Principals' and Teachers' Views on Home Visits in Turkey

Abstract

Schools must cooperate with parents to be effective. “Families are critical to children’s educational success” as Sheldon (2018, vii), declared. The history of cooperation with parents is quite old. One effective way of cooperating with parents is home visits. The impacts of home visits on school-parent cooperation and student outcomes have been revealed in the researches. Since home visits are mostly an out-of-school activity, they are made with the dedication and personal efforts of the teachers. This study aims at revealing the opinions of teachers and principals about home visiting practices in Turkish primary and secondary schools. This is a qualitative research. The study group consists of 12 secondary schools and 10 primary schools in Sivas city center. So, the questionnaires developed by the researchers were distributed to the determined schools. The survey forms were distributed to volunteer teachers and principals. 102 survey forms from teachers and 41 principals were evaluated in accordance with the research purpose. The data obtained from the research were analyzed by content analysis method. The results show that both principals and teachers believe the positive effects of home visits and they find home visits necessary to build an effective school environment. However, they have some reservations of home visit practices.