[MUSIC] You're welcome to week five, focussing on the lives of children, and for this lecture, lecture one, we are going to look at learning in the home. To start with, what is your view about a home? Why do we not talk about learning in a house, but learning in a home? The difference between a house and a home is simple: a house may refer to a physical structure, well-furnished and may have or may not have people living in it. A home, on the other hand, is an environment characterized by social interactions involving parents, whether married or unmarried, whether biological or social, whether single or double and it also involves siblings, who influence the personality development of the child. At this juncture, I want you to look at the definition of a parent by England and Wales Department of Education in the lecture notes, and then ask yourself if the definition resonates in any way with your own thinking about who a parent is. A major characteristic of the home is the notion of a family. Look through the various notions about a family, in your lecture notes. What is your own notion about a family? Normally, we will think about a family to comprise father, mother and a child - a nuclear family. But in some contexts the family extends beyond the nuclear context. We have the extended family. As a teacher, you need to be interested in family relations involving your students. You need to be interested in creating a family relationship with your student and their parents. And an anonymous writer has defined the family in a very interesting way. He says, "A family isn't always blood. It is the people in your life who want you in theirs." You can read about us a little in the lecture notes. As a teacher, you should be interested in what happens to the child at home, pause a moment and reflect on the following questions. What do children learn in their home environment? How does this influence what they learn in school? And how does what they learn at school effect their learning in the home? These three questions are critical in your work as a teacher, if you can build a very good family relationship with your students, which is very important in promoting learning. You must also know that in terms of influence, parents have some influence on young children, just as the peer group has influenced the children, and there has been a lot of discussion as to how each of these impact on a child's learning. This is one of the things you need to be interested in. You need to know that children learn at home how to behave at home. So, the home environment, the ethos of the home influence the child's behaviour and that is when parents have power. Once a child is born into a home, parents have the responsibility of socialising the child and the behavior that will be developed in the child is basically under the power of the home. They also learn outside their home how to behave outside the home, and here the peer, influence as we earlier learned in the previous lecture, comes in here. Then the school comes in and this is where children learn how to behave in a classroom, and here the teacher's power comes in. But if the teacher has family relations with the child, then the teacher will know that his influence of the child goes beyond the classroom as well. The teacher does not only think about how the child learns in the classroom, but how the child behaves, the total behaviour of the child, even outside the classroom. In assuring that the family impacts positively on the child, you need to think about what help parents should give to the child, in terms of their learning. You need to think about what parents should do. What would be your expectations of a parent, in terms of helping the child to learn? What would you expect parents to know? What would you expect parents to do? And how are these expectations decided? How are they agreed upon? And how are they observed? This is where the role of the parent-teacher association becomes paramount. How does a parent-teacher association operate in your context? What are the issues decided on at the parent-teacher association meetings? Do they have any relationship with the child's learning? These are things that a teacher should be concerned with. As a teacher, you also need to be conscious of the fact that parents come from different backgrounds. Some with very high social capital, a term that has been coined by some people to describe the level of connections that individuals have. Some parents may have very high connections, others may have very low connections. Connections in the context of knowledge, knowing where to go at what time to get what one needs. Connections as to knowing who to contact when there is a need. But the differences are there and these could impact on the child's learning. For children and young people who come from families where the social capital is very high, they come in with a lot of knowledge, they come in with a lot of backgrounds, that easily help them to start off in their learning. They have the support that they need and so the teacher only has to facilitate what they bring in. But for those who have very low social capital, they come in without knowing what to do and they also need special attention. In this context, I'll refer you to a story that is in your lecture notes, simply dubbed Anouka's story. Which simply talked about a parent whose child wasn't well, but just because she had a very low social capital, she could not easily get the help she needed, to attend to her sick child. Read this story and reflect upon it and ask yourself, what can be done as a teacher to help a child who comes from a family that relates to the family in the story of Anouka. [MUSIC] There's a need for parents to be able to support their children's school education, but to do this they need to know how to navigate the system. They need to be able to deal with authority, people in positions of power, gatekeepers, people who matter in terms of them getting access to all that they need to support their children. As a teacher, through the structure of - let's say for example - the parent-teacher association, it is your responsibility to help those parents who do not have the social capital to be aware of the opportunities available for them. They need to know where to go, who to speak to, and how to make themselves understood. For example, if you have a child come in from a family background where illiteracy is pronounced and a father doesn't know who to contact in order to get support for his child. He walks to the school's situation, and because he's an illiterate and doesn't know the difference between a watchman and a head teacher, he goes to the watchman to seek help. And the watchman, ignorant as he is, just tells him "No, this is not where you have to come to" and directs him to another place. Whereas someone who has a very high social capital, will walk straight to the head teacher's office and gets the help that he or she needs. It is your responsibility as a teacher to help parents who have no social capital to get access to these opportunities. There's a need for parents to be assertive, rather than aggressive. Parents should have that character of moving, trying to get what they want for their children, without necessarily becoming aggressive. Aggression normally come in out of frustration. When a person doesn't know where to get what at the right time, frustration sets in, and that leads to aggression. You can be of help to a parent in this context, so that he or she can meaningfully contribute to the learning of his or her child. There are many things that parents need to know. One of them is policies governing many things in the school. For example policies on homework, who is involved in framing them? In my country, this is where the parent-teacher association comes in. But in other countries, there may be other forms or other forums where this could be dealt with by parents and the school. Another thing that parents need to know is the school's policy on sanctions and punishments or complaints procedures. How do they change? In terms of the policies, how do they change? And who contribute to the process of change? This process requires a collaborative work between the school and the community, the teacher and the parents. It is only when the two come together to deal with these policies, that the two can contribute in helping towards its implementation. Now, let us look at another thing. I want you to reflect on these questions. What is the policy in your school on relationships with parents? How does the school respond to complaints from parents? In what ways could you draw on parental support, to improve the learning of children in your class? Think deeply about these questions. It is only when the school and the community, and the teacher and parents work harmoniously, that the teacher will be able to facilitate learning in a classroom. Just because a family relationship has been established between the teacher and the students, between the teacher, the students and the parents, and so collectively they will work towards that. So, think about these questions and write down your thoughts about them and share these with your colleagues. Thank you, until we meet again. [MUSIC]
