Centennial Honors College
Western Illinois University
Undergraduate Research Day 2012
Poster Presentation
Trends in Communication with Parents/Guardians and Teachers
Marissa Bartolomucci
Faculty Mentor: Debra Allwardt
Social Work
Young children depend on the adults in their lives, such as parents and teachers, to
work together to support their learning and development. This study will examine the
differences in responses to questions about parent/teacher communication based on
the gender of the parent responding. Specifically, I will examine if fathers, mothers, or
other guardians tend to view their satisfaction with parent/teacher interactions and
communication differently. To do this, I will use secondary data from a national study by
the National Center for Early Development and Learning Multi-State Study of PreKindergarten. This study’s purpose is to describe the different experiences that children
(pre-kindergarten to kindergarten) had in public schools and state-funded community
based schools in sixteen states. The study had six primary groups of research
questions, focused around the experiences of children and parents, as well as reports
by teachers. I will focus on six questions in which parent’s rate their satisfaction with
parent/teacher communication and interaction. I will also describe characteristics of the
people in the study. I am currently in the process of analyzing the data and will be
presenting the results of my analysis in my poster presentation. I hope to understand
better if fathers, mother, or other guardians are more or less satisfied with teacher
interactions, and how their expectations are different.