachers and parents create social capital which has both visible and invisible effects on the child's experience. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 17 Parent Involvement in Education Parents across the United States make efforts to participate in their children's education in a variety of ways and at a variety of levels. Within educational systems, parental involvement has generally come to include such things as volunteerism, participation in the Parent Teacher Organization (PTO), attendance at parent-teacher conferences, committee and fundraising work, communication with school and teachers, and homework support (Chen, Anderson, & Watkins 2016; Noel, Stark, Redford, & Zuckerburg, 2016). While parents may contribute in other meaningful ways to their children's education, these are the more visible ways by which a school generally measures the involvement of its parent body, and they have measurable effects on children (Chen, Anderson, & Watkins, 2016; Posey-Maddox, 2013). Researchers don't always agree on the benefits of parent involvement for academic achievement; some have found that the level and types of parent involvement do not translate into higher academic scores and grades (El Nokali, Bachman, & Votruba-Drzal, 2010; Goodwin, 2017; Rogosic & Baranovic, 2016). However, most researchers do agree that the involvement of parents in their child's education leads to increases in social and emotional skills and positive behavior at school (El Nokali, Bachman, & Votruba-Drzal, 2010; Garbacz, McIntyre, & Santiago, 2016; Minke, Sheridan, Kim, Ryoo, & Koziol, 2014; Vickers & Minke, 1995). Interestingly, after the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which mandated the provision of family engagement opportunities in public schools, parent involvement as measured by the above-mentioned types of participation actually declined by a significant 1.2% over the next seven years (Noel, Stark, Redford, & Zuckerburg, 2016; Wang & Fahey, 2011, p. 1124). While it is difficult to pinpoint the exact causes of this decline, some patterns have emerged as consistent across several studies. According to Wang and Fahey (2011) and Posey-Maddox (2013), mothers FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 18 are more likely to participate with their children's education than fathers. The education level of mothers is also a predictor of their parental involvement; the more education a mother has, the more likely she is to participate in her child's education (Garbacz, McIntyre, & Santiago, 2016). Parents in ethnic minority groups are less likely to get involved than Caucasian parents, and less likely to communicate with teachers about their children (Kayser, 2017; Matuszny, Banda, & Coleman, 2007; Posey-Maddox, 2013). While parents of students with special needs tend to make great efforts to be involved in their child's education as advocates, they often feel undervalued for the expertise and experience they can provide classroom teachers (Matuszny, Banda, & Coleman, 2007; Weasmer & Woods, 2010). Parents of low income may also feel inadequate to contribute to the school process, either due to a lack of funds or time to contribute (Kayser, 2017; Posey-Maddox, 2013). U.S. Census data collected in 2012 and released in June of 2016 shows that in the households of 53.4 million students, 87% of parents had attended at least one PTO meeting (Noel, Stark, Redford, & Zuckerburg, 2016, p. 6). On the surface, this is encouraging data. Combined with data claiming 76% of parents attend parent-teacher conferences, 42% volunteer or serve on school committees, and 58% participate in fundraising, this study done by the U. S. Department of Education shows that parents are demonstrably involved in schools (Noel, Stark, Redford, & Zuckerburg, 2016, p. 6). What the study does not highlight, however, is the less measurable, "invisible" ways that parents can be involved in their child's education (Minke, Sheridan, Kim, Ryoo, & Koziol, 2014). Some of these might include assisting with sporting events, contributing to music and art programs, mechanical services such as cutting and collating materials for teachers from home, mentoring students, input into decision making processes both through teacher collaborations and school board meetings, and efforts to create consistency FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 19 between home and school expectations and support home study (Kayser, 2017; Milner, 2017; Minke, Sheridan, Kim, Ryoo, & Koziol, 2014). Role construction has an important part to play here; what parents believe their role should be can vary significantly from what teachers and schools expect of their parent body, and schools may have difficulty in changing parents' views about their roles in their child's education (Kayser, 2017; Minke, Sheridan, Kim, Ryoo, & Koziol, 2014; Stevens & Patel, 2015). Kayser (2017) mentions a "deficit lens" through which teachers may view parents whose lives make at-school involvement either impossible or culturally abnormal, particularly for immigrant parents whose concept of their role may be shaped by prior experience in an alternate culture (p. 78). Increasingly, parents of students who fall outside social norms in their communities feel disconnected by the educational process, particularly if their differences lie in cultural background, a child's special needs, or poverty (Edwards & Da Fonte, 2012; Garbacz, McIntyre, & Santiago, 2016; Kayser, 2017; Kraft, 2017; Matuszny, Banda, & Coleman, 2007; Milner, 2017; Minke, Sheridan, Kim, Ryoo, & Koziol, 2014; Weasmer & Woods, 2010). Too often schools' interpretation of parent involvement has become what the parent can do for the teacher or school (Posey-Maddox, 2013; Vickers & Minke, 1995). It is common for schools to recognize parent involvement as the measurable contributions parents make to a teacher's process, rather than the parents' own ideas of how they can play a part (Posey-Maddox, 2013; Stevens & Patel, 2015; Vickers & Minke, 1995; Wang & Fahey 2011). In a study done at a Title One school in Northern California, Posey-Maddox (2013) describes a dramatic trend toward parent participation defined by measurable and often economic outcomes for the school driven by the PTO, including the acquisition of grants and donors, silent auctions, and strategic marketing campaigns. That study analyzed the effects of pressures within the organization for FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 20 parents to contribute in fund raising and the professionalization of the PTO, and found that middle to upper class parents experienced self-efficacy through contribution efforts, but parents of lower working class, socioeconomic disadvantage, or cultural diversity felt that their resumes were insufficient to validate their contributions to the school effort (Posey-Maddox, 2013). One teacher was quoted describing the school's parent-engagement philosophy as, "Don't ask what the school can do for your child, ask what you can do for the school" (Posey-Maddox, 2013, p. 245). In fact, studies show that some parent engagement practices can actually lead to an increase in class-based inequities, because they cause parents from diverse backgrounds and low socioeconomic status to feel that their contributions are not valued (Kayser, 2017; Minke, Sheridan, Kim, Ryoo, & Koziol, 2014; Posey-Maddox, 2013; Stevens & Patel, 2015; Wang & Fahey, 2011). Parents from all backgrounds have experiences and skills which could be of value in a classroom, but they need to be made to feel that whatever they bring to the table, it is recognized as purposeful and gives them a voice at school (Posey-Maddox, 2013). It is critical that schools pay attention not only to the material outcomes of parent involvement, but also to the social processes and relationships which develop as a result of communication and collaboration with families. Parent engagement should not be about economic advantage to the school; it should focus, instead, on the building and maintenance of positive relationships between family and school. Parent-Teacher Relationships While parents often build relationships with administrators, office staff, and other people within a school, generally speaking they form their opinions about the school as a whole based on their ongoing relationships with their child's teacher (Vickers & Minke, 1995). Logically, FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 21 positive parent-teacher relationships lead to greater satisfaction with the school organization, but there are other reasons that parent-teacher relationships are valuable (Chen, Anderson, & Watkins, 2016). Research shows that parent-teacher relationships have notable effects on student behavior and socialization at school (Dawson & Wymbs, 2016; Edwards & Da Fonte, 2012; El Nokali, Bachman, & Votruba-Drzal, 2010; Garbacz, Sheridan, Koziol, Kwon, & Holmes, 2015). Dawson and Wymbs (2016) discovered that teachers and parents with relationships high in "affiliation, support, dependability, availability, shared expectations, and beliefs" reported more positive outcomes for children and a decrease in child behavioral problems (p. 754). These positive behavioral outcomes are reported for average students of random groupings (Dawson & Wymbs, 2016; Henke, 2011), students with disabilities (Edwards & Da Fonte, 2012), students with a history of behavioral concerns (Garbacz, Sheridan, Koziol, Kwon, & Holmes, 2015), and students from ethnically diverse backgrounds (Matuszny, Banda, & Coleman, 2007). While research results are at times inconsistent regarding the effect of the parent-teacher relationship on academic success (El Nokali, Bachman, & Votruba-Drzal, 2010), quality parent-teacher relationships do appear to affect student behavior, social, and emotional skills, resulting in stronger student-teacher communication, fewer teacher-student conflicts and behavioral referrals, and increased social competence (Dawson & Wymbs, 2016; El Nokali, Bachman, & VotrubaDrzal, 2010; Garbacz, McIntyre, & Santiago, 2016; Garbacz, Sheridan, Koziol, Kwon, & Holmes, 2015). These effects are consistent with the ecological systems theory, and demonstrate the real effects of mesosystems in child development. While there could be many underlying reasons for these effects, the critical point is that a strong relationship between teacher and parents benefits the child, and is therefore a worthy goal, though not one easily achieved. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 22 One possible obstacle for parents and teachers is that they often have different perspectives about their relationships and the child they share in stewardship. Kronholz (2016) describes conversations during teacher home visits wherein parents express their hopes for their children to surprised teachers, who had previously assumed that their goals and parent goals for the child were the same, when in fact they were not. Parents from those same interviews were refreshed by the opportunity to tell the teachers what they wanted, for a change (Kronholz, 2016). Teachers reaching out to parents have found that families will embrace suggestions which match their family culture and belief system, but will most often refuse practices incongruent with their family culture (Jiles, 2015), even when the teacher has made an explanation for the practices. In fact, the teacher's own personal or cultural background can be a barrier if it conflicts with the cultural context of the child's family (Lin & Bates, 2010; Matuszny, Banda, & Coleman, 2007). Even the perceptions of the teacher and parent about a child can conflict. According to El Nokali et al. (2010), a significant number of teachers and parents disagree about the severity of children's behavioral problems and their level of social skill. Teachers and parents may also disagree about the quality of their relationship with one another (Minke, Sheridan, Kim, Ryoo, & Koziol, 2014). Sometimes, teachers and parents may have different points of view about the challenges a child faces, particularly when their challenges are atypical, as are those of children with disabilities (Weasmer & Woods, 2010). Seeing eye to eye may be the greatest hurdle facing teachers and parents seeking strong relationships. Studies show that when teachers and parents appreciate and agree about the nature of their relationship with one another, this congruence leads to social and behavioral benefits for the child (Dawson & Wymbs, 2016; El Nokali et al, 2010; Garbacz et al, 2015; Minke et al, 2014). Relational congruence has been the subject of several studies, and results generally indicate that FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 23 when parents and teachers do not experience congruence regarding their relationships, teachers report more difficulties with the child at school than parents report from home (Garbacz et al, 2015; Minke et al, 2014). According to Minke et al (2015), "Views of the relationship appear to influence teacher beliefs about students" (p. 529). Generally, when teachers perceive a positive relationship between themselves and the parents, they also maintain more optimistic attitudes about the child's behavior and potential (Dawson & Wymbs, 2016; Minke et al, 2015). These conclusions imply that for teachers to believe the best about their students, they must also believe that the child's parents are supportive of their efforts in the classroom. This could be a vicious cycle of negative perceptions if the parent-teacher relationship is not deliberately built and maintained. It is also good reason for teachers to consider the effects of their relationships with parents on their behaviors toward children in the classroom. If relational congruence leads to optimism and collaboration on the child's behalf, then it should be a high priority for both teachers and parents. In documenting the efforts of teachers and schools to strategically build positive parentteacher relationships, there are several strategies which appear to be effective. First, the relationship must be based on mutual respect and trust (Edwards & Da Fonte, 2012; Garbacz, McIntyre, & Santiago, 2016; Kronholz, 2016; Lin & Bates, 2010; Matuszny, Banda, & Coleman, 2007; Minke et al, 2014; Weasmer & Woods, 2010). Parents must believe that teachers respect their role as the child's primary care-giver, and that they recognize the expertise a parent has regarding his or her own child (Kronholz, 2016; Weasmer & Woods, 2010). That expertise can be extremely valuable to a teacher. According to Ulrich and Bauer (as cited by Weasmer & Woods, 2010), "The greatest danger in parent communication is for a teacher to assume that he FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 24 or she knows better" (p. 130). Laying groundwork that makes the parent feel valued for his role as parent and for his expertise about his child is the teacher's first necessary task. Second, the relationship must be characterized by cultural sensitivity (Edwards & Da Fonte, 2012; Henke, 2011; Kronholz, 2016; Lin & Bates, 2010; Matuszny, Banda, & Coleman, 2007; Rose, 2017). Both the teacher's and the parent's cultures have effects on the relationship, and it will only grow positively if the culture is expressed and an effort is made to understand and accept cultural differences, particularly given current consistent increases in cultural diversity among school faculties and student bodies (Matuszny, Banda, & Coleman, 2007). Third, parent-teacher relationships will grow with consistent communication and collaboration (Edwards & Da Fonte, 2012; Garbacz, McIntyre, & Santiago, 2016; Kronholz, 2016; Lin & Bates, 2010; Matuszny, Banda, & Coleman, 2007; Minke et al, 2014; Weasmer & Woods, 2010). Both teachers and parents should offer information to one another, and use the information as a basis for goal setting together on behalf of the child (Edwards & Da Fonte, 2012; Henke, 2011; Kronholz, 2016; Rose, 2017; Weasmer & Woods, 2010). This collaboration will ensure that the child benefits from the teacher's training and expertise and the parents' personal knowledge of and experience with the child's unique challenges. In addition, parents will feel more supported in their roles if the teacher and school provide resources and information to help them meet their child's needs at home (Edwards & Da Fonte, 2010; Garbacz, McIntyre, & Santiago, 2016; Matuszny, Banda, & Coleman, 2007). Home Visits One of the methods used by schools to strategically strengthen parent-teacher relationships is teacher home visits. Since one of the significant obstacles for positive parentteacher relationships is a lack of understanding for home culture, visiting the family in the home FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 25 can bridge the gap between a teacher's cultural assumptions and the family's reality (Kayser, 2017; Kronholz, 2016; Lin & Bates, 2010; Rose, 2017). A teacher is likely to apply assumptions to families and children based on his or her own personal experiences, and these assumptions are often dangerously incorrect (Cohen, 2017; Kayser, 2017; Matuszny, Banda, & Coleman, 2007). Cohen (2017) describes diversity among families today in terms of three characteristics: structure (who is in the home), trajectory (changes over time), and role (who does what). He highlights some of the dramatic shifts in these characteristics over time; according to the 2015 American Community Survey, work-family living arrangements for children ages 0-14 are broken down as follows: 22% with married parents, father only employed; 35% with married parents, both employed; 3% with married parents, mother only employed; 7% with cohabiting parent; 11% with never-married mother; 11% with formerly married mother; 3% with single father; 3% with grandparents only, and less than 2% with married parents, neither employed, or living with neither parents nor grandparents (Cohen, 2017). This data shows that families have different structures, trajectories, and roles than they have in the past, and that assumptions regarding families will often miss the mark, resulting in a negative effect on the parent-teacher relationship. These assumptions are often challenged in enlightening ways in a home visit, where family culture is tangible (Henke, 2011; Kayser, 2017; Kronholz, 2016; Lin & Bates, 2010; Rose, 2017). Parents may have assumptions, too. In a home visit, families have the opportunity to see the teacher as a real person, and often experience a sense of equality with the teacher that is difficult to achieve in the classroom, where a teacher has heightened authority (Henke, 2011; Kayser, 2017; Stetson, Stetson, Sinclair, & Nix 2012). The home visit allows teachers to meet parents in their own territory, a setting where parents feel their own sense of authority, comfort, FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 26 and control (Henke, 2011). This may reduce the tension between parents and teachers and create a greater sense of equality and openness to cultural differences (Lin & Bates, 2010), and a sense of teamwork on the child's behalf. Home visits also allow teachers to see the children in their natural habitat and to observe behaviors, interests, and connections which may never occur in school (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Keyser, 2006), and could lead to a deeper and more authentic understanding of the child's motivations, values, and challenges. Responses to teacher home visits are resoundingly positive, and indicate that home visits have resulted in greater trust, cultural sensitivity, and communication between teachers and families when implemented school or district-wide (Henke, 2011; Kronholz, 2016; Lin & Bates, 2010; Rose, 2017). A growing number of home visit programs across the country have documented their effectiveness in building parent-teacher relationships, including the Flambouyan Foundation, the Teacher Home Visit Program, and other school and district created programs (Henke, 2011; Kayser, 2017; Kronholz, 2016; Lin & Bates, 2010; Rose, 2017; Stetson, Stetson, Sinclair, & Nix, 2012). The most effective home visit programs have certain components in common; visits are optional for both staff and families, teachers are compensated for their time, and the focus for the first visit is on building relationship and understanding (Henke, 2011; Kronholz, 2016; Rose, 2017). Other components may include random selection of students for home visits (Rose, 2017), establishment of a communication plan (Kayser, 2017; Stetson, Stetson, Sinclair, & Nix 2012), and collaborating to set goals for the child (Henke, 2011; Kronholz, 2016; Rose, 2017; Stetson, Stetson, Sinclair, & Nix, 2012). Statistics show that home visits can have dramatic results for children. Maplewood Richmond Heights School District in St. Louis reported a drop in discipline referrals by 45% after just one year of a district-wide home visit program (Henke, 2011). The Teacher Home Visit FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 27 Program claims increases in student attendance, academic achievement, and student applications to colleges, and decreases in suspension and expulsion in schools where the program has been implemented (Rose, 217). A 2012 study in North Texas of sixty teachers showed that 45% of students experienced a moderate to extremely positive effect in behavior following participation in just one home visit, 46% experienced similarly positive effects on work habits, and 47% experienced positive effects on academic achievement (Stetson, Stetson, Sinclair, & Nix, 2012). These effects were directly attributed to goal setting and communication established during the home visit. Implications for This Research Ecological systems theory claims that the relationship between home and school has developmental effects on children, and implies that this relationship will also have effects for parents and teachers (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Teachers validate this implication when they describe the effects parent communication can have on their everyday actions, from distinctly positive feelings of competence and perceived support to overwhelmingly negative feelings of inadequacy and failure (Kayser, 2017; Tomlinson, 2017). Vickers and Minke (1995) claim that, "Beginning teachers identify relationships with parents as among their most significant difficulties, while veteran teachers cite problems with parents as a major source of job dissatisfaction" (p. 133). Most studies of the parent-teacher relationship are focused on the effects they bear for the child (Chen, Anderson, & Watkins, 2016; Garbacz, McIntyre, & Santiago 2016; Garbacz, Sheridan, Koziol, Kwon, & Holmes, 2015; Matuszny, Banda, & Coleman, 2007; Rogosic & Baranovic, 2016; Weasmer & Woods, 2010), ignoring or deemphasizing the reality of significant effects on parents and teachers. Regarding parents and teachers, Chen, Anderson, and Watkins FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 28 (2016) claim that "their communication and exchange of information and ideas is not for their own interests but for a common good, which is the well-being of the child" (p. 2269). This is a logical and common sentiment in education, but devalues the emotional climate created by parent-teacher relationships for the adults in the equation. Research connecting teacher job satisfaction to relationships with parents is scarce. While teachers do express personal opinions about burn-out and frustration (Fusco, 2017; Kayser, 2017; Tomlinson, 2017), because of perpetual, well-meaning focus on the child, possible causes of this frustration are rarely the subject of large-scale research. Teacher accounts are anecdotal at best. Some studies exist which seek to analyze teacher burn-out, but most are international rather than based in the United States. There is growing emphasis placed on self-care in teacher preparation and professional development to combat the common sense of complexity, isolation, and inadequacy of teachers (Houghton, 2001), though the causes of these conditions remain generalized in the literature. Research on home visits is also primarily concerned with the effects the visits may have on the child (Henke, 2011; Kronholz, 2016; Lin & Bates, 2010; Rose, 2017; Stetson, Stetson, Sinclair, & Nix 2012), rather than effects on teachers and parents which are treated as residual and less significant. While most home visit research mentions positive effects on parents' views of teachers, cultural understanding, two-way communication, empathy, and level of comfort with the school (Henke, 2011; Kayser, 2017; Kronholz, 2016; Lin & Bates, 2010; Rose, 2017; Stetson, Stetson, Sinclair, & Nix 2012), these effects are framed by the way they benefit the child, and emotional benefits for the teacher are deemphasized or nonexistent. Home visit research also fails to explore significant links with parent participation and involvement in school events, PTO, volunteerism, and parent education on school grounds, components which FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 29 are known to affect teacher perceptions of support (Dawson & Wymbs, 2016; Minke et al, 2015). These gaps in the literature demand research focusing on the effects of strategic relationship building with families on the teacher and on the both the visible and invisible effects on family relationships with the school organization. Conclusion Research regarding parent involvement at school and the parent-teacher relationship is primarily focused on its benefits for the child, which are significant and logical goals for an educational community. However, I believe that the benefits of strategic relationship building for a classroom teacher are as significant and as critical. Classroom teachers contribute in powerful ways to the social capital of the community as wells of knowledge and developers of children. In terms of social capital, it is not only the educational and experiential human resources which contribute to the learning community, but also the interactions between its members - mesosystems which affect each member in powerful ways (Bourdieu, 1986; Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Coleman, 1988). Improvements in teacher-family relationships will increase the social capital of the school and all of its members' ability to access that capital, including teachers (Rogosic & Baranovic, 2016). If the best models of parent-family communication are based on trust, empathy, and collaboration (Edwards & Da Fonte, 2012; Garbacz, McIntyre, & Santiago, 2016; Kronholz, 2016; Lin & Bates, 2010; Matuszny, Banda, & Coleman, 2007; Minke et al, 2014; Rose, 2017; Weasmer & Woods, 2010), and those experiences are effectively built through home visits (Henke, 2011; Kayser, 2017; Kronholz, 2016; Lin & Bates, 2010; Rose, 2017; Stetson, Stetson, Sinclair, & Nix, 2012), I believe home visits may be effective at creating the types of interactions between teachers and families which will build the social capital of the school and result in FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 30 positive effects for students, families, and also teachers - key contributors whose emotional wellbeing should be as valued as that of the children they teach. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 31 Chapter Three: Methods Introduction This research focused on the effects of teacher home visits on three aspects of the parentteacher relationship in order to evaluate their impact for parents and teachers. The following were aims for this research:  Aim one: Determine the correlative effects of a teacher home visit on subsequent parental participation in parent education, the Parent Teacher Organization (PTO), volunteerism on campus and in the classroom, and at school events.  Aim two: Discover trends in the quality and frequency of parent-teacher communications, and compare those trends between parent-teacher groups who have or have not participated in home visits.  Aim three: Explore the responses of parents and teachers to the process and effects of teacher home visits through focus group discussion and interviews. This chapter will explain the methodological approach, setting, participants, data collection and analysis methods, steps taken to ensure trustworthiness, and ethical considerations for the research. Methodological Approach and Rationale This research is qualitative in nature, as the sample size was small and the methods relied more on personal feedback than quantitative data. Rossman and Rallis (2017) propose that "research should have the goal of contributing to improving the human condition" (p. 3). The specific goal of this research was to determine the value of home visits in the strategic building of parent-teacher relationships, a deeply human condition. Qualitative methods provided a FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 32 personal perspective on the effects parents and teachers felt in a way that quantitative methods would not have accurately or adequately captured. In addition, this research was designed as a case study of the particular experience of one rural school's family outreach program and the effects which could be seen and measured within the course of one school year. Rossman and Rallis (2017) describe case study as a method of research with the goal of understanding a larger phenomenon through examination of a specific case, in this case the building of parent-teacher relationships through home visits. Rossman and Rallis (2017) also suggest that a researcher consider the critical question of how the "patterns of action and interaction in this case affect power relationships," (p. 81) which is significantly applicable since the phenomenon under review was actually relational and inherently complicated by perceptions of power disparity by both the parent and the teacher. In this way, the case study model was perfectly designed to meet the needs of this research. Data collection methods were chosen to show three different aspects of the parent-teacher relationship, in the hope that the combination of data would yield an accurate assessment of the program's effectiveness within this unique school setting. Setting & Participants The research site was a small public charter school in rural Utah. The school serves 500 local students in kindergarten through eighth grade and 175 distance students. Of these 675 children, 415 were disadvantaged, a significant 61%. 22% of on-site students in this school qualified for Title One services based on reading or mathematics skills that were more than a year below the student's academic grade level at the beginning of the study. In addition to having high levels of poverty, the school is situated in an area which serves a number of cultural groups, including a Native American reservation and high number of families displaced from FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 33 fundamentalist religious communities. The school's unique distance program serves 175 students across the entire state, providing Special Education services, standardized testing, and academic resources to its committed home-schooling families. The school employed four licensed Special Educators to serve 129 students on IEP's at the time of the study, most of whom were on-site students, so while they represented 19% of the total school population, students on IEP's actually comprised a much more dramatic 24% of the student body physically on campus. In addition, the school had homeless students (2%) and immigrants (5%) who required ELL services. The school had 20 full time academic core teachers, nine full time electives teachers, and a significant support staff of Title One and Special Education aides, custodians, and administrators, for a total staff of over 80 adults. Participants for this study were the teachers and parents with students attending the school on campus. The entire parent body was invited to participate in a survey and a focus group discussion, while the entire teaching faculty was invited to participate in the survey and interviews, though only a small portion were expected to do so. Therefore, participants were not selected by the researcher, but rather they volunteered, and in much higher numbers than was originally anticipated by the researcher. Data Collection All data was collected at the school site. General whole-school information included public data: overall event attendance, PTO membership, volunteer hours, parent teacher conference attendance, and parent education participation. Confidential parent-teacher communication logs, a parent focus group discussion, and interviews with teachers were also examined. Communication logs kept by 18 teachers indicated weekly communications with each family and of what type, including phone calls, emails, general class communications such as FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 34 newsletters, as well as individualized communications specific to the child, conferences, and face to face interactions. Public data and communication logs were correlated with data identifying which families received home visits from their child's or children's teacher(s) to determine corollary trends. In addition, teachers and parents were invited to participate in a voluntary, anonymous evaluation of the quality of their parent-teacher relationship through completion of the Parent Teacher Relationship Scale II (PTRS-II), developed by Vickers and Minke using psychometrically sound measures (Dawson & Wymbs, 2016; Vickers & Minke, 1995). The PTRS-II was administered as an online survey with the addition of one question to clarify whether participants had or had not participated in home visits. Information regarding the purposes and methods of research was included in the invitation to take the survey, which was emailed to all parents and teachers in the organization within the first three months of the school year to get a baseline of data. Eleven teachers and 68 parents participated in this survey, a participant size typical of prior surveys within the school. Ten teachers also chose to participate in voluntary interviews about their personal experience of the effects of home visiting or the building of parent-teacher relationships. Of those ten, eight had participated in home visits and two had not. They were provided with disclosure information and consent forms prior to participating in interviews, and were reassured of their rights to refuse to answer any interview question and discontinue participation at any time, including after the interview had occurred, though none of the participants withdrew from the research and all were enthusiastically supportive of the aims of the research. Seven parents participated in a scheduled and publicly advertised voluntary focus group discussion, which occurred after home visits had concluded. Feedback from the focus group FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 35 discussion was audio-recorded and then coded with pseudonyms to protect the privacy of the participants. Per the school's parent involvement policy, volunteers must sign in at the front desk before reporting to classrooms to assist, and those sign-in sheets were also recorded into the database. Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) membership was noted and correlated to other family data. Data Analysis Analysis of the study data was two-fold, including data acquired in face-to-face interactions and data gathered from the PTRS survey and the school organization. These types of data had to be analyzed first separately and then together in order to determine whether the implications were consistent. Attendance data for parent education events, other school events, Parent Teacher Organization meetings, and volunteerism were evaluated for changes throughout the year and against trends from prior years. I first aggregated organizational and membership data by whether or not participants had engaged in home visits and compared the data, analyzing trends among the home visit group, the non-home visiting group, and prior years' participation. PTRSII surveys were analyzed for possible correlations to home visit participation. I organized data from the PTRS survey into two groups for final analysis - those who had received a home visit, and those who had not. Membership data was used to indicate participation trends, though not able to contribute to an understanding of reasons. Ideas emerging from the PTRS survey as possible motivators or reasons for participation trends were outlined prior to the analysis of faceto-face interviews and focus group discussion. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 36 Focus group discussion and teacher interviews were transcribed from audio recordings and then coded for recurring themes using the constant comparative method, developed by Glaser and Strauss (1967). This method is further explained by Boeije (2002) to include comparing ideas within interviews and then between them to discover core messages, challenges, and contradictions. Using this method, I identified categories of responses which were common and significant among the teacher interviewees and parent group, and also noted anomalous responses which were unique among the participants. I continually referenced research questions, ecological systems theory, and social capital theory to determine if the focus of the research was accomplishing its aims in uncovering important aspects of the parent-teacher relationship. Interview and focus group discussion data was also compared to trends from membership data and the PTRS survey. Throughout the data analysis process, I employed perpetual cross referencing between sources of data, emerging themes, and the researcher's journal. Qualitative conclusions were drawn from the focus group discussion and interviews and triangulated with connections that emerged within the more quantitative membership and participation data. Emerging themes were collected with supporting evidence and sequenced based on a progression from the point in time when there was no extant relationship, through the home visit process, and into the period after the home visit when effects on the relationship could be seen over time. Finally, the reflections and conclusions of teachers were compared between participants and with the themes and categories from the researcher's journal that had emerged throughout the constant-comparative process. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 37 Trustworthiness In order for this research to be trustworthy, it incorporated triangulation, prolonged engagement, participant validation, collaboration, researcher reflexivity, description, and peer debriefing. Triangulation is the process of providing at least three types of data and aggregating trends which that data suggests. The data triangulated included attendance, membership, and participation data, focus group feedback, survey data, communication logs, and interviews. Because I have been a stakeholder in this school since its inception more than a decade ago, and have served in many capacities in the school, I have a unique and prolonged engagement on site as a board member, staff member, and administrator. I believe that gives me a unique perspective on the history of parent-teacher relationships at the school and an interesting lens through which I filtered my findings. Parents were asked their perspectives on both home visits and the challenge of building strong parent teacher relationships, and they provided strong feedback about both of those processes. Teachers also had an opportunity to validate possible conclusions in their interviews. The combination of the parent and teacher feedback provided participant validation to the study. In addition, a collaborative team of teachers in Kindergarten through grade 5 discussed some trends and anonymous feedback and made suggestions to the researcher to refine the research process. Their feedback provided objectivity to the project. My own perspective on the project was continually reviewed through a process of reflection and researcher reflexivity. I have provided descriptions of the process and feedback provided by my participants in order to frame the research with adequate depth. The research was also reviewed by peers in the M.Ed. cohort in order to refine it for consistency, FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 38 completeness, and coherence. I believe this research contains appropriate depth, scope, and validity, and has yielded conclusions which answer the research questions with detail. Ethical Considerations In order to treat each of the participants ethically, the researcher submitted a plan to the Institutional Review Board for consideration, and was granted approval based on the ethical nature of the research plan (see appendix). Participants were notified of the purposes of the data to be collected and the goals of the project and were assured of their anonymity in a way they felt was ethical and trustworthy. Consent forms were given to all parents and teachers who entered into the focus discussion, and/or interviews. Participants also had opportunities to ask questions and be informed of their right to discontinue participation at any time in the process. All information gathered was represented in the study without compromising the privacy of the families and teachers, particularly in circumstances when the information could have affected the child, such as existed in cases where the parent-teacher relationship was less healthy or parent involvement was deemed by the teacher to be low (Garbacz et al, 2015). Additionally, since I collected information that connected families and teachers, I was careful that all of the identifiers were changed or removed and cannot be traced back to families, children, or teachers, and that participants were able to trust the fidelity of the research methods and data protection. This was accomplished by assigning a confidential code to each teacher and family and removing identifiers, replacing them with that code as soon as data was collected. All data was stored in double password protected systems on the researcher's computer. This study did not involve physical risk of any kind to subjects, though teacher participants and parents did experience some emotional responses to the interview and focus group discussion processes. I ensured that all personally identifiable information was removed FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 39 from the interview and focus group discussion data prior to publication. Also, information given by all teachers and parents was reported anonymously and in such a way as to protect the connection of their responses to specific children, teachers, or families. Since an important component to relationships is the perception of realities of power differential, special attention was given to the influence of the teacher-administrator relationship and how it might have impacted this research. It was also important to note any power differential or perception of such between parents and teachers, such as may have existed between parents who also served on the executive board and the teachers who served their children, or teachers who are also parents. While none of the data was shared in conjunction with personally identifiable information, the researcher made efforts in ensuring that those power differentials were minimized to ensure that they did not bias feedback. No information collected from any participant was reported with identifiers to other participants, and participants were able to withdraw from the study at any point up until final review of the publication. At the conclusion of the study, generalized results were reported to the school board, the leadership team, and the staff of the school to inform practice. The publication itself was made available to stakeholders of the school who wished to review it. I believe that the emotional vulnerability for parents and teachers participating was worth undertaking, given the information it gave to inform teachers and parents in their strategic relationship building in the future. For schools, this study provides clear correlations between the implementation of a home visit program and effects on parent-teacher relationships, parent involvement, and the quality and frequency of communications between parents and teachers. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 40 Chapter Four: Findings The purposes of this research were to: 1) determine the correlative effects of a teacher home visit on subsequent parental participation in parent education, the Parent Teacher Organization (PTO), volunteerism on campus and in the classroom, and at school events, 2) discover trends in the quality and frequency of parent-teacher communications, and compare those trends between parent-teacher groups who had or had not participated in home visits, and 3) explore the responses of parents and teachers to the process and effects of teacher home visits through focus group discussion and interviews. In this chapter, I will explain the critical findings of the case study, exploring the significant barrier posed by feelings of separateness, the process of opening the door to strong relationships, home visits as one way to develop a real view of one another, establish trust, create goals together, and establish communication patterns that work, and finally discuss the effects of strong parent-teacher relationships for the teacher and parent. Perceptions of Separateness I approached this research with an ecological systems framework in mind, drawing on my belief that the microsystems of home and school overlap in powerful ways which can have significant effects on the children as well as teacher and parents. Teachers in the study resoundingly agreed that the overlap of the two environments have effects on children. They shared the common experience that increased stressors in the home cause children to act differently and have trouble focusing academically and connecting socially at school. Several shared beliefs that students adopt the attitudes of their parents toward school, either positive or FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 41 negative, and that those attitudes shape their experiences in the classroom. However, despite a common belief in the overlap of the home and school environments, parents and teachers both expressed a feeling of separateness which they described as unfortunate, but normal at the beginning of each school year. Parents reported feeling that home and school are two different worlds, which ideally can be connected, but never start out that way. Teachers described tremendous efforts they routinely make to bridge the two worlds. However, neither group feel that they are always invested members of the same community or team, despite a theoretical acceptance of the idea that they should be. It is as if the parent remains in the home, the teacher remains in the school, and the child is stuck, alone, in a small mesosystem (the overlap of the microsystems). Bronfenbrenner (1979) describes the child's transition into the school setting as an ecological transition, and suggests that the transition is facilitated by people who act within a system to support the individual, such as the parent and teacher who ought to be in the mesosystem with the child. Without supporting persons, the child must make this difficult transition alone. This idea is expressed in Figure 2, below. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP Home Parent 42 School Child Teacher Figure 2. Positions within microsystems. This figure shows the separation of parent and teacher in separate microsystems, with the child only in the mesosystem, or overlap. From a social capital stand-point, because teachers and parents are both working with the same child toward basically common goals, they should have access to one another as resources - they are part of the same community (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988). Throughout this study, however, descriptions of a sense of separateness that must be overcome were given by both parents and teachers. No matter how logical their membership in a common community was to them, parents and teachers began their relationships feeling a sense of distance between them. This distance prevented them from communicating openly or frequently and from accessing one another's expertise, ideas, and resources even though they acknowledged that sharing their social capital would benefit them both, and even expressed that as a desire. It was ironic that both teachers and parents, having the belief that they should be on the same team and that working FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 43 together would be best for everyone, began their relationship with significant barriers and fears, feeling distance and even intimidation between them. For parents, the most prevalent fear was that teachers would judge their parenting and find it inadequate in some way. They worried that teachers would scrutinize the way they speak to or discipline their children, their own academic skills or experience, their home environment and cleanliness, or their personal commitment and capacity to support their children academically and otherwise. Whether or not a teacher really had the intention to judge a parent, parents felt "prone to being evaluated," and unanimously considered their parenting choices to be a sensitive area which should not be subject to that evaluation (focus group discussion, February 6, 2018). For this reason, it was particularly vulnerable for a parent to have the teacher in his or her home; it seemed to parents the best place for a teacher who is evaluative to see all of the elements of their parenting clearly. This fear of judgment is the number one barrier which may prevent a parent from connecting with a teacher, up to and including accepting a home visit. For teachers, the barriers may seem quite different. Teachers expressed very few fears of judgment from parents, but instead described intense feelings of nervousness about whether or not they would be able to communicate about challenges without offending parents. They worried that parents would disagree with their choices or assignments, or blame the teacher when the child experienced problems at school. Several teachers in the study expressed the fear that parents would, "make excuses," rather than collaborating to create solutions to problems. Teachers also worried that parents would remove their children from the class or school if problems arose, and particularly if the teacher was unable to solve behavioral problems. Teachers expressed extreme nervousness when setting their first home visit appointment, even describing procrastination and physical illness at the thought of calling a parent. While FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 44 none of the teachers in this study claimed to fear parent judgment, many expressed deep anxiety that parents may question their competence or care for the child and subsequently remove the child from the teacher's care, and they described their feelings using terms such as "scary," "frightening," "careful," "anxious," "awkward," "overwhelming," and "unknown" (Personal Communications, January-March, 2018). One teacher described the initiation of a parent-teacher relationship as "first date syndrome," and explained that, "It's more intimidating that the first date. If a first date goes bad, you can check them off your Rolodex and move on, but if you have an awkward first meeting with the parent, you still have to teach their child for the rest of the year" (personal communication, January 26, 2018). Her feelings about this forced long-term relationship were consistent among her fellow teachers, who felt that there is a great deal of pressure to make a good first impression and follow it up with no mistakes that could endanger the parent's view of them as competent. With all this fear of judgment, teachers and parents tended to remain in their separate environments feeling a chasm of space between them, even when logic would suggest that their fears may be disproportionate. To visualize this phenomenon, one could imagine a teacher sitting in her classroom, alone, and discovering a new door in the room. The door might have a child's name on it, but it is closed and possibly locked. Behind that door, the teacher knows she will find important keys to truly knowing the child and meeting his unique individual needs, but the door is new and the space beyond it entirely unknown. The teacher calls upon her imagination to fill in the possibilities: behind the door could be overwhelming, overstimulating, filthy chaos. It could be rigid, stern, high expectations. It could be drugs, crime, and life-long tragedy. It might be disconnected, apathetic un-involvement, instability, mental illness, and hatred, anger, judgement or harsh criticism. In fact, she may even find peace, love, and family connection, but FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 45 her human tendency to fear the unknown causes her to fixate on the negative possibilities, rather than the more rational optimism which would suggest that most families, despite their differences, are made up of people who love each other and hope for happiness. The moment of greatest fear is when the teacher must choose to knock on the door, turn the handle, and open it to discover what is really inside (researcher's journal, February 2, 2018). The metaphor of an opening door recurred throughout this study, mentioned by both parents and teachers, and represents the moment a healthy parent-teacher relationship is deliberately initiated. In essence, the microsystems of home and school will remain separate for the parent and teacher until someone opens the door to the space where they overlap - the mesosystem that is the parent-teacher relationship. And since there are doors on both sides of the mesosystem, the door could be opened by either the parent or the teacher, but will not actually result in an improved parent-teacher relationship unless both decide to step into the mesosystem. This idea is represented in Figure 3. Home Parent School Child Teacher Figure 3. Microsystems with a closed mesosystem. This figure shows closed doors into the microsystem, representing the fears that keep teachers and parents separate. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 46 Bronfenbrenner (1979) emphasizes the importance of this relationship using the term linking dyad, and explains that members of one microsystem who become active in another microsystem provide a strong link which increases the developmental potential of the setting dramatically. More than one active member within a mesosystem increases the momentum of development even further. He also claims that the strong motivational and developmental effects of the mesosystem, or overlap, "are further enhanced if the participants are emotionally significant to each other's lives" (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 213). If one imagines the teacher opening the door despite her fear, one might see a room with the child in it, for the child lives in the mesosystem regularly. For the mesosystem to become "multiply linked," however, the parent must open his or her own door into the shared space, as well. If only the teacher reaches out and the parent does not also desire a relationship, frustration inevitably ensues. One of the greatest frustrations that was repeatedly expressed in this study was that of teachers who felt their efforts to communicate were not reciprocated by all parents - a scenario described by one teacher as opening her door, but feeling that the parent's door is shut, or perhaps even locked. Opening the Doors Too often, educators believe that opening the doors of the school will open the doors to a strong parent-teacher relationship. Most teachers interviewed in this study described ideal parent involvement as regular classroom volunteering, fund raising, and assistance with events and activities (Personal Communications, January-February 2018). These examples echo the findings of Noel, Stark, and Redford (2016) who claimed that schools tend to recognize these as the primary forms of parent involvement in education. Teachers in this study listed attendance at Back to School Night, Parent Teacher Conferences, and academic festivals and concerts, as well as helping with formal snack and sharing and participation in birthday walks, all of which take FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 47 place within the school building, as examples. The school hosts Back to School Night at the beginning of each school year, inviting parents to enter, and hoping that its open doors will be the start of a great relationship. For many parents, however, walking through the school's open doors doesn't open their own. As evidence, consider that the school in this case study averaged 48% attendance at Back to School Night, an open-house style event where parents could meet their child's teacher, see the classroom, receive classroom materials and information, and access information about school lunch, busing, and other school-wide programs (Institutional Data, August 10, 2017). At this event, 18% of total enrolled families signed up for membership in the Parent Teacher Organization at a recruiting table. These statistics are encouraging, but they don't tell the whole story. After Back to School Night, four percent of the families contributed 44% of total family volunteer hours, and members of the community without any children attending the school logged more total volunteer hours than the entire parent body combined: 324.5 compared to 283.5 (Institutional Data, March 15, 2018). These findings indicate that school events alone did not create the type of parent involvement which would make parents a regular presence in the classroom. Clearly, opening the school's doors did not create the type of on-campus parental involvement that the school had hoped for. Schools generally look at volunteer time as a key indicator of parent involvement, but fail to recognize the continual expectation for parents to come to the school building as onedimensional. Bronfenbrenner (1979) would describe this type of relationship as "weakly linked" because only one member (the parent) is active in the mesosystem (p. 211). Mapp, Carver, and Lander (2017) remind educators that families may experience many factors which affect their ability to participate at the school, but their engagement at home and in their communities may be deep and should be recognized and honored, as well. Another type of on-campus participation FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 48 is Parent Teacher Conferences, which took place at the study site after the first academic term. The school in this study boasted 98.4% attendance at these conferences, notably individualized experiences wherein the teacher talked with parents about the child's individual goals and progress (Institutional Data, October 28, 2017). The contrast between volunteer time and conference attendance is significant and shows, somewhat unsurprisingly, that parents exhibit a greater sense of commitment to their own child/children than they do to the larger school community. While they expressed that they may not have had time to contribute to the general classroom regularly, they were able to attend to the needs of their own child even if it meant missing work time; for example, one parent confessed that she is "a very lazy parent" who doesn't always like to go to after-hours activities, but who makes time for the things she knows affect her child directly (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018). On-campus participation by parents can sometimes be a doorway to a strong long-term relationship, as is the case with several participants who began as parents at the study site and grew later into faculty roles. For those individuals, volunteering in the school led to training and employment opportunities, as well as relationships with teachers and staff. But for the majority of the parent body, volunteering is not an open door that automatically leads to strong parentteacher relationships. Simply inviting parents to events at the school was not enough to close the gap between home and school in this case; it allowed parents to glimpse the school's microsystem, but did not put parents and teachers into relational closeness. It pulled the parent into the mesosystem briefly to look through the school's open doorway, but did not put the teacher and parent into the same plane to form a relationship. This separateness is depicted in Figure 4. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP Home 49 School Teacher Parent Child Figure 4. Parent on campus. This figure shows the parent in the mesosystem, but with his own door closed and still in a separate space from the teacher. Home Visits: A Better Way to Open the Door Having struggled with a history of low parental involvement, the school in this case study implemented a teacher home visit program this year as another way to open the door between teachers and families. The school conducted 149 home visits with 114 families, or 37% of the school's total family enrollment of 306 families (Institutional Data, November 30, 2017). The visits were conducted between July and November, 2017. One aim of this study was to determine if the home visit program increased subsequent parent participation in on-campus activities. Results here were encouraging, and were taken from institutional data gathered for the first eight months of school (Institutional Data, March 15, 2018): volunteer time was slightly higher among families who received home visits; 31% of home-visited families volunteered on campus, compared to 24% of the unvisited population. Attendance at Parent Education events FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 50 was significantly higher; 20% of visited parents participated in Parent Education, compared with 6% of the unvisited population (Institutional Data, March 24, 2018). 21% of home visited parents and 15% of the unvisited population joined the Parent Teacher Organization (Institutional Data, January 30, 2018). A Parent Teacher Relationship Scale Survey conducted throughout the month of November had 68 respondents, representing 22% of the student body; the surveys were split into three nearly even categories - those who had received a home visit (24, or 35%), those who had not but were interested in receiving one (22, or 32%), and those who did not wish to receive a visit (22, or 32%) (PTRS-II, December 1, 2017). I feel that this is an accurate representative sample, as it mirrors actual participation in the program school-wide. The survey indicates that there is room for improvement on the school's part, since nearly a third of the population would have liked to receive a home visit and did not. This was partially due to the voluntary nature of the program - no one is required to participate, including teachers, although the majority of the staff received home visit training. Still, the program in its first year resulted in a full third of families opening their doors to teachers and allowing them into the home. For 114 families, 14 teachers, and 13 support staff, it was a door that had not been opened before, and the view on the other side was remarkable (Institutional Data, December 1, 2017). Realistic view. Perhaps the most dramatic reported effect of the home visit program was the experience of seeing one another in a real way. Interviewed teachers reported that observing a student in his natural environment, the home, made them feel that they understood the child differently and more completely. They had a new view of the student, in light of the interests and dynamics he displayed in his own world. These findings are consistent with other literature about home visits FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 51 claiming that they can change participants' views of one another (Henke, 2011; Kayser, 2017; Stetson, Stetson, Sinclair, & Nix 2012). Throughout the study, conversations between teachers and parents in home visits yielded a more balanced, whole view of one another. Experiencing the culture and dynamics within the home helped teachers to understand details they had, perhaps, read on paper but couldn't visualize. For example, one teacher reported having taken a survey on her students' backgrounds and reading that a parent was from a foreign country. While she had read it in the child's survey, she reported having a much different view of that reality after actually meeting him face to face (Personal Communication, February 2, 2018). Parents reported that the conversations in the home visit made the teacher feel more human, to them and to their children (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018). This phenomenon is depicted in Figure 5, where all three participants within the home see one another through new lenses. Child Home School Parent Teacher Figure 5. A realistic view from the home visit. This figure shows parent, child, and teacher seeing each other in a new way during a home visit. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 52 The net effect of connecting within the child's home was a sense of reality that had not existed before. Teachers, parents, and students became more real to one another - three dimensional human beings with background, personality, interests, and uniqueness that went beyond their roles. One teacher said that she had basically taken the approach of, "I won't believe everything they say about you, if you don't believe everything they say about me" (Personal Communication, January 26, 2018). She described entering the home with an attitude of seeking truth and reality. Another described the experience this way: "You're observing the child in his own home, interacting with the siblings, and you see the child as a member of a family unit and as a member of the community" (Personal Communication, February 6, 2018). A parent described this approach as "entering as a learner" (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018). In each interview, teachers reported that children had wanted to show them things - their home, toys, books, or other things they were proud of - and parents reported later that showing those things to the teacher had made the children feel known. Another common phenomenon during home visits was a settling of roles. Teachers were able to introduce their aides for the first time and parents asked questions about the roles each played in the classroom. Parents also had an opportunity to settle into their role with the child and teacher. For some, there was a period of awkwardness when the parent wasn't sure whether to take the lead in the home. This was surprising to teachers, who were relieved when most parents did assume the authority of parenting their children after the initially awkward period. Children also needed some time to decide if classroom behavior or home behavior was expected of them. This was not an anticipated take-away, but is one which the participants felt was significant FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 53 because it set up expectations for the roles each would fulfill for the rest of the year and established the parent as an authority in the teacher's presence. While a power differential favoring the teacher may be perceived within a classroom, during home visits the teacher, child, and parent all had an opportunity to reset the playing field. Several teachers reported feeling more relaxed when the parent took charge of activities within the home, including what would be shown, the movement of children through the shared space, and the conversation itself (Personal Communications, January-February 2018). They described a feeling of "equal ground" that was validated by the parent focus group discussion (February 6, 2018), wherein parents concurred that the fear of judgment went away during the home visit. Both teachers and parents expressed a sense of relaxation during the home visit that let them drop their guard and actually connect with one another. Instead of holding their fears about one another in mind, they were face to face with the reality of one another and had to see what was really there and let go of the imagined judgment or preconceived notions that had made them so nervous before the visit. One teacher expressed that, "It was 100% awkward immediately, instead of spreading that awkwardness out… Instead of figuring them out by the end of the year, we figured them out at the beginning" (Personal Communication, February 8, 2018). These findings indicate that the home visit dissolved most assumptions for both parents and teachers creating an enduring, realistic view, another conclusion which is consistent with current research (Henke, 2011; Kayser, 2017; Kronholz, 2016; Lin & Bates, 2010; Rose, 2017; Stetson, Stetson, Sinclair, & Nix 2012). For most of these teachers and parents, the home visit resulted in a realistic view of one another and the child based on actual experience together that dissolved the fear they felt before, and left them able to trust one another. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 54 Trust. Having a realistic view of each other helped parents and teachers to get beyond their fears to see each other clearly and to begin to build trust between them. One parent said, "Establishing that beginning foundation - trust - is critical!" (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018). Regarding the effectiveness of a community from a social capital lens, Coleman (1988) claimed that, "a group within which there is extensive trustworthiness and extensive trust is able to accomplish much more than a comparable group without that trustworthiness and trust" (p. 101). Consistent with social capital theory, parents and teachers in this study agreed; trust allowed them to access one another's experience and ideas as resources. Their descriptions of increasing trust centered around a few key concepts: positivity, vulnerability, informality, and motive. Nearly every teacher described using positivity as a way to build relationships with the parent (Personal Communications, January-February 2018). Several mentioned the idea of starting with something positive, discussing a challenge, and ending with something positive. Others explained the need for a well of positive feeling that is built gradually over time, so that in times of trouble the relationship can handle the challenge. The Arbinger Institute (2006), a long-time source of peace-building curriculum used in the school, suggests that most relationship-building time should be spent in obtaining a sense of peace, building relationships, listening, learning, teaching, and communicating, rather than correcting problems. The teachers in this study seemed to agree. Parents expressed deep gratitude for the positivity of teachers, and claimed that a positive teacher gives both the child and the parent confidence that future interactions will be enjoyable, which reduces anxiety surrounding parent teacher conferences and other communications (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018). FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 55 Another key factor in the building of trust is allowing oneself to become vulnerable. For some teachers, feelings of vulnerability contributed to extreme anxiety over the home visit (Personal Communications, January-February 2018). Several mentioned either their own urban background or the idea that home visits would not work in an urban setting, and contrasted that with the idea that our rural setting should feel safer, and yet their anxiety was still high. Most teachers did not feel comfortable giving parents their mobile phone number, and were reassured by the presence of a coworker and glad they had been asked to go out in twos. Several teachers expressed the opinion that being so vulnerable was exhausting. Still, though it had emotional costs for the teachers, many believed that their vulnerability had been influential in winning the trust of the family. One even credited the success of the home visit to her vulnerability in attempting to speak Spanish (albeit poorly), because she had been willing to show her flaws and the family had appreciated her effort (Personal Communication, February 8, 2018). The challenges surrounding the issue of vulnerability that were expressed by participants are consistent with Brown's (2012) research, in which vulnerability is cited as a key barrier to communication. Brown claims that many people in educational settings are not comfortable with "hard conversations" and will tend to avoid them, causing communication and productivity break-downs (p. 197). Mentions of fearing or avoiding hard conversations were made throughout this study, and those participants who engaged in home visits tended to embrace the idea of becoming deliberately vulnerable to one another in order to build stronger relationships. Parent and teacher choices to become vulnerable created trust between them, the foundation for a healthier relationship. While most teachers interviewed in the study described healthy relationships between themselves, their students, and parents as being "comfortable," one teacher went further in her FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 56 analysis, explaining that if the relationship between teacher and child remains formal, there is a distance between them defined by their roles, but when the relationship becomes more informal, the informality actually creates trust (Personal Communication, February 7, 2018). The informality she described happens when the relationship transcends the roles of teacher and student, and both begin to feel a human connection with emotional commitment to one another that will last beyond their time together in the classroom. Many other participants described similar informality with both students and their parents without using the same term. Examples included asking about a family member with whom the teacher has no required involvement, discussing leisure and weekend activities, warm greetings at the supermarket and other places off-campus, and even the giving and receiving of hugs (Personal Communications, January - February, 2018). When asked if it is easier to communicate with a teacher who has been in her home, one parent summarized by saying, "I feel like I'm talking to a friend" (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018). While some teachers worried about crossing an imaginary boundary of professionalism, all who described a more informal relationship with parents seemed grateful for the feelings of support and understanding they felt within that informality. When their relationships extended beyond their role as teachers and parents, both had a heightened sense of trust in one another, and felt confidence that their imperfections would not make the other think less of them. Another part of the trust equation is that of motive. Teachers and parents must establish trust in each other's motives as caring and solution oriented, not biased, angry, or judgmental (Researcher's Journal, February 2, 2018). When parents believe that the teacher cares personally for their child, it is easier to trust the teacher with the child's feelings and learning. Several parents in the study expressed having had negative experiences in other schools when they did FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 57 not feel confident that their child would have the emotional care of a teacher who, like the parent, wanted them to be happy (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018). All parents in this study expressed similar hope for their children's happiness, both in the focus group discussion and in a majority of home visits; they were more confident when they believed that the child's happiness was a high priority for the teacher, as well. Covey (2006) explains that "Our perception of intent has a huge impact on trust," (p. 76) and that "While our motives and agendas are deep inside in our own hearts and minds, they become visible to others through our behaviors and as we share them with others" (p. 78). The key here is that the teacher and the parent needed a forum in which to talk about their intentions for the child and to realize that they share motives and goals in common. Teachers at the school were trained by the program provider to specifically ask parents about their goals for the children during a home visit (Rose, 2017). Parents expressed tremendous gratitude for the home-visiting teacher's focus on family goals, as it gave them a moment to voice their hopes and the teacher a moment to embrace and share them, demonstrating that their motives were similar (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018). When parents believed that they and the teacher shared similar goals for the child, trust formed quickly and insulated the relationship against judgment. Goal agreement. Besides creating trust, having common goals is necessary for teachers and parents in order to make progress. One of the parents' favorite parts of the home visit was the question, "What are your hopes and dreams for your child?" Resoundingly, the parents agree that this question was welcomed because it offered them a chance to talk about a bigger picture than one academic year in the life of their child (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018). They enjoyed the chance to FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 58 talk about their visions of the future for their children. Teachers expressed that hearing the parents' hope helped them to set appropriate priorities for the child in the classroom. One teacher claimed that, "If you don't consider their priorities, you're not going to make progress," a statement which shows clearly that the teacher was willing to trust the parent's knowledge of his/her child and synchronize with the parent's goal (Personal Communication, February 8, 2018). Having a thorough conversation about the parent's expectations for the child's future offers clarity to the teacher, and makes goals align to long-term vision, rather than short-sighted benchmarks (Researcher's Journal, February 28, 2018). Teachers also reported that setting these common goals for the child in the home visit resulted in an increase in focus, because teachers knew exactly what the parent needed and expected of the teacher. Working toward common goals created directional momentum in the classroom and a sense of accountability to parents (Researcher's Journal, March 1, 2018). I was very surprised to hear teacher after teacher express a feeling of accountability to parents with whom they had strong relationships. Throughout this study, teachers expressed that a connection with a child's parent increased their attention to the child's needs because of this sense of accountability. They knew that a conversation with the parent would happen, and were more vigilant in noticing the child's progress and ensuring that there was positive progress to report. While many teachers indicated this as a truth, one stated it with impressive clarity and courage; "When parents are involved, you honestly pay more attention to their student. You know that the parent cares what is happening at school so you want to make sure that you have the communication open, that you're checking back with them if they have requested information or they have a concern" (Personal Communication, February 2, 2018). Teachers claimed that while they work hard to meet the needs of every child in their classrooms, they were FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 59 often more cognizant of the progress of children whose parents communicated regularly because they were anticipating the parent's questions and wanted to be prepared (Personal Communications, January-February 2018). Coleman (1988) claimed that having a sense of obligation to one another increases the social capital within a system, and indeed it was apparent throughout this study that building relationships increased a sense of accountability and the sharing of information among teachers and parents (Researcher's Journal, March 31, 2018). With the parent's goals in mind, teachers were more consistently focused on working toward those goals in the classroom. One of the most powerful conclusions of this study is that teachers focused attentively to accomplish the goals of communicative parents. Communication. Communication is the most critical key to building a strong relationship, and throughout this study clear patterns in communication have emerged which answer a key research question about the quality and frequency of communications between teachers and parents. Though personal preferences do exist and varied among teachers and parents, participants in this case study generally agree on the following hierarchy of effective communications from least formal to most formal: classroom webpage, text, email, face to face conversation, and phone call (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018; Personal Communications, January-February 2018). Participants had strong feelings related to the pressure and level of anxiety each creates, and agreed that for most communications, it is important to choose the correct medium. Classroom webpages, including blogs, Wiki spaces, google pages, and other teacher created forums are helpful for students and parents who need resources at home. Some examples of their uses include chat forums to discuss assignments, lists of prepared research tools, links to FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 60 applications used in the classroom, and postings about current events in the classroom. While these types of tools were not used or discussed by all teachers and parents, those who did utilize them believe they are no-pressure systems to support families. Teachers and parents who used webpages believe they are a great way to provide answers without even knowing who is asking the questions, because students and parents can visit the page anonymously to access any resources posted there by the teacher, including reproducibles, forms, instructions for assignments, models, and rubrics. This system of communication carried the least pressure of those discussed by participants because there is no human interaction actually happening, except in the case of a blog or chat forum. In that case, interaction is minimal and often faceless or anonymous. Additionally, no patterns emerged in this study which link the use of web-based communications with home visit participation (Communication Logs, March 2018). The next level of communication is text messaging. While not all teachers used text messages as a communication tool, those who did believe it is likely the most effective form of communication to use regularly (Personal Communications, January-February 2018). Texting requires very little time commitment, and due to its informal nature, is the fastest way for a teacher to reach parents. Text messages are short, which means teachers don't spend a lot of time crafting perfect sentences. They can also contain graphics, such as pictures of the child at work, assignments, and completed projects. One teacher in the study often wrote quick notes to parents at the end of the day, but texted a picture of them just in case the paper didn't make it home, a regular occurrence in every elementary classroom (Personal Communication, February 8, 2018). Text messages send instantly, and can be answered with instant responses or responses later, when the parent has more time. They are useful for short questions and answers, and can be frequent or infrequent depending on the personal preferences of teachers and parents. The school FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 61 in this case study has a Google voice line which teachers can use to text parents if they do not feel comfortable giving out their own mobile number, a tool that was popular with many teachers. Most notably, parents participating in this study claimed to enjoy receiving text messages from their children's teachers. They felt relaxed and comfortable with text messaging, and could answer at their own pace. Interestingly, while teachers' formal communication logs did not often report text messaging, parents and teachers in the home visiting group did report using text messaging at higher rates than their counterparts who did not participate in home visits, a phenomenon I feel is significant (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018; Personal Communications, January-February 2018). Email remained the most popular form of communication for teachers, who claimed that email is an excellent way to document their communications with parents and to alert administration (via CC or BCC) when they need support (Personal Communications, JanuaryFebruary 2018). Emails are more formal than text messages and require significantly more time to craft, but work really well to communicate class-wide general information and to start more individual conversations with families. A great deal of information can be communicated via email, so it is useful in broad communications and for sending attachments. Parents agreed that email is an effective tool to communicate both general and individual information, and appreciated receiving email from teachers (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018). Communication logs (2018) indicate that email is the most frequently used form of communication between parents and teachers in both home visit and non-home visiting groups. Most teachers initiated conversations about individual students via email, and expected that a phone call or face to face conversation may follow the initial email. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 62 According to participants, the great majority of conversations about student challenges are not solved via any form of written communication (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018; Personal Communications, January-February 2018). Both teachers and parents felt that face to face communication is more efficient than a series of texts or emails because so much more can be communicated verbally in such a shorter period of time, and because of the benefit of body language which is difficult to misinterpret when face to face. Several teachers in this study claimed that a short period of face to face time accomplishes more than a long series of notes, describing home visits as the most powerful form of face-to-face time. They also mentioned encounters in the community as quick but effective moments of clarity and convergence. Parents included popping into the classroom at pick-up or drop-off, brief chats in the halls or office, and parent-teacher conferences as conversations which build trusting relationships. While most parents do not make appointments to see their child's teacher outside of conferences, there are many informal ways for them to create face-to-face contact that connects them with the school. Parents and teachers both value face to face interaction, which feels more genuine than written communication and has the benefit of body-language. While this study did not discover a significant difference in the number of face-to-face communications between home visit and non-home visiting groups, teachers and parents who engaged in home visits reported a higher level of comfort and satisfaction with these interactions after the home visit occurred. Though telephone conversations are an important part of the communication systems between school and home, both parents and teachers reported the highest levels of discomfort calling one another or receiving phone calls (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018; Personal Communications, January-February 2018). From the parents' perspective, as soon as a FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 63 phone call is received from the school, anxiety strikes. Parents assume that a phone call from school will be negative most times, either due to an accident or injury to the child or due to inappropriate behaviors by the child and consequent disciplinary action. They reported that phone calls send them into worry mode immediately, and while they appreciate communication from schools, any occasion requiring a phone call carries a sense of immediacy and urgency they do not feel with any of the other forms of communication. One teacher put it eloquently; "Parents are unaccustomed to good news from school… they think, ‘Oh no! (Child), what did you do this time?'" (Personal Communication, January 26, 2018). Teachers also reported heightened stress in giving or receiving phone calls. Many described feeling like their words to parents needed to be crafted carefully, but that on the phone they were improvising without the benefit of body language and they often didn't have confidence in their improvisational skills. Teachers fearing misinterpretation over the phone often preferred to email or speak face to face to ensure that their messages were received clearly and interpreted correctly. Both teachers and parents will typically try other forms of communication before resorting to a phone call. Participants in this study strongly agreed upon the communication continuum, including the emotional responses typically associated with each communication medium. It was interesting that parents and teachers shared very similar anxieties and interpretations of each medium of communication, while worrying that their preferred styles of communication would be burdensome to the other (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018; Personal Communications, January-February 2018). See figure 6. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 64 Figure 6. Communication continuum. This figure shows the continuum of communication that emerged through this research as expressed by parents and teachers. Interestingly, both teachers and parents reported feeling more relaxed about communicating with one another, including through phone calls, after engaging in a home visit (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018; Personal Communications, January-February 2018). Data from the study's Parent Teacher Relationship Scale Survey conducted in November, 2017, supports this conclusion in interesting ways. In the survey, teachers and parents in the home visit group reported much more frequent communication when they are pleased; teachers reported that 20% of their unvisited parents frequently or almost always tell them when they are pleased, but that 75% of home visited parents frequently or almost always tell the teacher when they are pleased. 64% of parents who declined or were not offered a home visit claimed that they FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 65 frequently or almost always tell the teacher when they are pleased. 87.5% of parents who did received a home visit told the teacher frequently or almost always when they were pleased. In contrast, 82% of unvisited parents frequently or almost always told the teacher when they were concerned, and 68% frequently or almost always told the teacher when they were worried, while 87.5% of home-visited parents claimed that they tell the teacher when they are worried - the same percentage who reported positive feelings to the teacher. 40% of teachers who had not done home visits reported telling parents frequently or almost always when they are pleased. 100% of teachers who completed home visits told the visited parents frequently or almost always when they were pleased. The two groups asked each other's advice and opinions at the same rate. This is significant, I believe, because it means that the sharing of positive feedback is the most powerful statistical difference. These findings clearly answer the research question of how home visits affected the frequency and quality of communication between parents and teachers. Parents in the home visited group were comfortable enough communicating with the teacher that they shared both positive and negative feedback, and home-visiting teachers took the time to communicate not only challenges, but also positive feedback to families. Communications of all types were more regular, more comfortable, and more effective for both parties after home visits occurred (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018; Personal Communications, JanuaryFebruary 2018). Effects of the Open Door Relationship This powerful shift to open communication about both successes and challenges signals a healthy parent-teacher relationship, and is just one way in which home visits have affected participants in this study positively. A critical aim of this research was to discover the effects of FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 66 home visits on the parent-teacher relationship through the perspective of parents and teachers themselves. What follows here are the findings specific to this aim. Teachers in the study described healthy relationships with parents as comfortable, solution oriented, honest, and supportive after completing home visits (Personal Communications, January-February, 2018). They expressed a consistent belief that parents can "lighten the load" of the teacher, not by teaching in the classroom but by "backing their play" at home, and they hope to back the parent's play at school, as well. Many teachers recognized this type of parent support as a source of stress-relief. They claimed that closeness or connection to families makes communication more honest, relaxed, and frequent, and that the more frequently their communication occurs, the less they worry about their conversations offending or being misinterpreted. In contrast to pre-visit attitudes which focused on professionalism and respect, post home visit attitudes among teachers shifted to personal relationships, empathy, shared goals, and communication. Parent participants also described a shift in the parent-teacher relationship after a home visit occurred (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018). They were grateful for the time and energy of the teacher, and had increased confidence in sending their children to school. They initiated conversation, rather than reciprocating only when the teacher had reached out first. They shared goals and ideas, as well as positive feedback when they were pleased. They supported the teacher's efforts by sharing a committed attitude with their children and backing the teacher's assignments, expectations, and approach. Consistent with Sheldon's (as quoted by Kronholz, 2016) recommendations for educational problem solving, these parents solved problems with the teacher and expressed empathy when the child's challenges were challenging for the teacher, too. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 67 Regarding the aims of this study, the analysis of data suggests that: 1) Parents participated in relationship building and positive feedback at higher rates after home visits, rather than increasing in traditional on-campus donations of time, 2) parent-teacher communication after home visiting was less formal, more frequent, and initiated by parents more often than before the visit, and tended to be more relaxed and triggered less anxiety in both parents and teachers, and 3) both parents and teachers suggested that home visits, though challenging, helped participants to form healthier, more trusting and realistic relationships. One home-visiting teacher summarized this new level of comfort with parents; "I think they felt comfortable coming into my environment because I had come into theirs" (Personal Communication, January 31, 2018). As depicted in Figure 7, the relationship-building process of home visiting opened the doors -- physically and emotionally -- to both school and home, creating a much greater mesosystem with space for parents, teachers, and children to share their significant social capital, and to enjoy one another as emotionally committed human beings. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP Home School Parent Child Teacher Figure 6. Sharing the mesosystem. This figure shows parent, teacher, and child in an enlarged mesosystem where healthy relationship-building occurs. 68 FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 69 Chapter Five: Conclusion This study aimed to discover the effects of home visits on parent involvement, quality and frequency of communications between home and school, and the parent-teacher relationship. It was conducted using a quantitative approach as a case study with the constant comparative method (Glasser & Strauss, 1967) evaluating data gathered through teacher interviews, a parent focus group discussion, a Parent Teacher Relationship Scale survey, and data about school volunteerism, participation in school events, and communication between teachers and families. A close constant-comparative analysis of the data shows that parents became involved in the education of their children in a new way following teacher home visits. Rather than resulting in an increase in on-campus volunteerism, home visits yielded an improved interaction with the teacher and school process, and an increase of confidence which led to consistency between home and school expectations for the child. Communications between parents and teachers improved in both frequency and quality; specifically, they became less anxious and less formal which caused both participants to feel an increase of emotional support. The home visit is credited with establishing an increase in trust between teachers and parents, allowing them to see and experience each other in a more real way and to communicate with more reciprocity. These benefits led to an analysis of the program for best practices by participants and the researcher, and resulted in a number of recommendations for the school organization, parents, and teachers. Recommendations School organization. The findings of this study suggest that the school organization should continue with the Teacher Home Visit program, including several key elements which led to its success. First, the program should remain voluntary for families and teachers. All parents agreed on this point, and FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 70 two teachers interviewed who did not participate in the home visit program indicated that keeping the program voluntary means that teachers who participate have had the opportunity to build buy-in on their own time frame. Voluntary participation ensures that teachers have chosen to participate based on a personal commitment to the potential of the program, a finding supported by prior research by the program provider (Rose, 2017). Parents agreed that for the program to be beneficial, teachers should have a positive attitude which is facilitated by the opportunity to choose it for themselves (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018). Second, teacher participants appreciated being paid for their time. While all teacher participants in the home visit program said that having done it this year, they would do it even without financial compensation for its benefits to the teacher-family relationship, they appreciated the fact that the school placed a value on their time. It was a contributing factor to some teachers' choice to participate in the beginning, though the relational rewards far surpassed the economic compensation for participation throughout the program (researcher's journal, March 30, 2018). A third recommendation is that teachers continue to make home visits in teams. Visiting in pairs gave teachers a sense of security and safety in the unfamiliar environment. Particularly teachers from a more urban background felt better about visiting homes with a coworker. Also, it was beneficial for the teacher and classroom aide to go together to students' homes because it provided families with perspective on how they operate as a team in the classroom and teaching teams with a similar perspective on the home life of the child. For teaching teams who have not conscientiously clarified their roles in the classroom for families, that clarification can happen during the home visit, helping the families became more comfortable with communicating with both educators and more comfortable with the role of the aide in supporting learners. Teachers FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 71 and aides who home visit together may be better able to create strategies together for meeting the child's needs in the classroom. By committing to the team visiting structure, educators will be able to choose a coworker with whom they have a strong relationship and good communication patterns. In this study, home visiting in teams allowed the visitors to feel a sense of security and collaboration, rather than the vulnerability that would have occurred had they gone alone. The practice of visiting homes in pairs was effective and is suggested as a best practice. A fourth recommendation is that the school provide training and class lists early in the summer to allow teachers to visit either in the summer or throughout the school year. The training offered to the staff in early June, 2017, provided much needed structure to the home visiting process, including suggestions for setting the appointments, strategies for alleviating family fears, and scripts to help with both the appointment setting, confirmation, and the actual home visit (Rose, 2017). Also, the training itself relieved some fears the staff held regarding the effectiveness of home visits, creating a sense of confidence in the program which gave them the courage to participate. Additionally, receiving both the training and the class rosters allowed teachers to begin making visits in the early summer. Many teachers appreciated this time because it allowed them to visit without the added stress of full-time teaching duties and gave them time to space out the visits into periods that worked for their families. Interestingly, data showed that the home visits completed during the summer had a different feel and result than those completed during the school year because during the summer, teachers entered the home without preconceived notions or agendas, simply to get to know the child and family. Home visits which occurred after the school year began tended to have a problem-solving focus, as teachers had experiences with the child in the classroom and were strategically working to build plans for the student's success. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 72 Both types of visits had great benefits, though every teacher who visited both during the summer and during the school year claimed that summer visits were easier, less stressful, more relaxed, and resulted in more relationship building than problem solving. Teachers who only visited during the school year described the visits as time consuming and exhausting, but worth it, and tended to feel that they wanted to have some experience with the child in the classroom so the visits didn't feel so intimidating. They also expressed a need to space out the visits over a much greater length of time in order to conserve their energy for the day to day task of teaching and often the demands of their home lives and their own children. I believe that teachers who understand these differences between the visits from either time-frame will be more informed when making the choice of when to schedule their visits, and recommend that the differences be explained to staff during the first home visit training session. My last recommendation for the school organization came primarily from the Focus Group Discussion with parents, who said that their most challenging obstacle to accepting the home visit was worry about the purposes of the visit itself. One parent who is familiar with the Head Start program expressed the fear that the home visit program was designed as a welfare check to evaluate the fitness of the home and family to care for the child. This very real fear was echoed by other participants who repeatedly asked, "What is it for?" and who felt intimidated at the prospect of their parenting style, fiscal means of providing, or housekeeping skills being evaluated by the teacher (Focus Group Discussion, February 6, 2018). Parents expressed the belief that the school administration could go a long way toward alleviating this fear by creating school-wide communications which explicitly explained what the home visit is and what it is not, and gave simple, clear purposes that were emphatically non-evaluative. This is an area where the administrative staff of the school can strengthen the program by communicating the FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 73 very relationally based purposes of the home visit to all stakeholders before teachers begin making appointments. Strategic relationship building. Within and beyond the home visit, one clear conclusion of this study is that teachers must strategically build relationships with families. An interesting phenomenon which occurred during teacher interviews was that teacher participants had spontaneous moments of clarity during their interviews and drew some of their own conclusions because of the conversation. This is significant, I believe, because most interviews happened between three and eight months after the actual home visits occurred. Throughout the analysis, I realized that while the school had concluded its home visit window at the end of November (allowing a five-month period for home visits), we had created no formal opportunity for teachers to discuss their experiences with one another. Because of this oversight, most teachers had not actually discussed their experiences in any depth with their colleagues until the teacher interviews occurred in February. The process of discussing the home visit experience and its effects actually helped teachers to reflect and draw their own conclusions - realizations which may have helped them months earlier, had they had a chance to talk with their peers. For this reason, I believe teachers should engage in reflection and discussion with peers about their relationship building process to help them synthesize the experience, draw conclusions, and create relationship-building strategies early in the school year. For several of the teacher participants, conclusions made during the interview included the realization that the parents with whom they had not conducted a home visit were some of their most challenging parents - parents with whom they had still not built a strong relationship. FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 74 Several teachers also spontaneously concluded that they should create strategies for building relationships with the parents who had chosen not to participate in the home visit program. Other realizations made during the teacher interviews included the need to set boundaries with parents, create communication patterns together, and to build academic and social goals for the child together, rather than just expressing the goals the teacher already has for the child. Many teachers commented that the strategy of communicating positively with parents helped the relationship to become stronger. Some did this by layering positive feedback, suggestions for improvement, and then more positive feedback within each single communication. Some did it by deliberately making several positive communications to build a foundational relationship before there were challenges or problems. Collectively, teachers felt that deliberately choosing to communicate positively with families made their relationships with those families more open; parents in the focus group discussion agreed that the positivity of a teacher impacts their feelings of confidence and openness for the better. The two major implications for teachers are that: 1) deliberately building relationships with parents, both through home visits and a variety of other methods, makes the teacher feel more supported by the family, and 2) using positive messaging is an effective way to build a foundation of open communication on which a healthy relationship can grow. For parents, the data suggests that taking the time to build a relationship with the teacher will increase their contribution to and confidence in their child's school experience. When parents communicate regularly and openly with teachers, teacher are then able to implement and support shared goals for the child in the classroom. Teachers also feel more accountable for the progress of a child whose parents communicate regularly, particularly when the parents initiate conversation rather than waiting to respond to the teacher's communications. For parents who FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 75 want to have impact on their child's education, building trust and a reciprocal relationship with the classroom teacher is critical. A key component here is to acknowledge the effort of the teacher. One teacher participant summarized this idea succinctly; "We're human beings, and teachers love feeling appreciated" (Personal Communication, February 8, 2018). All teachers who participated in home visits in this study noted the appreciation of the families for their efforts in taking time to come into the home, and commented that it made them feel good. Conducting a home visit is a significant commitment for teachers, as are many of the other things they do to affect a child's learning, and knowing that their efforts are appreciated has a positive impact on the teacher-parent relationship. While society may often define a parent's involvement in education by the time and resource commitment they make on the school's campus, building strong relationships with a child's teacher has more immediate effects for both the parent and the teacher. Parent involvement isn't about volunteerism, it's about building a foundation of trust, shared goals, and communication; it's about deliberately overlapping home and school to create space for a real relationship. Implications for Future Research While I believe that this study has clearly answered the original research questions, there are many questions which have emerged without answers from the researcher's journal as well as in focus group discussion and teacher interviews. Further study is necessary on whether the ages of the children in a home affect the practices which would make the home visits most effective. Another topic for further research is the practice of giving more than one home visit in a single year. Because of the differences reported by teachers between summer home visits and those which occurred after the school year began, I believe research should be done to determine FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 76 whether the effects for these types of visits are actually different. Since the home visit program is designed to be voluntary and my findings indicate that as an effective practice, research is also needed about whether home visits are as effective at increasing parent confidence and consistency when they are conducted by a staff member who is not the child's primary teacher, for example by administration or support staff. Additionally, it would benefit teachers to discover effective strategies for building relationships with families who do not accept home visits. While the study has sparked several topics for future research, it has also clearly answered the research questions and provided a roadmap for best practices in implementing a teacher home visit program. Teacher home visits have powerful effects on that most fragile and necessary process of building relationships, in this case between teachers and families who share children in common. Brown's (2012) research on the subject of vulnerability claims that connection is what society thrives upon, and that disengagement causes people to stop contributing and caring about their communities. The engagement of parents, children, teachers, and stakeholders in the school community is foundational to the success of children, and by extension, our entire world and future; there is no more critical component in the development of society than that of the school. Home visits have the capacity to strengthen the quality of relationships within that community, improve communications, and engage families in the process of education. They demonstrate a school's commitment to engaging in those critical relationships, to co-creating the educational process together, and to the undeniable truth that family counts! FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP 77 References Arbinger Institute. (2006). The anatomy of peace. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.: San Francisco, CA. Boeije, H. (2002). A purposeful approach to the Constant Comparative Method in the analysis of qualitative interviews. Quality & Quantity, 36(4), 391-409. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. 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FAMILY COUNTS: HOME VISITS & THE PARENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP Appendix 82 APPROVAL of a thesis/project submitted by Author(s): Aimee DiBrienza School Department: MED Title of Thesis: Family Counts: Effects of Home Visits on Parent-Teacher Relationships The above named master's thesis/project has been read by each member of the supervisory committee and has been found to be satisfactory regarding content, English usage, format, citations, bibliographic style, and consistency, and is ready to be deposited and displayed in the Westminster College-Institutional Repository. Chairperson, Supervisory Committee: Nancy Garrison Approved On 5/6/2018 4:46:06 AM Dean, School: Dr. Melanie Agnew Approved On 5/6/2018 10:49:20 AM STATEMENT OF PERMISSION TO DEPOSIT & DISPLAY THESIS IN THE INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY Name of Author(s): Aimee DiBrienza School Department: MED Title of Thesis: Family Counts: Effects of Home Visits on Parent-Teacher Relationships With permission from the author(s), the staff of the Giovale Library of Westminster College has the right to deposit and display an electronic copy of the above named thesis in its Institutional Repository for educational purposes only. I hereby give my permission to the staff of the Giovale Library of Westminster College to deposit and display as described the above named thesis. I retain ownership rights to my work, including the right to use it in future works such as articles or a book. Submitted by the Author(s) on 5/3/2018 9:12:58 PM The above duplication and deposit rights may be terminated by the author(s) at any time by notifying the Director of the Giovale Library in writing that permission is withdrawn.