roblem Statement: The way teachers and parents of school-aged children
interact has a major impact on establishing an effective educational
environment and on learning. Parents are one of the most important
variables that are expected to contribute to schools voluntarily both in class
activities and in managerial processes. Parents have traditionally adopted
the role of supporter or representative, rather than becoming full and equal
educational partners.
Purpose of Study: The purposes of this study were first to determine the
administrators’, teachers’ and parents’ attitudes towards building more
effective partnerships between schools and parents in Turkey, and
secondly to find out how their attitudes were affected by gender, work
experience, academic background, teaching branch, parents’ profession,
parents’ income and class grade of students.
Methods: This research was conducted as a survey using a descriptive
method. The data was gathered using a questionnaire developed by the
researcher. The reliability of the questionnaire applied to teachers and
managers was found to be a=.95. The reliability of the questionnaire
applied to parents was a=.91. Specific descriptive analyses that were
conducted to calculate the data included frequencies, means, significance
tests, MANOVA and one-way ANOVA.
Findings and Results: Of the groups surveyed, managers hold more positive
attitudes towards parental involvement. Teachers’ and parents’ scores are
lower in all dimensions compared to managers. Examination of the
coefficients for the linear combinations distinguishing teachers’ views
indicated that communicating, volunteering, learning at home and
collaborating contributed most to distinguishing teachers’ attitudes. No
significant difference was found regarding demographic variables between
principals and assistant principals. There were also no differences between
parents’ attitudes in relation to demographic variables. In particular,
communicating, volunteering, learning at home, and collaborating
contributed significantly toward discriminating associate degree graduate
teachers from the other two groups (bachelor's and master’s degrees).
 

Conclusions and Recommendations: The educational implication of the
findings is that effective parent-school cooperation requires a revolutionary
outlook with a focus on finding creative strategies and methods to
transform the reported positive attitudes into practice.