Parent Involvement in the Lives of College Students in Ontario

Abstract

When working at a community college in Ontario, my colleagues and I frequently interacted with students and their parents. However, limited institutional resources supported such interactions and much of our work with parents was performed off the sides of our desks. As both an administrator and academic researcher, I was conflicted by how scholarly descriptions of parent involvement differed from my professional encounters with parents of students. I was inspired to synergize the support students receive in their college journeys: both the familial and institutional. Thus, the purpose of my doctoral research became to explore the involvement of parents in their students’ education journeys at four public Ontario Colleges. I grounded my research in Bronfenbrenner's (1977) & Bronfenbrenner & Morris' (2006) bioecological model. I used the bioecological model to conceptualize influences (including parents) on human (student) development. Through website content analysis, telephone interviews, and surveys, I sought to elucidate the nature of parent involvement in the context of college in Ontario. I used the parallel-databases variant of convergent design to collect and analyze data on the involvement of parents in the lives of college students, through three distinct research strands: (i) interviews with college employees,(ii) surveys of college employees, students, and parents, and (iii) college website content analysis. My study yielded novel contributions to the literature, including that the involvement of parents impacted both students and college employees. My research documented that parents (& other family members) were involved in a myriad of ways and that their involvement both positively and negatively affected students. My findings also highlighted a range of perspectives in regards to how parents were foreseen as involved in students’ college related experiences. In particular, I found institutional and college employees’ perceptions of the home-school relationship, often conflicted with student expectations and the involvement practices of parents (especially for families from marginalized backgrounds). Overall, I concluded that, in Ontario, parents are involved throughout students’ college journeys, from recruitment through to graduation, and beyond. Ultimately, I hope that my dissertation may inform professional practices seeking to support the involvement of parents in students’ college journeys in Ontario.