2015

Part 1 Symposium: Positive Parenting : Assessment, Programmes and Evaluation

Chair: Raquel-Amaya Martínez-González (Universidad de Oviedo, Spain)

Discussant: Stephen Cullen (University of Warwick, England)

Bronfenbrenner (1979) pointed out that the family is one of the most influential social contexts in the development of human beings. The family also constitutes a true factor for individual and social diversity. It is the first social context that embraces individuals, and from which they receive the greatest influences all through life due to the direct interrelationship with the family members. The Social Capital Theory (Coleman, 1997; Symeou, 2007) refers to the quality and depth of relationships between people in a family or in a community. This form of capital is created by the interrelationships among people, which assist personal development as well as access to social resources. Social Capital in the family is found in the interrelationship between children and parents (and other family members) and the resources generated towards the children wellbeing. This gives children access to the adult’s human capital (education and personal resources) and depends on the attention parents give to the children.

Research on parenting strategies (Martínez-González & Rodríguez-Ruiz, 2007) shows that many parents admit it is difficult for them to understand their children’s behaviour, especially that of teenagers. At that evolutive stage an increasing number of secondary school students show school absenteeism, misbehaviour within the school and academic failure (Chen and Kaplan, 2003). This makes many parents feel guilty and inadequate as parents. Also many recognize the parenting methods they use are framed on the past reproducing their own parents’ parental strategies, which effects on children are not the same today; consequently, many feel they have lost key models for raising children.

Thus, it seems necessary enhancing policies to promote positive parenting, as the Council of Europe Recommendation 2006/19 claimed, in order to help parents feel more competent and effective.

In this symposium issues concerning positive parenting, parental education and family-school cooperation are addressed. Parenting assessment, parenting programmes, parenting programmes evaluation and keys for family and school relationships to promote positive parenting will be considered taking into account a European dimension.

The symposium comprises two parts collecting 6 papers all together. This first part (SYMPOSIUM 1) includes three papers; two of them connected with parenting assessment and another one with intervention. The Emotional and Social Parenting Competence Scale (ESPCS) will be introduced by Dr. Martínez-González (University of Oviedo,Spain) as a valid instrument to identify and assess parental competences. Dr. Perala-Littunen (University of Jyväskylä,Finland) will show results obtained when analysing parents’ beliefs on ideal upbringing and caring children. Regarding intervention, findings from a quantitative and qualitative study exploring the impact of a short intervention for new parents called Let’s Stick Together (LST) in theUK, will be introduced by Dr. Spielhofer (The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR),United Kingdom).

Psychometric Characteristics of the Emotional and Social Parenting Competence Scale (ESPCS)

Raquel-Amaya Martínez-González, María-Teresa Iglesias-García, Beatriz Rodríguez-Ruiz, Lucía Álvarez-Blanco

(Universidad de Oviedo)

BACKGROUND: The delivery of the Council of Europe Recommendation 2006/19 on Policies to Promote Positive Parenting brought about the development of Positive Parenting programmes. Identifying how parents perceive their parenting competences before enrolling a programme is key to detect parenting needs as well as to analyze programme effectiveness. This applies specially to mothers, who, according to research, are the ones more frequently involved in parenting tasks (Martínez-González & Rodríguez-Ruiz, 2007; Symeou, Martínez-González & Álvarez-Blanco, 2012). The objective of this paper is to present the technical features of the Emotional and Social Parenting Competence Scale-ESPCS designed to identify such parental competences. METHOD: ESPCS content validity was checked by experts in the field and applied to a Spanish random sample of 2.437 mothers with children from 0 up to 18 years old. The structure of the questionnaire was analysed through exploratory factor analysis and hierarchical clustering analysis. The internal consistency (reliability) was verified by Cronbach’s Alpha Index. In a second step, analysis of the questionnaire was made only with data from mothers of adolescents given the challenging characteristics of this evolutive stage. RESULTS: ESPCS resolves around five factors when applied with mothers of children from 0 to up 18 years old, explaining 60.25% of the variance. An optimal level of internal consistency was found for the total scale (Cronbach's α=0.62). Better adjustment was found when analysing mothers of adolescents’ data: 63.49% of variance explained, Cronbach's α=0.70 for the total scale with only four factors. CONCLUSIONS AND PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: ESPCS has adequate psychometric properties to be applied to assess mothers' perception of their emotional parenting competences. It can be used with mothers of children with a wide range of ages -from 0 to up 18 years old- and especially with mothers of teenagers. The questionnaire can be worth to analyse how mothers’ emotional parenting competences change after taking part in parenting programmes, thus, contributing to assess parenting programmes effectiveness.

Part 2 Symposium. Positive Parenting: Assessment, Programmes and Evaluation

Chair: Raquel-Amaya Martínez-González (Universidad de Oviedo, Spain)

Discussant: Mairi-Ann Cullen (University of Warwick, England)

Bronfenbrenner (1979) pointed out that the family is one of the most influential social contexts in the development of human beings. The family also constitutes a true factor for individual and social diversity. It is the first social context that embraces individuals, and from which they receive the greatest influences all through life due to the direct interrelationship with the family members. The Social Capital Theory (Coleman, 1997; Symeou, 2007) refers to the quality and depth of relationships between people in a family or in a community. This form of capital is created by the interrelationships among people, which assist personal development as well as access to social resources. Social Capital in the family is found in the interrelationship between children and parents (and other family members) and the resources generated towards the children wellbeing. This gives children access to the adult’s human capital (education and personal resources) and depends on the attention parents give to the children.

Research on parenting strategies (Martínez-González & Rodríguez-Ruiz, 2007) shows that many parents admit it is difficult for them to understand their children’s behaviour, especially that of teenagers. At that evolutive stage an increasing number of secondary school students show school absenteeism, misbehaviour within the school and academic failure (Chen and Kaplan, 2003). This makes many parents feel guilty and inadequate as parents. Also many recognize the parenting methods they use are framed on the past reproducing their own parents’ parental strategies, which effects on children are not the same today; consequently, many feel they have lost key models for raising children.

Thus, it seems necessary enhancing policies to promote positive parenting, as the Council of Europe Recommendation 2006/19 claimed, in order to help parents feel more competent and effective.

In this symposium issues concerning positive parenting, parental education and family-school cooperation are addressed. Parenting assessment, parenting programmes, parenting programmes evaluation and keys for family and school relationships to promote positive parenting will be considered taking into account a European dimension.

The symposium comprises two parts collecting 6 papers all together.

This second part is composed of tree papers focused in parenting programme evaluation, families-schools relationships and community intervention to promote parenting competences. Dr. Cullen & Dr. Cullen (University of Warwick, England) present qualitative results from the evaluation of the ‘CANparent’ programme for parents and carers of children aged 0-5 years, launched by the United Kingdom government. Dr. Jónsdóttir (University of Iceland) will concentrate on analysing ways to promote teachers-parents relationships to help the latter to cope with their children´s needs. The last paper by Dr. Martínez-González (University of Oviedo), Rauchi & Daviu (Catalonia Students' Parents' Federation-Federació d’Associacions de Pares i Mares d’Alumnes de Catalunya-FaPac.) introduces the main characteristics of an European project aimed at promoting parental competences through creating a community network of families to enhance children's school success.

The European Xarxa Clau Project: Families For Educational Success

Raquel-Amaya Martínez-González (University of Oviedo), Francesca Rauchi y Montse Daviu (Federació d’Associacions de Pares i Mares d’Alumnes de Catalunya)

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: The European project "EUXarxaClau: Families for Educational Success" focuses in to transfer and implement innovative educational practices at an European level. The project is based on a Strategic Partnership in the field of education that has been designed to reinforce interaction between practices, research and policy with the purpose to go after a promotion of a greater participation of the families in the schools based on their training in Successful Educational Actions (SEA), namely based on scientific evidences. METHOD: This Strategic Partnership heads to transfer to Europe an experience of social transformation that is already being implemented in Spain where social agents of base like relatives and other community members are completely involved. PRELIMINARY RESULTS: The Xarxa Clau project: Families for Educational Success is being developed in Catalonia (Spain) since 2012 and in just one year of the project, 449 parents have been trained and achieved that 51 AMPA were developing the SEA in the educational centres of their sons and daughters, etc. CONCLUSIONS AND PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: SEA emerge as universal and transferrable practices that are creating successful learning environments anywhere they are implemented. In this sense Included research has demonstrated the vital importance of participation and training of the families and its interrelationship between family and community as catalyst of school success. Concretely, multipliers events have been alternated with intellectual outputs (on-line training for families associations and training material aimed at families) and with presencial trainings for families to allow the main objectives of the project.