parent-teacher conferences , parent-teacher interview or parent's night , is a short meeting or conference between parent and student teacher to discuss progress children in school and find solutions to academic or behavioral problems. Parent-teacher conferences complement the information conveyed by report cards by focusing on the specific strengths and weaknesses of students in individual subjects and generalizing skill levels and intercultural competencies.
Most conferences take place in the absence of students whose progress is being discussed, despite evidence that their inclusion increases the productivity of the meeting. Meetings are generally led by teachers who take a more active role in sharing information, with parents largely relegated to the listener role.
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Parent-teacher conferences exist in different forms, depending on the country, school district, and individual schools. Subtypes are characterized by the following attributes.
Mode
Like most other meetings, parent-teacher conferences can take the form of face-to-face meetings where parents and teachers meet in person, or electronic meetings made during the phone or through a conference system videos like Skype or Google Voice. A face-to-face meeting offers personal contact but requires parents and teachers to meet physically in the same place during the meeting. These interviews are usually between five and fifteen minutes.
In the case of parent-teacher electronic conferences, neither parents nor teachers need to be in school or other public locations and may participate in meetings from home or while working or traveling. Schools do not need to book room for meetings and there is more flexibility in finding the appropriate time. The disadvantages of electronics are the lack of facial time used by many participants and the need for technology availability that never fails.
Parent-teacher interviews are a tradition in Western school systems, such as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In the United States, many elementary schools will shorten school days 2-3 hours (often for one full week) in mid-autumn to allow additional time for teachers to give this conference.
Participants
Parent-teacher conferences can
- one-on-one meetings between parents and a teacher. This type is used when different subjects are taught by different teachers and parents meet with teachers for all the different subjects individually. This type offers confidentiality and allows discussion of specific information for a student in a particular subject. The downside of this type is that meetings are difficult to schedule because they require a lot of time slots and meeting places.
- many-to-one meetings are meetings between many parents and one teacher. Usually the students whose parents attend the meeting are in the same class/year and the teacher is the teacher of a particular subject or assigned class teacher. This type is common in elementary schools. It is relatively easy to schedule but has no privacy to discuss the progress of a particular student.
- one-to-many meetings between one parent and many teachers. This type can be used if a child has problems in some subjects or when parents come to school outside of regular teacher-parent conference schedules to meet with multiple teachers at once.
- Many-to-many meetings between many parents and many teachers. This type of meeting is easy to use for selecting board members or disseminating general information about schools, event calendars, changes in general rules, etc. It's inefficient to address the specific issues of a particular student and not to have the privacy required.
Frequency
Parent-teacher conferences usually take place every semester of the school, although some schools only organize one meeting during (mostly at the beginning) of the school year.
Duration
The duration of a teacher-parent conference depends on the frequency of the conference and the number of parents and teachers participating. Annual meetings with some participants may take two hours or longer; one-to-many and many-to-one meetings once a term can last for an hour; one-on-one meetings once a year can last 15 minutes, one-on-one meetings of the term tend to last 5-10 minutes.
Location
Most face-to-face meetings take place in schools. One-to-many meetings can take place in separate meeting rooms, multi-by-one meetings in larger classrooms and one-to-one and many-to-one meetings in school, auditorium or hall halls, with multiple-one meetings occur simultaneously in various parts of the room.
Maps Parent-teacher conference
Area variation
Australia
In the Australian education system, meetings are known as parent-teacher interviews or evening parents. Appropriate practices vary by country and by type of school. Some countries mandate that interviews be done, others do not. Government and non-government schools also follow different federal education laws.
Some schools have only one interview round per year, others have more. Two general rounds, with provisions 1 (February-April) and 3 (July-September) being a popular time. Many schools offer multiple dates, separating interviews either by class or by name (eg a-k/l-z).
Often there is a sharp demand by parents for times with teachers, although the teacher's general observation is that the parents they do not need to see who is attending the interview, while the parents who should > often present no.
Canada
In the Canadian education system, meetings are known as parent-teacher interviews.
Parent-teacher interviews are mandatory for all primary and secondary school teachers in Ontario (Canada). Parents are entitled to be given time for this purpose under the Ministry of Education.
Canadian life criticizes parents-teacher interviews for their class biases. Often only the parents of the most privileged children who will attend the interview and the children are more likely to need additional help will not be visited by their parents.
Singapore
In Singapore, this meeting is known as a meeting of school parents.
United States
In the US education system, the meeting is known as a parent-teacher conference.
Conferences are usually held twice a year, at the end of the first quarter and at the end of the third quarter, with each meeting 15-20 minutes. Parents usually choose the best time for them, and the teacher schedules the conference appropriately. Specific practices vary within the school district.
In the United States, many elementary schools will shorten school days 2-3 hours (often for one full week) in mid-autumn to allow additional time for teachers to give this conference.
The difference between parent-teacher conferences and PTA meetings is that the first focuses on students' academic progress while the latter organizes extra-curricular activities.
Several countries in the US have proposed to consider it a violation of law for parents or guardians who fail to attend at least one parent-teacher conference during the school year. However, some charter schools have made the event a requirement for parents to attend.
United Kingdom
In the British educational system, this meeting is known as a parent-teacher conference or parent's night . The event is often held in the school hall and adjacent communal hall where parents move through a series of eight to nine face-to-face 5-minute consultations with each teacher.
Scheduling
Task
Teacher-parent conference scheduling involves finding suitable times for parents and teachers with their existing time constraints and finding locations for meetings. If all meetings will be independent without any dependency, meeting planning will simplify unregulated timers rather than full-scale scheduling where events need to be scheduled in a certain order, often because the output of one event forms input for the other.
In many cases, certain dependencies exist: parents prefer not to wait too long between different interviews but need to rest long enough to move from one location to another or adjacent location.
Method
Various methods exist for scheduling parent-teacher conferences.
In the simplest case, meetings are not scheduled at all, parents come to school and march to see every teacher they want to see. Meetings take place on the basis of the first arrival.
Meetings can be scheduled in person, by phone or on-line.
Personally
The scheduling of people comes in two flavors:
- Parents come to the school administration office to schedule meetings; scheduling done by school administrators.
- Students schedule time to meet with the teacher with a booking sheet and ask the teacher to allocate the available time. The teachers have their own order sheet and they mark the time on both sheets. Parents usually have an option to show which teachers they want to see and their preferred time.
The advantage of the first is that the teacher does not need to be involved in scheduling, the disadvantage is that a special intermediary is required. This method is centered in the sense that it is directed by a parent or teacher.
The advantage of the latter is that parents do not need to be involved in scheduling, the disadvantage is that teachers need to do scheduling after their classes end or during breaks they should need to rest, prepare classes or advise students, parents do not know which slots are available and often get inappropriate or optimal time (the ordering schedule is optimized from the teacher's point of view, not the parent.), if the student does not want the parent to see the teacher, all of them may not make the reservation, or leave it so late that no time available.
By phone
Telephone scheduling also involves parents and school administrators to do scheduling without parents needing to be physically in school at the time of scheduling. In principle, intermediaries can be avoided by automated scheduling over the phone but are currently hindered by the lack of sophisticated speech analysis. This process can lead to high demand levels in the school office.
On-line
On-line scheduling is done by internet using scheduling scheduling software. The advantage of this system is that it is automated without the need for intermediaries, centrally optimized for both parents and for teachers without the need to involve students.
Complexity
Computationally, the scheduling problem is a NP-complete problem and in the same complexity class with other problems involving constraint satisfaction and combinatorial optimization (so no known fast algorithm to solve it).
This can be seen as follows. We can check the polynomial time to input size whether a particular time slot assignment meets the parent-teacher conference scheduling constraint (PTCS). Therefore, PTCS? NP. Ignoring the obstacles that complicate further scheduling, let's just consider the constraints on the availability of parents (eg Assuming that all teachers, space and time slots are always available). Then there is a simple polynomial transformation of teacher class assignment problems with teacher availability constraints (CTTA) in school schedule construction for PTCS problems: that is, example of map class to teacher instance, teacher instance to master instance, time slot to time slot (Identity Map) and teacher availability for parent availability. So if the PTCS problem is a polynomial time that can be solved by some algorithm, the transformation described above and the algorithm can be used to solve the CTTA problem as well and CTTA task will be solved polynomial as well. But CTTA has previously been proven NP-complete by the reduction of the NP-resolving the 3-SAT problem, so the PTC scheduling problem can not be polarized polynomial well, and must be NP-complete.
Management
Optimized scheduling is only beneficial as long as participants follow the schedule by attending meetings and starting and finishing on time. The latter can be achieved with school bells or electronic voice-over messages played on top of the school's PA system, at any time of interview changes (eg " Please move to your next interview "), avoid scheduling the interview time a very short one that is harder to keep running on time, schedules empty slots at intervals to help bring events back to time if they run. Time management techniques generally apply.
Walking on time
Parents sometimes complain about schedules not running on time, causing them to miss an interview, or cut short. This is usually because parents or teachers choose to keep talking outside of the time slots they order. One factor that naturally reduces this effect is the presence of other parents who are ready to start the next interview and are clear in the teacher's view. There are several other options that can help run events in a timely manner:
- The bell, sound, or electronic sound is automatically played over the school's PA system, at any time of the interview. (Eg " Please move to your next interview ")
- Large projected clock display on the hall screen, ensuring there is no doubt about the right time, and encouraging participants to pay attention to the time.
- Very reminiscent, and encourage teachers to stay on time advertised.
- Driving away from very short interview times, which are harder to keep running on time (eg 5 minutes), support a slightly longer duration interview that may be more appropriate to the time it takes to discuss the issue. Short duration like five minutes ensures more can fit into the event, but if run on time fails, the benefits are lost.
- Provision of spacer interview slots at intervals for all busy schedule teachers, to act as a time buffer - helps to return events to time if they go on.
- Systems that offer optimized scheduling of interviews can provide significantly more solid parent schedules. Parents then have a reason to finish their conversation right now on time, ie to get to the next meeting. The natural tendency is often for parents to stay longer in an interview, which is acceptable if both parents and teachers do not have another interview soon following. Optimized parent schedules are also beneficial for parents by reducing time in place, and significantly reducing the number of unemployed parents (event congestion).
Discussions
Parent-teacher conferences have been criticized for their class biases and inefficiencies because meetings are mostly attended by parents of more privileged children, while parents of children who are more likely to require additional assistance are absent.
See also
- Educational assessment
- Personal development planning
- Parent Teacher Organization
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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