How to promote co-education between home and school in rural schools

It is one of the important tasks of school work to improve the cooperative education mechanism of school family and society and promote the cooperation between school and family. Rural schools are facing more difficulties on this issue, such as the low overall education level of parents, more intergenerational parenting, relative lack of social resources, and less participation of parents and communities in school activities. Faced with the above difficulties, how should rural schools play an active role in promoting co-education between home and school?

　　　　Understand and make up the objective gap. Schools lead communities to build rural education environment together.

Recognizing and understanding the actual situation of the community is the premise of effective cooperation between home and school. Rural schools should realize the reality that students’ family conditions and educational support ability are relatively poor compared with those in cities, and try their best to make up the gap. For example, giving priority to children’s well-being, combining with the family situation and living habits of local students, we should strengthen communication with parents in daily health knowledge, nutrition knowledge, safe living matters, and school adaptation counseling, so as to provide guidance and help to students’ families. When carrying out all kinds of educational activities, we should also consider the differences of audience’s cultural level, difficulties and needs. The content and language of family education activities or lectures should be easy to understand, and simple image atlas materials can be printed and distributed appropriately. The content of education and training should also be practical and operable, not just theoretical, but also teaching parents concrete and feasible methods. Parents with low educational level, especially guardians with ancestral status, should pay more patience and find more suitable methods and strategies to communicate with them.

Under the cooperative education mechanism of home, school and community, schools should play a leading role, mobilize family and social forces, and make all adults, especially parents and guardians of children, fully aware of their influence on the next generation and their educational responsibilities. First, we should educate children to love their hometown, understand their hometown and establish the consciousness of serving their hometown; The second is to expand the educational field inside and outside the campus to help students understand and master local knowledge, hometown history and culture, and at the same time cultivate the awareness and ability of building a child-friendly village among adults; Third, school teachers, community part-time teachers or volunteers should learn some adult education skills and communication skills, and combine local production and life traditions and local folk culture when providing family education guidance and services, which is conducive to training and guidance in a more grounded and easy-to-understand way; Fourth, the school and the community should closely combine the local actual situation, design relevant school-based courses and local courses under the guidance of the concept of coordinated development of agricultural civilization, industrial civilization and digital civilization, or independently develop community education courses and community experience courses.

　　　　Using school resources to serve the community and paying attention to the needs of rural special groups

Rural educational resources and cultural resources are relatively scarce. Today, when the number of students in rural schools is shrinking and the conditions for running schools are constantly improving, rural schools can make full use of the existing software and hardware resources, as well as the link channels between schools and external resources in the community, so that schools can play the role of community cultural centers and learning centers, carry out cultural and educational activities, enrich rural spiritual and cultural life, and at the same time promote the development of co-education between home and school.

The co-education between home and school in rural society should focus on the needs of several special groups. First, carry out targeted education activities for the elderly, and teach them some knowledge related to their own interests or education, which may include how to seek medical care for the elderly, how to deal with family relations, and how to raise them from generation to generation. Second, there are many left-behind children in rural areas, and the primary dilemma they face is the lack of parental companionship and the resulting psychological and behavioral problems. On the one hand, schools and communities should strengthen the guidance to parents, so that they can understand the harm of early emotional deprivation to their children. Therefore, they should go home as often as possible, contact their children as often as possible, and teach parents some operable communication methods and psychological support methods. Third, some groups such as disabled children, students with learning difficulties, students with ADHD or dyslexia are also easily overlooked in rural areas. It is necessary for schools to train teachers in inclusive education skills, and local professional institutions should strengthen inspections and screening to provide teachers with corresponding training and guidance. Schools and professional institutions should strengthen the propaganda of inclusive education ideas, improve the social integration level of humanities and hardware environment construction in rural communities, and respect, accept and help special children integrate into society.

　　　　Promote effective communication between home and school communities and establish deep trust and cooperation.

To promote the cooperative education between home and school, we should strengthen the training of social emotional skills for all groups. Studies at home and abroad have shown that one of the main reasons for the poor cooperation between home and school is the lack of communication skills between the two sides. Effective communication is very important for all participants in educational activities and cooperative activities to reach an agreement, build mutual trust and commit to joint efforts. Both home-school communication and parent-child communication need to improve each other’s communication skills and level. To deepen the cooperation between home and school, the school should have a sense of consultation, discuss the cooperation plan with the participants, and explain the importance and influence of the matter, as well as the specific tasks that need parents to cooperate or complete.

Poor communication between home and school and lack of mutual trust are also one of the reasons why some parent committees or other types of supervision institutions are less involved in school management. In deepening the cooperation between home and school and promoting the modernization of school governance, we can strengthen the disclosure of school information and community supervision, and attract community forces to participate in school development planning or quality internal control. In terms of specific management, we can explore various forms of home-school cooperation according to the actual needs of schools. Taking students’ nutrition improvement plan as an example, schools can cooperate with farmers to build labor bases and food bases, parents can take turns to accompany meals to supervise the quality of school meals, or parents with catering experience can be invited to provide meals and management guidance. Parents or community workers can also participate in the school’s book management, security patrol, after-school service and other work. In terms of student training, the vocational skills of rural parents can also become the object of inquiry learning and the content of professional experience for students. From the perspective of serving the community, schools should take the initiative to participate in rural work and social life, such as cooperating with the community to carry out the evaluation of civilized families and healthy families, holding rural festival celebrations, participating in community development planning, etc., so that students can understand social life and participate in social services during the activities. The deep cooperation between home and school clubs can also cultivate students’ awareness of social participation and public welfare. In this process, schools can play an important irreplaceable role.

　　　　The government coordinates resources, improves management, and strengthens the reserve of the whole society’s collaborative education ability.

In the process of forming the consciousness and ability of collaborative education in the whole society, the government needs to play a coordinating role. Schools should do a good job in social resources research, family and children’s needs research, and understand the resources and time that local communities and enterprises can use for educational projects, as well as the forms and contents that social and productive activities can be connected to courses and classroom activities. Schools can design social resource maps and preliminary curriculum planning, and the government will coordinate relevant units to jointly improve the cooperation plan.

Principals and teachers are the key groups to deepen the cooperation between home and school. It is necessary to establish a system for principals and teachers to enter enterprises and communities to receive "shadow training" (also known as "experience training" and "on-the-job training"), which will help improve their cooperative planning and implementation ability, teachers’ ability to develop off-campus resources and design practical courses, and also help principals learn from management experience, thus helping to improve the quality and efficiency of school management.

Another task that the government can do is to actively cultivate non-profit organizations or non-governmental organizations and mobilize and give play to their strength in home-school cooperation. In some areas, various modes of social participation are adopted to solve the problem of left-behind children’s after-school activities, such as the government helping to coordinate the resources and venues for activities, and parents’ unions, public welfare organizations, social work associations, returning college students and other different institutions and groups undertaking the supply of teachers, the organization of courses and activities, etc., which effectively solved the situation that the school was the single subject to carry out activities in the past, and the mind was unable to do so.

Although there are some difficulties in hardware and software resources in rural schools, as long as schools, families and society, including the government and Qi Xin, work together, support and cooperate with each other, and at the same time adhere to the initial intention of educating people and follow the laws of education, they can gather strong forces and achieve good cooperative and co-educational results.

(The writer is a researcher at China Academy of Educational Sciences. This paper is the research achievement of the key entrusted project of educational research of China Education Society, "The main forms and characteristics of child-friendly schools under the background of Chinese modernization" [No.:202300002011WTB］].

China Education News, September 3, 2023, 4th Edition