AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
represents the profession and the school in relation to legal
representatives and other partners of the school;
chooses and uses methods and tools (trust box,
questionnaire for the legal representatives of pupils,
observation, etc.) to identify problems and barriers in
cognitive, social, moral and character development of
pupils;
identifies the demonstrations of socio-pathological
behaviour, actively cooperates with legal representatives and
professionals (colleagues) in order to eliminate them;
evaluates the effectiveness of interventions (solutions) in
elimination of socio-pathological phenomena in cooperation
with legal representatives of pupils.
Class teacher, using methods and tools of pedagogical
diagnostics, identifies the specifics in personality development
of a pupil/child in the classroom, learning styles and behaviour
of children/pupils in the classroom, as well as specifics of social
and cultural environment (family, etc.) on the basis of his/her
own discoveries or on the basis of suggestions from legal
representatives, other teachers, or other pedagogical employees.
He/she plans and projects cooperation with legal representatives
of children/pupils and with general public. Among his/her
activities belong cooperation with legal representatives of
children/pupils, with pedagogical and vocational training
employees of the school and school community, effective
communication and cooperation with legal representatives of
children/pupils, coordination of counselling for children/pupils
and their legal representatives in accordance with their special
needs.
It is important to consider the fact that parents, in
communication with a teacher, may respond unproductively, e.g.
when they inappropriately apply (Lipnická, 2017):
defending – they uncritically view their children, they deny
any problems, they don’t see the cause in their children,
accusations – they find the causes of their child’s problems
in an unprofessional approach of the teacher,
protecting – defending their children, overprotecting them
and advocating their deficiencies and problems,
obloquy – obscuring the truth, falsely and unjustly
defaming, judging and humiliating the teacher,
intercession – they ask for benefits for their children, they
ask for ignoring their problems, to endure them.
In 2010, we conducted a questionnaire research among teachers
at elementary, secondary and high schools in the mid-Slovakian
region (Emmerová, 2011). The research sample consisted of 196
elementary and secondary school teachers and 155 high school
teachers, total of 351 respondents. The goal of the research was
to analyse, from the perspective of teachers, the occurrence of
problem behaviour of elementary, secondary and high school
pupils, forms of preventive activities in the researched school
environment and dealing with the behaving problems as well as
cooperation with the family of pupils. Our results show that
teachers from practice most often rated the cooperation with
family as satisfactory (46.72% of respondents) and as good
(25.36%of respondents). Bad cooperation was stated by 15.67%
of respondents and very bad cooperation by 2.85% of teachers.
Only 2.56% of respondents rated the cooperation as excellent.
Generally, we can state that cooperation with family was better
rated by elementary and secondary school teachers than by high
school teachers.
Within this question, respondents had an option to write down
their own opinion. Most frequently stated opinion was that only
parents of non-problematic pupils (concerning either school
performance and behaviour) attend school meetings and other
school activities.
In the research of Z. Hrivíková (2016), 58.29% of respondents
stated that the problem a prevention coordinator has to face is
parents’ unwillingness to cooperate. Also, 81.25% of school
social pedagogues stated the problem with insufficient
cooperation with parents and the same number of social
pedagogues requires improvement of cooperation with parents
on dealing with problem behaviour of pupils. 33.18% of
prevention coordinators suggests improvement of cooperation
with families.
Situations when pupils need professional help require sensitive
approach. Pedagogical or vocational training employee must
explain to parents that consulting a professional is in the child’s
best interest. It is suitable to provide contacts, e.g. an address of
the counselling facility.
Pedagogical and vocational training employees must consider
the possibility that problem behaviour of a pupil, or rapid
worsening of his/her performance, may by caused by family
problems. Some attitudes and approaches of parents may have
negative impact on emotional development of their children, e.g.
being afraid of conflict and difficult situations, being unable to
handle failure, being unable to speak of their emotions, etc.
Deficiencies in the failure of the dominant socializing agents,
including family, may project into problem behaviour of
children and youth. Family is a dominant socializing agent and,
as stated by B. Kraus (2016), socialization takes place in the
environment of various levels, various degrees of quality, and
thus, due to the influence of unfavourable and undesirable
incentives (persons) in terms of optimal personality
development, it may happen that the resulting behaviour will
deviate from the norm. Social environment and its negative
impact is mainly based on un-supportive, unsuitable, or even
pathological family environment. In such environment, children
acquire undesirable patterns of behaviour. Such environments
include families in which one or both parents are anomalous
personalities; families that are only functional on a formal level
and don’t provide children with incentives necessary for their
harmonious development; families that are part of a subculture
or a social group that tolerates or even supports such behaviour
that is considered defective by the majority society. A significant
role is also played by the quality of relationships in family,
disagreements in upbringing and inconsistency, but also
exaggerated childcare. In many families, parents prefer free,
liberal upbringing – however, they misunderstand it as an
upbringing without any rules and limits. There is also a
significant relationship between alcohol consumption of parents
and children. Family environment has a determining influence
on the healthy personality development of children and it also
provides patterns of behaviour. In this context, M. Hutyrová, M.
Růžička and J. Spěváček (2013) point out that there are two
possibilities how to cooperate with families: on a restrictive level
and on a motivational level. Pedagogical and vocational training
employees at schools have in this sense competences on the
motivational level; the restrictive level is mainly the competence
of the Labour, Social affairs and Family Resort.
Special attention in the area of socio-educational care at schools
should be paid to pupils from socially disadvantaged
environment and actively work with them. Pupils from a socially
disadvantaged environment are according to the Act on
education and training pupils living in an environment that due
to social, family, economic and cultural conditions insufficiently
supports the development of mental, volitional, emotional
properties of children or pupils, does not support their
socialisation and does not provide them with enough adequate
impulses for the development of their personalities.
In the Slovak Republic, these are mainly low-socialized Roma
families who live most often in segregated settlements.
Nowadays, despite efforts of school institutions to engage
parents in the school life, there are still many barriers and
prejudices, especially in the Roma community. According to D.
Kopčanová (2014), the attributes of school failure of Roma
children indicate that the attitude of parents towards education is
very important. If a good-quality cooperation between parents
and school is established, it has many positive results:
development of trust between school and parents, parents and
teachers work as a team to create positive learning experience
for pupils, pupils benefit from the work of cooperating teams of
adults. Good-quality cooperation with parents supports
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