What helps students to learn?
Most parents want to help their children achieve well. The best results for children come about when their teachers establish good relationships with the children’s parents and families. Genuine and effective collaboration between home and school can lift children’s achievement significantly.
Bilingual students’ individual differences and needs are part of the language-learning context that teachers need to take into account. It’s important to explore and work with students’ attitudes, beliefs, and issues in relation to their two languages, to language learning, and to education.
The attitudes and beliefs that adults and other students hold about cultures, languages, and language learning are not always well informed or helpful to bilingual students. Fortunately, these attitudes and beliefs can be changed.
Like all students, bilingual Pasifika students need a classroom environment that encourages them to be highly motivated to learn and enables them to participate fully.
This section looks at developing the most constructive conditions for these students, in terms of the relationships between home and school, the students’ identity and motivation to learn, and their ability to participate fully in the learning environment.
The Pacific Islands School Community Parent Liaison Project (PISCPL) aims to raise the achievement of Pasifika students by fostering more effective interaction between schools and Pasifika parents and communities. You can find out more by following up these links:
- Gorinski, R. (2005). Pacific Islands School Community Parent Liaison Project case study. Wellington: Research Division of the Ministry of Education.
- Education Counts
- Gorinski, R. & Fraser, C. (2006). Literature review on the engagement of Pasifika parents and communities in education (PISCPL). Wellington: Ministry of Education.
See also Ministry of Education. (2000). Better relationships for better learning: Guidelines for boards of trustees and schools on engaging with Māori parents, whānau, and communities. Wellington: Learning Media.
These guidelines for establishing good partnerships between schools and Māori families and communities contain the following principles, which could also be applied to relationships with Pasifika schools, families, and communities:
- a strong leadership team
- a powerful school vision
- understanding and responding to the educational needs of Māori communities
- long-term strategies for change
- being prepared to change
- managing relationships proactively
- understanding how best to consult with Māori.
