Parental Scaffolding in Enhancing Learners’ School Academic Participation

It is the parents’ role and responsibility to act as guides, mentors, facilitators, and supporters of their children’s education; thus, understanding the interplay between parental scaffolding and students’ academic participation is essential. This quantitative descriptive study examined different scaffolding techniques and strategies employed by 40 parents of Grade 10 students of Panlayaan National High School (PNHS) in Sorsogon province, Philippines and the school’s initiatives or strategies in involving parents as perceived by six educator-respondents. Findings revealed that contingency management and affective scaffolding techniques are preferred for curricular and co-curricular domains, prioritizing students’ evolving needs and providing a positive emotional foundation in enhancing students’ academic participation. At the same time, parents employ less frequent scaffolding strategies for extracurricular activities, implying less focus on this domain. Further, PNHS’s different school initiatives allow parents to scaffold their learners’ performances across different academic domains. The study suggests holistic and flexible homeschool partnership programs address parents’ concerns with time constraints and limited scaffolding knowledge, leverage the potential of parental scaffolding, and improve students’ academic participation. The study proposed the Parent PLUS (Positive Learning through Unified Support) program, which empowers parents to support their children’s educational participation. It integrates different scaffolding principles and strategies in educating, training, and empowering parents as critical partners of schools in learners’ education. Recommendations for the study and scaffolding programs were also given.