Study

last updated:April 2008

What were the key findings of the home–school knowledge exchange (HSKE) project?
The HSKE researchers trialled different ways of exchanging ‘funds of knowledge’ between home and school and found that many were beneficial both for children’s learning and for wider home–school relationships.

Details of the activities trialled are set out in the pages below. Briefly, they included:

• videos of classroom teaching and learning produced for parents to watch at home
• videos of life at secondary school for parents and pupils to watch prior to transfer
• exhibitions of work at supermarkets; teachers visiting parents’ homes to talk about teaching and learning; and
• children taking photos of their home life or filling shoe boxes with important personal artefacts to discuss in school.

All the knowledge exchange activities were focused on three areas:

• literacy at key stage 1
• numeracy at key stage 2, and
• transfer from primary to secondary school.

Practitioners interested in finding out how teachers have used the camera and shoe box activities to enhance parents’ involvement in their children’s learning may like to read a case study we included in our earlier RfT about parental involvement. The study involved children at both primary and secondary level.

We have summarised the headline findings from the research project under the three headings below, and explore the findings in more detail in the pages that follow.

Strategies for home–school knowledge exchange
Schools in different contexts found their own best means of engaging with parents. There was certainly no single ‘one size fits all’ strategy for success.
It was better to focus on meeting the needs of all parents, rather than trying to identify and engage with ‘hard to reach’ parents.

The impact of HSKE
There were several successes measured by the project – these included improvements in pupils’ attainment and attitude to learning, parents’ support for their children’s learning, attendance at school events, and school/parent/pupil relationships.

It is difficult to demonstrate direct impact of home–school research projects on attainment as there are so many factors involved. Nonetheless, the researchers identified some immediate, positive connections with literacy results in several of the schools in the study and found better attainment after transfer to secondary school.

The challenges of HSKE
The researchers found that schools needed to be sensitive to feelings about power, exclusion, inferiority, language, ethical and privacy issues in the planning of home–school activities.

School to home knowledge transfer is the usual direction of travel, but with imagination and planning, home to school exchange can also occur.

How did the HSKE activities benefit the children’s learning and attitude to learning?   
The researchers found some evidence that knowledge exchange activities had a positive effect on children’s attainment, but this was not found uniformly across the project. In the key stage 1 literacy strand the children who experienced the activities made statistically significantly better progress in some of the schools. In the key stage 2 mathematics strand, the effect of the home–school knowledge exchange activities on children’s attainment was positive, but not statistically significant.

In the transfer strand there was also evidence of impact on pupil attainment. Pupils who attended a school where HSKE activities had taken place made significantly greater progress in literacy from Year 6 to Year 7 compared to pupils who had not. Pupils were shown to benefit from knowledge exchange activities which happened during Year 6 and Year 7.

As well as these overall improvements in pupil attainment in certain subject areas, the study also showed a good deal of evidence of impact on individual children. One teacher for example, reported that the shoe box activity, in which children brought valued personal artefacts from home into school, had had a dramatic effect on the writing of many of the children. She called these ‘literacy breakthroughs’ and said of one pupil:

‘It was the first time she had done a piece of writing showing any real imagination and she’s gone on to develop that really well’.

Parents felt the school to home activities had made them more knowledgeable about what and how their child was learning in school. Several parents said that the activities had also had a positive impact on the way they helped their children to learn.

You may like to read a case study we included in our earlier RfT about pre-school education which shows how parents and children benefited from an activity that involved the children taking a teddy bear and a digital camera home to record the bear’s adventures and activities.

For some parents, the video was particularly helpful for showing them how they could help their children to learn at home. As this parent explained:

‘They read the story first, then they go back through the book and go through the different words and if there’s bigger words, they explain them … I never used to read the story first. I’d just open the book and start to read it, and that’s where you get no expression, but if you’ve read the book and you look through the pictures and you explain the story, by the time you get to read it then you’re more into it, aren’t you, because you know what you’re looking at. It makes sense …but you don’t think to do it until you’re actually shown yourself, do you?’

Where communication between home and school was effective, the contribution that parents made to their child’s learning was often extensive. One parent commented:

‘They had an afternoon where some of the mums went in and they actually taught us for an hour how they teach the children. And it helped so much …it was nice to know how they’re being taught , how they break it all down … even her teacher said they noticed such a huge difference once I knew what she was doing and was able to give her more help’.

You may like to look at a case study which shows the impact another parent partnership project had on the attainment of the children involved.

Practitioners may also like to refer to a previous RfT about parental involvement which looked specifically at the impact of parental involvement in children’s learning at home on children’s achievement.

In terms of attitudes to learning, the transfer activities showed good results. Pupils’ disposition to learning generally drops from Year 6 to Year 7. But the drop was  lower in the pupils who had attended the action primary schools. In particular the pupils from the action schools reported much better ‘Learning Relationships’ during Year 7.

Practitioners wishing to find out more about the transfer strand may like to read a  case study which looks at the experience of a pair of twins in their transfer from primary to secondary school and how HSKE assisted in this process.

What other benefits did HSKE activities bring?   
The study also demonstrated a number of ways in which HSKE activities made a positive impact on many areas of school life. These benefits included:

• increasing the number and range of opportunities for parents to go into school
• improving teacher/parent/child relationships (social and professional)
• generating new and stimulating teaching resources for teachers, including in the area of personalised learning
• raising the status, self-esteem and identity of individual children, and
• improving parents’ knowledge and appreciation of what, how and why their children are learning.

Below are a few specific examples of these additional benefits.

Getting parents into school
A targeted approach led to an increase in parental attendance in all of the schools. For example some parents who had little previous contact with school were invited individually to attend video screenings of literacy lessons or were visited in their home by a teacher and invited to come into school.

Improving relationships
Several of the parents said that watching videos of lessons had increased their respect for the teachers and their professionalism in carrying out such a complex job. Some of the younger teachers felt that their status had been raised among parents as a result of the parents viewing the videos. One infant school used the ‘shoe box activity’ as a way of helping children manage the transfer to junior school, and enabled the junior school teachers to get to know their new children quickly.  In another school that had recently been formed from an acrimonious merger of an infant and junior school the project helped to improve fragile parent–school relationships.

Developing teaching and personalising teaching
Many of the activities helped teachers to bring popular culture into the classroom, making learning more relevant and enjoyable for the children. They also helped to deliver personalised learning because it was easier to tailor learning to individual need, interest and aptitude when teachers had knowledge of children’s lives outside of school. In one school, the shoebox activity led a teacher to reflect more deeply on her own practice. She commented, ‘If you look at these boxes you can see all the differences in just a small group of children ... all too often this diversity is closed down in schools’. She asked herself, ‘Do we make them conform too much?’

Improving children’s status and self–esteem
Improved status and self-esteem was noted by a number of teachers. For example, one child who brought in pictures of his pet birds was subsequently seen as the ‘bird expert’ in class and became much more outgoing and responsive as a result. One school reported that one of their activities which involved siblings of different ages working together had resulted in a significant decrease in incidents of bullying.

Increasing parents’ knowledge
Some parents said that the video had shown them how tired or distracted their children were in class and that they had concluded their children needed more sleep. In another school a request for more homework from parents was withdrawn after they saw how hard their children worked in class. Making videos available to be viewed at home also provided more opportunity for working parents to engage with their child’s school experience.

You may like to read a case study which explores some of the benefits associated with home–school knowledge exchange activities in more detail. The case study describes an innovative family literacy scheme which provided opportunities for parents and children to work together directly at school.

How did the study help to improve relationships between schools and families from minority ethnic groups?
All of the schools involved in the study were selected to reflect the ethnic and cultural mix of Cardiff and Bristol and therefore there were significant minority ethnic populations in several of them. The activities planned by the schools in many cases sought to target minority parents. The activities also sought to tackle some of the difficulties associated with exchanging knowledge across different languages and cultures.

Cultural knowledge exchange
Some of the knowledge which was transferred from home to school in the study had clear cultural and ethnic origins. Several families of Asian origin used traditional practices of ‘strand counting’, counting on fingers and finger joints to represent units. One child who was learning Punjabi at her local gudwara was given novel strategies for memorising the letters by her grandfather, as she ‘couldn’t keep them in my head’. These strategies had been passed on to children, but the teacher was often unaware of them. The exchanges of knowledge allowed teachers to begin to understand the different ways some children were being taught out of school.

Issues for multi-lingual children and their families
The researchers tried to meet the needs of all parents. For example for families whose first language was not English, some children recorded sessions on video in their home language. These videos were appreciated by many parents and demonstrated to several of them the difficulty and challenge their children faced when explaining things in two languages. One teacher who was interviewed pinpointed the difficulties inherent in dealing with different languages:

‘At parents’ evening...I was not able to discuss perhaps the ways that the [Bengali] parent could support their child at home or in a particular area of learning’.

For this reason, one of the schools specifically targeted a group of Bengali parents. Once the parents had gained the confidence to engage with the school and teachers, they asked for specialist English and ICT classes which were quickly set up. The work with these Bengali families had a lasting impact, with many more parents becoming involved in school activities as a result of the initial impetus provided by the project.

Breaking down stereotypes
A focus on transferring knowledge from the homes of children from minority ethnic groups also showed the sometimes stereotyped nature of teachers’ knowledge and the ways in which it changed and developed over time. Different children from the same ethnic background were observed to have very different home lives. Practitioners may like to read a case study that shows how getting to know minority families better can help to challenge such stereotypes.

What kinds of knowledge were exchanged?   
A variety of different kinds of knowledge was exchanged between school and home during the project. Knowledge was exchanged in two directions: from school to home and from home to school.

School to home
The researchers acknowledged that schools are large, complicated and often confusing institutions and parents typically have many questions about what goes on in them. The activities trialled in the study showed that the following kinds of information and knowledge could usefully be passed to parents:

• curriculum information
• teaching methods, and
• culture and expectations of a school, particularly at transfer.

Parents were almost universally interested in knowing more about the curriculum and the way different subjects were taught. Several parents said they wanted to know exactly how reading or maths were being taught so that they could use similar or complementary methods to help. One parent explained:

‘Sometimes the way I would like to teach my daughter is not the way the school teaches it. Information would be useful’.

Home to school
There were many areas of children’s life outside of school which teachers had limited or no knowledge about. Such types of knowledge transfer included:

• circumstances at home, both physical and emotional
• cultural information about a child’s home life
• children’s interests
• identifying learning opportunities at home, and
• use of popular culture in learning.

Circumstances of interest to teachers and of potential relevance to their teaching included understanding how much time some children helped out with domestic tasks, such as writing shopping lists, reading labels and calculating change. Other areas of knowledge with potential relevance to teaching included the cultural and family reasons for extended trips abroad.

Games which the children played at home with their families, such as Monopoly, were identified as rich activities for reading and making mathematical calculations. Maths games played an increased role in one school because they provided a context in which pupils could legitimately use out-of-school strategies to accomplish the maths required by the games.

The study also identified the motivational nature of objects from popular culture. TV programmes, films, nursery rhymes and books, such as the Harry Potter series, were drawn upon extensively by children. This was found to support their emerging understanding of narrative such as genre, character and plot.

But getting knowledge about home into school was only the first stage towards making an impact. The next stage was the response to that knowledge once it arrived – some teachers made more use of such knowledge in their work than others.

How was knowledge transferred from school to home?
The project schools developed a range of activities for transferring knowledge from school to home which suited their own particular circumstances.

Guidance sheets, newsletters and booklets
These generally gave information about both the curriculum and teaching methods. The title was viewed as particularly important in signalling the intention of the booklet. For example a booklet entitled ‘supporting your child through reading’ made it clear that the intention was both to provide information and to encourage parents to then help their child with the learning.

Videos
Videos were made which showed children in their key stage 1 and 2 classrooms, learning about aspects of literacy and numeracy. Some of them were accompanied by voice-overs or booklets explaining particular methods, such as procedures for carrying out calculations. In one school the video was produced by the children – the children themselves took on the role of ‘teacher’, explaining how they were learning to do multiplication. Showings were held in school and/or parents received their own copies to view at home. At one school, the class teacher personally invited parents to the screenings during parents evening. The screenings were relatively highly attended. Around half the parents attended the screening at one school, while nearly a third came to another.

In the secondary schools videos were made about life in Year 7 for pupils and parents to view. These videos included messages from teachers, current Year 7 students and their parents. The videos explained what routines were like at secondary school, what was expected and what was enjoyable. These videos were shown at significant times, for example at the Year 6 leavers concert or at a pre-transfer parents evening.

Exhibition out of school
In one school many parents were reluctant to come in to school for various reasons so the school mounted an exhibition in the entrance to a local supermarket. The exhibition ran from 8am to 6pm for two consecutive days and included literacy materials, children’s work and photos of other HSKE work. Parents were offered a free cup of tea or coffee. At least two thirds of parents came and interestingly many came more than once and in different social groupings. The researchers suggested this showed something of the promise that moving events away from school can offer. Parents are likely to be more relaxed and friends/neighbours can be involved.

Parental observation of lessons
In some of the schools parents were invited into school to view how children were being taught and how they responded. This means of transfer was particularly powerful for some parents and encouraged a good deal of subsequent contact with the teacher, but the logistics of such a project meant this was only possible for a limited number of parents.

Parents invited to targeted sessions
At one school, parents were invited in and taught a lesson in exactly the same way that the children were taught. One said: ‘... that was brilliant...probably the best hour that I’ve spent at school actually.’ Another school responded to a demand which had surfaced in the early home–school audit by setting up basic ICT classes for parents. The key aim was to provide them with the skills needed to assist their children with their learning.

At another school in the transfer strand, parents were invited to a pre-transfer presentation by the upcoming head of Year 7. This was followed by a small group session with parents discussing what their children might find different after transfer and how they might be helped and supported.

Another of the secondary schools held a small informal tea party for parents at the end of the day at which their children had visited the school for the first time prior to transfer. This was followed by a number of small-scale informal meetings for parents and teachers during the Autumn term at the start of Year 7. These meetings helped to establish relationships between teachers and parents and gave the chance for any concerns to be raised.

How was knowledge transferred from home to school?   
Several activities were aimed at transferring knowledge from home to school. It is worth noting that they attempted to include methods that did not rely on the written word.

Use of cameras
Children used disposable cameras to take photographs of relevant aspects of their out of school lives. In the literacy strand photographs related to class topics such as ‘living things’ or the ‘local environment’. In the maths strand the photographs related to everyday maths such as setting the video or reading a timetable.

One teacher felt that the best way of using the photos was simply to discuss them as a class ‘... because they like seeing each other in photographs, because they always find it funny.’ In another school children had to choose their favourite four photographs to go into a class album, while in another school parents came in to help the children produce an album of captioned photos.

In one school, the children were given cameras and a diary to write down when they took each photo, who was with them and a brief comment. A display and class album were again produced. Many parents reported children were enthused by the project and keen to return to school at the end of the holidays to share their albums.

At one of the secondary schools cameras were also used. Pupils were again asked to take pictures during the summer holidays and these were turned into a major display. The display was used to explore learning, while also allowing students and their families to become better known within the secondary school.

You may like to read a case study that shows how disposable cameras were used to engage with some ‘hard to reach’ families, in this case in a Gypsy Roma Traveller community.

Shoe boxes
Children in the literacy strand were given an empty shoe box and asked to bring in personal possessions and artefacts from home (such as favourite items or photos of themselves as babies). The empty shoe box went home with an explanatory letter to parents. There was a high response rate to this activity and the contents were diverse. In one school the shoe boxes contributed to an ‘all about me’ topic; in another they were used as a way of helping children manage the transfer from infant to junior school. The children used the artefacts to introduce themselves to a new teacher. Another teacher made use of shoe boxes across the curriculum: in maths weighing and measuring items; in history, asking ‘what can you tell about this person’; and in literacy, a full week’s writing centred on the contents of the shoe box.

Toy in a bag
A similar activity was used by one school which asked children to bring one favourite toy in a bag. Their teacher spent time talking individually with each child about their toy as a means to get to know them better. Other children wrote about it in literacy, thus allowing the children more control than usual over their writing topic.

Targeting parents
A final set of strategies for supporting the transfer of knowledge from home to school involved targeting individual parents or groups of parents. For example, one school developed a concerted strategy to involve a group of Bengali-speaking parents who were reluctant to approach the school. Individual parents were visited at home by the teacher–researcher and bilingual teacher. Teachers got to know the parents better and invited them to attend a meeting at school where parents’ views about what would help them were elicited. Five of the six mothers who were visited attended the meetings. In contrast only four out of 30 attended when they were invited by letter.

What were the main challenges in trying to improve knowledge exchange between school and home?
   
The study identified several challenges in trying to improve the exchange of knowledge between home and school. Many of these challenges were met by a combination of sensitive and careful planning.

Existing relationships and dynamics needed to be taken into account
If care was not taken, there was potential for the HSKE activities to reinforce existing groupings – i.e. parents who were already engaged in school life could become more involved whilst those who were not engaged could become more excluded. Careful targeting was one way around this.

Communication was key
In the more successful activities, teachers avoided using jargon and took the needs of parents whose primary language was not English into account. In this area there was also no ‘one size for all’. For example, one Somali heritage mother wanted information in her own language so she could read it without assistance, but another Somali mother wanted it in English so that her daughter could read it and translate it for her.

HSKE involved risk
Schools and teachers became aware that home–school knowledge exchange could lead to having their practice challenged. For example, one or two parents who saw a classroom video reported that it confirmed their belief that the work set for their children was not challenging enough and that they appeared to be bored. In other cases parents who had no previous experience of the classroom compared what they saw to an idealised vision and were disappointed.

Privacy and ethics
The researchers also identified the importance of accepting children’s and parents’ right to privacy. With the videos, teachers faced dilemmas such as whether or not to include sequences in which children were seen to be struggling. At the same time, there was the risk that some children (and parents) might feel exposed if they felt obliged to provide information about their ‘lives out of school’ – of making their private life public to their peers and/or teachers, perhaps due to a fear of criticism. The schools tried to be sensitive to this, making activities non-threatening and/or voluntary. Both the schools and the researchers also identified a need for an ethical code of practice.

How was the study designed?
The study aimed to find out how children’s learning could be enhanced if parents, children and teachers came together more often to exchange knowledge and information. A number of different ways of exchanging knowledge between teachers, parents and children were developed, implemented and evaluated. There were three main strands to the project:

• supporting literacy learning at key stage 1
• supporting numeracy learning at key stage 2, and
• supporting transfer from key stage 2 to key stage 3.

Twelve primary schools took part in the study over four years. In each strand there were two primary schools from Bristol and two from Cardiff. In each pair of schools there was one with a high proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals and one with a low proportion. The study also ensured that the ethnic diversity of the two cities was represented in the sample. In the transfer strand the four main ‘destination’ secondary schools for the four primary schools were also involved in the project.

An experienced teacher was seconded to work part-time on each of the literacy, numeracy and transfer strands. First, they interviewed the class teachers and headteachers. They also sent questionnaires home to parents and held parent discussion groups to find out the kind of information parents wanted from the school, the kind of information parents wanted to give the school and how information might be exchanged. The teacher–researchers then developed a range of activities for exchanging knowledge between school and home. The school to home knowledge transfer activities included: newsletters, leaflets, booklets, videos, and exhibitions of work. The home to school knowledge transfer activities included: video, photography, diaries, and taking personal artefacts into school.

The study measured the impact of these activities in a number of ways.

• An audit of existing home–school activity was carried out first, in order to see how this changed during the project.
• Assessments of the children were carried out during the first term of the project to establish a baseline, then after the first and second years of the project. Children were assessed using the Performance Indicators in Primary Schools (PIPs) assessments.
• Changes in learning disposition were measured over the life of the project, using existing questionnaires and some designed by the study team. Changes in attainment and learning disposition of children were compared to those of children from schools not involved in the project.

For the transfer strand, the first year of the research emphasised building relationships between schools and looking at where links could be made. During the second year, knowledge exchange activities were introduced to Year 6 pupils and their parents and then followed up during Year 7.

In all three strands, the researchers randomly selected six target pupils from each class following parental consent for more in-depth study (three girls and three boys from each class – two high attaining, two medium attaining and two low attaining). These children and their families then became the focus of more intensive study throughout the project. The researchers recruited the target parents via phone calls, approaching parents in the playground and at the school gate and knocking on their doors. They interviewed parents and pupils using photographs to stimulate recall of the different activities. An interpreter accompanied the researchers to the homes of children supported by EMAS and was also present at meetings which parents were invited to.

What are the implications of the study?
Teachers may like to consider the following implications in acting out the messages of this study:

• When asked, parents said they were interested in knowing more about the curriculum and the way different subjects, such as reading and mathematics, were taught. Would you find it valuable to find out from parents (via a questionnaire, parents’ meeting or by talking to parents in the playground) the kind of activities and support they would find helpful in supporting their children’s learning?
• The study showed that helping children to learn about literacy and numeracy involved recognising that much learning in these areas takes place out of school, in every day contexts. Can you think of ways to help children make better connections between the different kinds of learning which they encounter inside and outside of school? For example, you might ask children to bring in favourite toys or books which they can talk about at school or photos of themselves taking part in mathematical activities at home. You could then hold class discussions about how the skills they learn in class might help in these home contexts.
• The children’s parents enjoyed being able to see teaching and learning in practice, for example through video, observation or direct experience and learned a great deal about how to help their children. Can you think of ways that you could bring teaching and learning to life for parents, and which perhaps avoid the use of the written word like many of the project activities?
• Although the activities brought a wide range of benefits, they also carried a degree of risk. Some children (and parents) might have felt exposed if they were asked to provide information about their ‘lives out of school’, and the researchers needed to be sensitive to this. Similarly, some teachers were concerned about identifying struggling children to other parents when showing video sequences etc. The project schools tried to be sensitive to this and identified a need for an ethical code of practice. How might you tackle these kinds of dilemma? (You may find case study 4 which showed how working with a researcher helped gain the trust of a group of Gypsy Roma Traveller children and their families a helpful starting point for a discussion with colleagues).

Leaders may like to consider the following implications:

• One of the key challenges identified by the study was that HSKE activities can be time consuming and resource intensive, both in planning and delivery. But the results can be extremely positive. For example, the findings suggest that interventions concerned with personal, social and emotional areas of transfer to secondary school can have a direct impact on attainment and academic progress. Are there ways in which existing resources could be better used, to improve home–school knowledge exchange in your school and in partner schools?
• The study identified that ‘hard to reach’ parents are certainly not a homogeneous group and that the term itself may be an artefact of the way schools are organised. Certainly, different strategies are needed to engage different parents. (For example, whilst some parents will fill in return slips and read leaflets, others will need personal invitations to appointments). Do you currently provide a sufficient range of ‘easy access’ methods for parents to engage with the school, to ensure that all preferences are catered for? For example, videos of classroom teaching and learning produced for parents to watch at home; exhibitions of work at local shops and supermarkets.
• Schools were often unaware of specific details about the home lives of some individual pupils which explained for example prolonged absences or struggles in certain subject areas. Could you find innovative ways to encourage parents to talk to you about such issues for children? For example you might try arranging small group parent discussions that have a social focus.
• Although the home–school activities made teachers more aware of their pupils’ home experiences of learning, the study highlighted how some teachers were more skilful than others in making use of such knowledge in their work. Could you invite your colleagues to share ideas and experiences of putting such knowledge to work effectively and building on it in a concerted way? (You may find case study 2 which shows how one child’s problematic transfer to secondary school might have been alleviated a useful starting point for discussion).

Filling in the gaps
Gaps that are uncovered in a piece of research have a useful role in making sure that future research builds cumulatively on what is known.  But research also needs to inform practice, so practitioners’ interpretation of the gaps and follow-up questions are crucial.  We think three kinds of studies would usefully supplement the findings of the HSKE project:

Studies that look at how knowledge about children’s home lives can usefully and manageably be incorporated into teachers’ lesson planning.
Research which looks at how home–school exchange activities have been developed to suit the individual contexts of different schools and communities.
Case studies of individual children whose attitude to learning and achievement have been enhanced by an improved exchange between school and home.

What is your experience?
Do you have any evidence regarding home–school knowledge exchange in your school? Do you have action research or enquiry based development programmes running that explore, for example, use of children’s home life experience in lesson planning, HSKE in particular contexts, or any striking case study material?  We would be interested to hear about examples of effective CPD, which we could perhaps feature in our case study section.

Your feedback
Have you found this summary of the HSKE project to be useful? Have you used any aspect of this research in your own classroom teaching practice? We would like to hear your feedback on this study. Contact research@gtce.org.uk to share your views with us.