Exploring Bahraini Parents’ Views on Parental Involvement in Primary Education

This article reports on an exploratory study of parental involvement in primary education conducted in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Drawing on a survey of 154 parents across 16 schools, parent views on parental involvement are explored – specifically, beliefs and experiences about parental involvement, and who should be held responsible for ensuring parental involvement. The study finds that the participants viewed all types of parental involvement identified by Epstein (2011) as important, and that it was emphasized by their children’s schools, but had a school-centered view of home–school relations. Furthermore, they identified a range of barriers to parental involvement, with parents’ other responsibilities featuring as the most important. Cultural factors influencing parental involvement within the specific cultural context of Bahrain are discussed. صخلملا ،ةسردم ١٦ ً ايلو ١٥٤ تل ةنابتسا ع ةساردلا موقت . رحبلا ةكل اهؤارجإ ادتب ا لعتلا ةي ا ةكراش ا لوح ةيفاشكتسا ةسارد اق ا هذه لوانتت تادقتعم ديدحتلا هجو ع ةساردلا فشكتست ثيح ،ةيئادتب ا حر ا ن نوسردي ذلا د وأ لعت م كراشم لوح دلاولا ءارآ فاشكتسا ثيح ةكراش ا بناوج عي نأ اوأر كراش ا نأ إ ةساردلا تلصوتو .لا ا اذه ةيلوئس ا لمحتي نأ ب نمو ، لعتلا ةي ا ةكراش ا لوح دلاولا برا و ةسرد ا لوح زك ت رظن ة و م ن هنأ إ ،كلذ ع م افطأ سرادم لبق نم ا لع ديك أتلا هنأو ،ةم تعت (٢٠١١) اتشبإ اهددح لا لعتلا ةي ا دلاولا تايلوؤسم زا إ عم ، لعتلا ةي ا ةكراش ا نود لو لا قئاوعلا نم ةعوم اوددح دقف ،كلذ ع ةًو ع .ةسرد او ل ا ب تاق علل ةبسنل . رحبلل دد ا اقثلا قايسلا ةي ا ةكراش ا ع ؤت لا ةيفاقثلا لماوعلا ةشقانم .قئاوعلا ىرخ ا


Introduction
A wealth of evidence documents the positive outcomes associated with parental involvement in education (Daniel,  There is a growing awareness within Bahrain about the need to promote strong relationships between school and families, which is now one of the strategic goals of the Ministry of Education. In addition, the Bahrain Education and Training Quality Authority (BQA), which inspects all schools in the Kingdom, considers these strong relationships as an indicator of school success in creating positive learning environment (Bahrain Education and Training Quality Authority, 2015). It is of direct utility to educational policymakers and practitioners in Bahrain to understand any impediments to creating such barriers.
Although there is a wealth of research investigating parental involvement in Western contexts, the cultural and educational context of Bahrain (and the Gulf states more broadly) means that we cannot expect the forms of, and barriers to, involvement in Western contexts to be applicable here. The existing literature is predominantly Western-centric; hence, this article draws on data collected from Bahraini parents in order to explore how parental involvement is conceptualized in the Bahraini context, and to explore the continuities and contrasts with international literature on parental involvement. The research explores parent perspectives concerning parental involvement in public primary schools in Bahrain. We look at the value accorded to parental involvement, experiences of parental involvement, and who is accorded responsibility for parental involvement. We consider the role of aspects of Bahraini culture in this involvement. This article draws from a larger project which investigates parental involvement practices from the perspectives of different stakeholders.

Gulf Education and Social Policy Review
Osama Al-Mahdi, Lucy Bailey

Background: Bahrain
The Kingdom of Bahrain is an archipelago nation lying in the Arabian Gulf, close to the coast of Saudi Arabia. Its position led to its development as a trading nation; however, it was the discovery of oil in 1932 which brought wealth to Bahrain as well as to the rest of the Gulf region (Karolak, 2010). More recently, there is rising concern that the economy needs to diversify away from both oil and the large public sector, and more attention should be paid to the human capital needed to achieve that. Bahrain was the first Gulf country to develop a public education system in 1919. The first girls' school opened within a decade of the first boys' school. All public schools in Bahrain are segregated by gender. Primary boys' schools are administrated either by male or female staff while girls' schools are administrated only by female staff. Bahrain has a reputation as a moderate and progressive country within the region.
As majority Muslim, Arab, and Arabic speaking countries, the Gulf countries share a common language, culture, and religion. In addition, they face the current challenge of moving away from oil-based economies. The common culture and economic challenges across these nations suggest that research insights from one may be applicable to others in the region.

Literature Review
This section establishes dimensions of parental involvement in Western contexts, the limited literature that has explored the applicability of this framework in the Gulf Region, and a specific empirical lacuna from the Kingdom of Bahrain. The literature review will begin by examining the concept of parental involvement in education and establishing the parameters to debates regarding parental involvement that have been established in Western research. We then explore how empirical studies have applied this framework, arguing that the linguistically and culturally diverse context of many Gulf states means that findings from the West cannot be simplistically applied here (Moussa-Inaty & De La Vega, 2013). Having established this background, we move to discussion of research into parental involvement that has been conducted in the Gulf region. Finally, we focus on the very limited literature that exists concerning parents and education in the specific context of the Kingdom of Bahrain. We consider the influence of cultural factors, such as educational practices in relation to gender or views about the role of the family, on parental involvement in this context. (1) Parenting, defined as fulfilling the basic obligations of families to support health, safety, and conditions to promote child development (e.g., schools supporting parents in the development of parenting skills and understanding the home conditions necessary to foster child development).
(2) Communicating with families about school and their children's progress (e.g., parent-teacher conferences, report cards, and notices).
(3) Parent involvement at school (e.g., volunteering in the classroom, attending sports or other performances).
(5) Parent involvement in decision-making around education.
(6) Collaboration with community organizations (e.g., provision of after-school clubs or liaison with local businesses).
These six forms of involvement (Epstein 2011) form the framework for our analysis below. In addition to categorizing different forms of involvement, the literature has explored perspectives on responsibility for effective involvement. Western studies into parent and school views have explored the discourses that hold individual parents, Gulf Education and Social Policy Review Osama Al-Mahdi, Lucy Bailey rather than structural factors, as responsible for a child's performance (Goodall, 2021).
However, perceptions of responsibility for parent involvement may differ between cultural contexts; views about the role of the family, the amount of trust placed in teachers, and the degree of centralization of an education system may all impact on whether, for example, students themselves, teachers, or centralized administrators are seen as responsible for promoting parental involvement (Al-Harrasi & Al-Mahrooqi, 2014; Baker & Hourani, 2014). A further concern in the international literature has been to explore barriers to parental involvement; both parental circumstances (such as work commitments) and parental attitudes may pose barriers to their involvement (Haack, 2007). Haack's study suggests that teachers and other parents may be more likely to blame less-educated parents for low involvement rather than viewing it because of their circumstances; in contrast, more-educated parents are more likely to be perceived as uninvolved because of their circumstances (Haack, 2007). The Arabic reading achievement in the UAE, finding that parents provided more learning resources at home for their daughters than for their sons. The available literature suggests that schools' approach to gender may also impact on parental involvement in schooling; in a study of a Saudi case-study school, Baydoun (2015) found that some fathers felt excluded by the gender-segregated school policies. Conversely, Al-Qaryouti and Kilani's (2015) study of the role of Omani parents in fostering emergent literacy skills by surveying 314 parents of kindergarten children found medium to high levels Gulf Education and Social Policy Review Osama Al-Mahdi, Lucy Bailey of involvement with no significant difference related to child's gender. Additionally, there was no difference between the involvement of mothers and fathers in their child's literacy development. However, Ridge and Jeon's (2020) large-scale study of paternal involvement in the Middle East, including 1684 participants from 10 countries, found that fathers are perceived as less involved than mothers, a differential that increases with paternal age.
The gender of educational professionals may also have an impact. In the investigation of Kuwaiti middle school principals summarized above, Al-Daihani (2005) found gender differences amongst principals in how they saw family involvement -for example, female principals were more likely to view the involvement of parents with limited education positively than were their male counterparts. In addition, female principals viewed their schools' communication with parents more positively than did male principals. Al-Daihani notes that in Kuwaiti culture of single-sex education, female teachers are more likely to communicate with mothers, although decisions regarding education are usually made by fathers, whereas male teachers generally communicate directly with fathers. In summary, then, there is a need for further research into parent involvement in this cultural context and although the current study did not examine gender specifically, future studies that focus on this aspect are important.

Methodology
The questionnaire used in this descriptive study was adapted from two doctoral theses:

Sample
There are 112 public primary schools in Bahrain (57 boys' schools and 55 girls' schools); the data reported here are drawn from 16 of these schools, representing 14% of the total, an opportunistic sample gained by inviting school leaders attending a professional development course at Bahrain Teachers College to participate. The survey was distributed by them to a random sample of 20 parents from each school, who were invited to participate using a process of informed consent, with their anonymity guaranteed, with a total of 154 complete questionnaires being returned (48%). A brief overview of the demographics of the sample is important before moving to the data analysis.
Overall, 81.2% of the participants were mothers, with 13.6% being fathers, suggesting that mothers are perhaps more involved than fathers in their children's education. The remaining 5.2% were siblings of the primary school child. Around 82% of the sample were females and the data was collected from 4 boys' and 12 girls' schools. Participants  Table 1 shows parents' views of the average grades their child receives in school.

Findings
Majority of the parents (72.1%) indicated that their child's grades are excellent, with a few (18.2%) indicating they are very good. In other words, the parents surveyed had a high level of satisfaction with their child's current academic performance, although it is unclear whether this is because parents of high achievers were more likely to respond to the survey or because there are generally high levels of achievement at the primary level. From the researchers' experience, high achievement seems to be common among primary school children due to a focus on formative and collaborative assessment at that age. Table 2 shows the results of the survey questions related to parents' general experiences about their involvement in children's learning. It was evident that the participants believed that parental involvement was beneficial to children. Most of the participants (92.9%) highly agreed or agreed that parents should be involved in their child's school.
Similarly, most of the participants (96.1%) highly agreed or agreed that parental involvement improves primary school students' academic success. However, most participants Gulf Education and Social Policy Review Osama Al-Mahdi, Lucy Bailey     Table 4 shows the results of the survey's questions related to parents' views on who is responsible for initiating family involvement in the school. It is evident from this table that participants felt that most responsibility lay with the school administration, the social work supervisors, and teachers, in order of importance. Parents are given less responsibility than either of these groups, and students least of all. However, responsibility is still given to parents as well. These findings echo the studies by  both found that parents placed more responsibility upon educational professionals than upon families for getting parents involved in schools. Table 5 shows the results of the survey questions related to parents' identification of the importance of each barrier to family involvement in their child's education. Parents' responsibilities were seen by 97.9% of participants as very important or important barriers to their involvement. Other factors seen as important or very important barriers to parental involvement were administrators' relationships with teachers and/or parents (97.4%); teachers' responsibilities (94.2%); different personalities of the teachers (81.2%); and students becoming independent and not wanting parent involvement (74.8%). In contrast to Haack's (2007) study from the US, then, parents saw parents' and teachers' circumstances as more important barriers than characteristics of the teachers or parents themselves.  In further analysis of the data, one-way ANOVA was used to determine whether there are any statistically significant differences between the means of different groups of parents according to the following variables: relationship to child, child's school year, student achievement level, father's education level, and mother's education level. The findings show that there were no significant differences between the means of the subgroups (fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers) on most questionnaire sub-scales.
The main results that emerged from this analysis are that different types of family members shared similar views on the first three subscales of the questionnaire: general views on family-school relations, type of family involvement, and responsibility for initiating family involvement. In further analysis, a t-test was used to find any statistically

Discussion
This Jeon's (2020) study suggesting that fathers are less involved than mothers across the Gulf states. Interestingly, our data suggest that there is no gender differential on the first three subscales of the questionnaire: general views on family-school relations, type of family involvement, and responsibility for initiating family involvement. Some significant differences existed related to barriers to family involvement and the importance for each type of involvement which we were unable to attribute to specific groups due to the variation in subgroup sizes. Again, this suggests an important area for further research; using a qualitative approach might help to elicit any differences between mother and fathers related to cultural or social factors that can influence the nature of their involvement. In addition, further cultural differences in how parental involvement is enacted could be explored through qualitative means.
It is important to acknowledge some of the limitations of this exploratory study. For example, whilst the data show that there was a high similarity among the participants in terms of their positive attitudes toward school and their good relations and involvement Gulf Education and Social Policy Review Osama Al-Mahdi, Lucy Bailey in their children's schooling and education, one possible explanation for this is that the participants generally share similar characteristics (e.g., the educational level of the parents is generally high and their children are also generally high achievers); hence, these findings might not be generalizable to parents lacking these characteristics who may be less likely to participate in such research studies. In addition, the dataset reported on here does not include other parental demographic factors, such as socioeconomic background, which may also play an important role. Moreover, our data focus exclusively on the parents of primary school children, and further studies are needed to understand home-school relations after primary level in Bahrain. Future studies should also focus on studying contrasting groups of parents (e.g., parents of high achievers and low achieving students, parents from varied academic or socioeconomic levels). Also, by virtue of their participation in the research, participants were already more involved than others. It would be useful in future studies to find ways to reach parents who are less involved.

Conclusion
This quantitative study of parents of primary school students in Bahrain suggests that Bahraini parents place a high emphasis on all forms of parental involvement (Epstein, 2011) and have a high satisfaction with current opportunities for parental participation offered by their schools. They espouse a school-centered view of homeschool relations, with most emphasis placed upon school administrators' role in ensuring parental participation, although there is nevertheless an important emphasis given to the responsibility of parents themselves. The study was largely completed by mothers, possibly suggesting that fathers are less directly involved in school-related matters (Ridge & Jeon, 2020), however, this does not mean that they are not involved in supporting their children's education at home. This study has identified several areas for further research into Bahraini parents' views of parental involvement, noting important limitations of the current study; it has been stressed that this is an initial, exploratory study, responding to the research gap in the Bahraini context.
Policy recommendations from this exploratory study are therefore tentative, pending further research. However, these exploratory findings suggest increased provision of preservice and in-service teacher training in the area of supporting positive homeschool communication, allowing schools to exchange their experiences in building strong home-school relations, and overcoming barriers to parental involvement. In addition, the study underscores parental commitment to diverse forms of involvement,

Gulf Education and Social Policy Review
Osama Al-Mahdi, Lucy Bailey thereby supporting schools' inclusion of parents in volunteering and decision-making, and a family centered approach to their education. Most importantly, this study points to the fecundity of research into parental involvement in Bahrain and the wider GCC region, with studies that explore the specific cultural, social, and educational contexts of the region being of necessity.