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As part of a larger grant-funded project, a professional development (PD) series was conducted within the framework of a school–university partnership to improve teachers’ capacity to meaningfully include fathers and father figures in the school environment, with a particular focus on fathers of children with disabilities. The authors sought to understand the extent to which a school-wide PD framed through the lens of a father of a child with a disability might inform practice with sustainable implementation. Due to the pandemic, the original format of the PD was redesigned for virtual delivery.

A three-phase data collection and analysis approach included a pre-PD survey, a post-PD survey and a one-year follow-up survey. All surveys included both quantitative and qualitative self-report data components.

Results suggest school personnel found the virtual PD valuable, gleaning several useful strategies for reflecting on their own practices, working to improve communication with families of children with disabilities and more meaningfully including fathers and father figures in future school-related activities and programing.

First, the sample size of the present study was small, and participation was variable across PD sessions. In addition, participants self-selected into the series, and therefore, they may be more likely to value father-figure involvement with or without participation in the PD series. The small sample size may minimize the generalizability of these results across other replicable settings and participants. Second, the results of the pre-PD survey could be positively skewed since the university partner’s initial delivery of PD related to this topic began in 2018. In the pre-PD survey, the majority of respondents indicated, as an example, that they believed father involvement was correlated with higher academic achievement. It is not clear if respondents held these beliefs independently at the inception of the partnership or if they perhaps learned of these connections during an earlier PD offered by the authors.

The current study offers a small glimpse into the world of a school–university partnership and its ability to actualize meaningful reflection on family engagement practices. Results also indicate a greater awareness of significant male figures/fathers and their needs. Content delivered during each PD supports capacity building in terms of teachers’ ability to see fathers and father figures as meaningful contributors within the context of the school environment. Participants mentioned that the PD taught them ways to recognize and remediate some of the insidious communication barriers that exist.

Participants stated that they grew in their understanding of intentional connections with significant male figures, noting a concerted effort to ensure communication of information pertaining to school events, conferences and, in some cases, individualized educational programs (IEPs). Staff members also felt as though the pandemic fostered greater connections with fathers who were working at home and who were simultaneously helping their children access online learning platforms. However, it is noteworthy that the latter benefit was likely a positive side effect of mandatory home-based learning as opposed to a direct result of the present study. Socially, the authors all find ourselves embarking on a bit of social uncertainty, where perhaps it is no longer appropriate or significant to mention one's gender. Nonetheless, the research highlights the unique contributions that fathers and father figures can make to children's positive trajectory, and the authors espouse that the current study suggests that virtual PD sessions can help train school personnel to recognize and foster such relationships.

The past few decades have ushered in an awareness of significant male involvement and its importance in the development of young children. Despite this surge of interest, the research on father/significant male involvement in the school context remains limited. Additionally, the implementation of virtual PD and its potential positive impacts remain largely unexplored, especially when the intersection with father engagement practices is considered. As such, the authors espouse that the present study reflects a unique combination of content and pedagogy.

There are many factors that contribute to a person's career choice. The decision of whether or not to join the family business is certainly most influenced by parents. The aim of this research is to determine how much of an impact parents have on their next-generation family members' (NGFMs) decision to join the family business.

Following a positivistic paradigm, a cross-sectional design was followed using a quantitative, self-administered questionnaire through a judgemental sampling technique. A structured questionnaire was distributed to South African respondents who have parents who own a family business. The data were analysed using Statistica.

The results indicate that parental style, culture, self-efficacy and parental identification were found to influence the NGFMs' intention to join the family business significantly. Their decisions can be influenced by several factors, and parents can better manage these aspects by being aware of these influencing factors.

Given the imminent ageing of a large cohort of senior leaders, this research adds to the body of knowledge by highlighting the necessity for committed, willing and ready next-generation family members (NGFMs) to ensure efficient succession in family businesses. Therefore, effective management is required for succession-planning, particularly from the perspective of the successor.

This study, therefore, responds to calls for more in-depth quantitative studies on family businesses in general and on Black-owned family businesses in South Africa in particular. This study will evaluate the significance of parent influence on NGFMs to join Black family-owned businesses in South Africa. This research will assist family business owners and their families in understanding their children's intentions, designing and evolving an appropriate system to instill necessary traits, skills and attitudes in the children, preparing them for upcoming challenges, adding new perspectives to the family business and ensuring its profitability and long-term growth.

Children are gradually attaining recognition as service users and their involvement in service development has been advanced in recent years. This study draws on empirical research in social and health-care services designed for children and families. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how professionals understand children’s involvement as experts by experience. The focus is on professionals’ views and intergenerational relations.

The research data comprise 25 individual and 10 group interviews with managers and professionals working in social and health-care services in one Finnish province. The data were analysed using qualitative thematic analysis.

The professionals recognised the value of children’s service user involvement. However, they concentrated more on the challenges than the possibilities it presents. Health-care professionals emphasised parental needs and children’s vulnerability. In turn, the professionals from social services and child welfare non-governmental organisations perceived children as partners, although with reservations, as they discussed ethical issues widely and foregrounded the responsibilities of adults in protecting children. In general, the professionals in both domains saw themselves as having ethical responsibility to support children’s service user involvement while at the same time setting limits to it.

This study confirmed the importance of taking intergenerational relations into account when developing children’s service user involvement. The results indicate that professionals also need to reflect on the ethical challenges with children themselves as, largely owing to the generational position of children as minors, they rarely perceive them as partners in ethical reflection.

In an era of increased autonomy and accountability in education, school principals have been given the responsibility for many tasks that used to be centralized, such as hiring and managing personnel, ensuring that the curriculum is followed and that the development of the school is on the right path. In this study an exploration is attempted into the associations among institutional context, school leadership, school climate and student outcomes.

The authors analyze data from the Programme of International Student Assessment study 2015 to identify variations in institutional context (autonomy and accountability) among education systems to determine whether and how institutional context is associated with leadership and whether education systems, in turn, are associated with school climate and students' achievement in reading. To account for the hierarchical structure of the education systems under investigation, a three-level structural equation modeling (SEM) approach was employed to analyze the data gathered on the institutions, schools and students.

No association was found between the degree of autonomy of an education system and leadership behavior; however, accountability and leadership seemed to go together. Achievement in reading competencies was greater in school systems in which principals had more autonomy. At the school level, a relationship was found between leadership and opportunities for parental involvement.

The results of this study indicate the need of strong leadership in order to have better results when there is more accountability. In this sense, the authors' findings also point to the increased importance of context-sensitive leadership skills.

Involvement of parents/carers may increase effectiveness of primary school-based alcohol-misuse prevention projects through strengthening family-based protective factors, but rates of parental engagement are typically low. This paper reports findings from an exploratory trial of a school-based prevention intervention – Kids, Adults Together (KAT), based on the Social Development Model, which aimed to promote pro-social family communication in order to prevent alcohol misuse, and incorporated strategies to engage parents/carers. The purpose of this paper is to assess the feasibility and value of conducting an effectiveness trial of KAT.

The study was a parallel-group cluster randomised exploratory trial with an embedded process evaluation. The study took place in south Wales, UK, and involved nine primary schools, 367 pupils in Years 5/6 (aged 9-11 years) and their parents/carers and teachers. Questionnaires were completed by pupils at baseline and four month follow-up, and by parents at six month follow-up.

Overall KAT was delivered with good fidelity, but two of five intervention schools withdrew from the study without completing implementation. In total, 50 per cent of eligible parents participated in the intervention, and KAT had good acceptability among pupils, parents and teachers. However, a number of “progression to effectiveness trial” criteria were not met. Intermediate outcomes on family communication (hypothesised to prevent alcohol misuse) showed insufficient evidence of an intervention effect. Difficulties were encountered in identifying age appropriate outcome measures for primary school-age children, particularly in relation to family communication processes. The study was unable to find comprehensive methodological guidance on exploratory trials.

It would not be appropriate to conduct an effectiveness trial as key progression criteria relating to intervention and trial feasibility were not met. There is a need for new measures of family communication which are suitable for primary school-age children, and more guidance on the design and conduct of exploratory/feasibility trials.

KAT achieved high rates of parental involvement, and its theoretical framework and processes could be adapted by other interventions which experience difficulties with recruitment of parents/carers.

The topic of parent migration and its effects on the family environment has become a focus of moral dilemmas in East Europe for the last three decades. Children have been portrayed as social orphans and parents working abroad as neglectful parents. Today, with more evidence from research and experience, the impact of parental migration is much more comprehensive and nuanced, recognising its noxious or even harmful but also possibly empowering effects. This chapter reflects on the involvement of left-behind adolescents as co-researchers in a study of transnational families. It acknowledges the agentic role of children (often automatically labelled as victims of neglect), amplifies their voices to inform existing data on the impact of parents' departure to work abroad and identifies directions for intervention that might strengthen families.

The research is an integral part of CASTLE – Children Left Behind by Labour Migration, an ongoing project (June 2021–December 2023). ¹ This chapter presents the research collaboration experience with 12 co-researcher adolescents with previous left-behind experiences, originating from Moldova and currently residing in Romania. The co-researchers participated in all stages of the research process: training, design of data collection, recruitment of research participants, data analysis and dissemination of results. Taking co-researcher roles had an empowering effect on adolescents, who learnt how to express their views on the topic, voiced their experiences about the emotional costs of being left behind by their parents and reflected on sensitive issues like separation of family members and violence in the family.

This paper aims to investigate the extent to which family roles and settings can mediate the impact of unemployment on psychological well-being among Italian households.

Using the European Health Interview Survey data for 2015, the authors adopt linear regression models to evaluate the effect of family settings on the mental health outcomes of unemployment, in particular on the likelihood of developing depression. The latter is measured using the internationally validated Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-8). Since the gender gap in occupation has not ceased to exist in Italy, special attention is paid to the differences between males and females in the workforce.

The results suggest that involvement in parental roles has a moderating influence on unemployment mental health outcomes among both men and women, although it has a higher effect on the female workforce. Moreover, the study shows that “not living far from the family of origin” could be considered a crucial moderating factor for both gender categories.

The novelty of this paper lies in its consideration of the implications the social definition of gender roles may have on gender-related expectancies and attributions in life domains, such as work and family.

This paper aims to focus on how reading for pleasure is transmitted within the family. Using data taken from the Programme for International Student Assessment test of 2009, which dealt in depth with the reading proficiency of students, the authors show that children of parents who read for pleasure are better readers. Within the extensive research and published results on reading performance, the authors focused on the transmission of parents’ reading attitudes to their children.

In this study, the authors have opted for an approach of “difference in differences”, applied to a population that represents all 15-year-olds from five countries (Germany, Denmark, Hungary, Italy and Portugal). To support this study, the authors chose as a response variable the difference between reading performance and maths performance of each student, taking into account five plausible values for each student. The authors have several explanatory variables, among them what we call the “treatment”, which is the parents’ enthusiasm for reading.

The calculated estimations clearly indicate that there is a positive effect for four out of the five countries analysed, ranging from 4 points for Italy to 6.5 points for Germany and Portugal. As for the significance of the effect, with the exception of Hungary, the result is reliable and robust. It should also be noted that the variable that indicates the existence of a reading habit by children (daily reading for pleasure) is seen as a factor that positively affects the difference between competence in reading and mathematics in four out of the five countries analysed.

The results show positive effects on children whose parents read for pleasure, and this fact should be used to further encourage parents to promote their own reading time for pleasure. In view of the already quantified trend in international reports that adults are reading less, it seems crucial to involve educational authorities in reversing this phenomenon, knowing the impact that adult reading habits have on the reading competence of young people.

Introduction: The birth of a preterm child requires hospitalization in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), which is a very stressful experience for parents. Aim: To determine the stress level of parents of preterm babies admitted to intensive and sub-intensive units in two hospitals in Northern Italy and its association with their sociodemographic variables and the clinical conditions of their newborns.

The sampling was non-probabilistic and included parents of preterm babies admitted to intensive and/or sub-intensive care for at least 10 days. Instruments: (1) information deduced from the clinical record of preterm newborns; (2) sociodemographic determinants of parents' well-being deduced from a questionnaire; (3) parental stress scale: neonatal intensive care unit (PSS:NICU), which measures the perception of parents about stressors from the physical and psychological environment of the NICU.

Results: A total of 104 parents of 59 hospitalized preterm babies participated in the study. The average parental stress level was 1.87 ± 0.837. The subscale score that got higher was parent-infant relationship subscale. Concerning the infant characteristics, the birth weight of the babies and the length of their hospitalization affected the parents' stress level. Looking at parents' sociodemographic characteristics instead, the greater predictors were gender, age and occupational social class.

The parental role alteration caused by infant premature birth and consequent hospitalization is a major stressor for parents and in particular for mothers. The variables that resulted positively associated with higher stress in parents of preterm infants hospitalized are specific parental characteristics, including not adequately or previously studied ones, and infant characteristics.

Using a Southeast Asian context, this paper asks a question that has seldom been researched: Is there a divergence between parents’ and their college-going children’s perceptions of education and employability at a time of rapid economic change? If such a divergence exists, it would have hidden costs for the children. Parents’ choice of professions no longer in demand when their children reach working age can permanently damage the latter’s earning power. Also, parents’ choice of fields of study that their children are not proficient or interested in jeopardizes the latter’s chances of success in their studies. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Data were collected using mixed methods, a combination of structured online questionnaires from two local special-purpose sample surveys conducted by the authors, and follow-up interviews. Graduate Employment Survey 2 (GES2) was the second of a three-phase British Council-sponsored study, focusing on TNE, that used a structured online questionnaire for students of several tertiary education institutions, both in the public and private sectors, and for several group interviews of students in 2015. A structured questionnaire was also administered to a small number of parents.

In terms of employment, the rankings of HEIs by parents and students were generally consistent. Study in foreign HEIs abroad has the highest likelihood of employment. Branch campuses were ranked next highest. Despite this, of interest is the difference in mean scores between first and second ranked HEIs. Whereas students rate branch campuses as not much inferior to foreign university campuses, parents see a major gulf between them – they rate foreign campuses more highly than branch campuses more poorly. This difference is likely caused by parents’ traditional preference for foreign study over local, coupled with a lack of TNE knowledge.

A fundamental issue of perception is how parents and students see the role of education. Is education a destination or is education a journey? This disconnect has consequences. Given the shifting nature of employment, the need for transferable skills and the fact that some of the jobs that the next generation will be doing are not even known today, parental advice based on what they know may not do justice to their children’s choice of career. Likewise, the approach of TNE to promote traditional degrees to job paths is also a conventional approach that has a limited shelf life.

The role of parents in education choice has received surprisingly scant academic attention. With technological change driving product and service innovation ever more rapidly, previously unknown types of work have emerged in a relatively short span of time. In this situation, the risk of mismatched perceptions between parents and their children, whose educational experience spans a generation, is becoming increasingly real. While most studies of a parental role have been undertaken for Western countries, there is much less research on East Asian parents’ role in their children’s education.