DDP 709. María Martiniello. "Participación de los Padres en la Educación: Hacia una Taxonomía para América Latina." (Participation of Parents in Education: Toward a Taxonomy for Latin America) June 1999. 41 pp. Central America Project Series

This paper develops a taxonomy of the categories of participation of parents discussed in the literature, and is presented as a frame of reference for the study of participation, and the design and implementation of policies in Latin America. Individual study of the modalities demonstrates that the only modality of participation with systematic evidence is the modality of “parents as educators.” When parents become involved in their children’s education, they interact with their children in an organized fashion, helping with homework, thus reinforcing the learning process from the classroom and raising the learning level. Other modalities of participation have an important impact on the assistance to students in school (modality of ‘parents as responsible for child rearing’), the amount of resources available to schools (‘parents as agents of support to the school’), efficiency in the use of resources, payment to educators, and assistance to educators (‘parents as agents with decision making power’).

Keywords: Community Participation, Parental Involvement, Governance of Education.

JEL Codes: I20, I21, N36.

María Martiniello, M.Ed., M.A., cursa estudios de doctorado en la Escuela de Educación de la Universidad de Harvard, con especialización en Educación Internacional. Ha sido profesora de la Escuela de Psicología en la Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (Caracas), y ha realizado investigaciones en la Oficina de Planificación del Sector Universitario y el Consejo Nacional de la Cultura en Venezuela, y en Project Zero en la Universidad de Harvard.