ADVANCING OF COMMUNICATION WITH PARENTS IN KOSOVO SCHOOLS

The project “Advancing Communication with Parents in Kosovo Schools” is the result of extensive research on parents’ involvement in the life of the school, which was done in Kosovo within a regional project involving 539 primary schools of Kosovo. One of the recommendations has been to devise procedures for more effective parenting meetings. This project aims to advance communication between the school and parents. The specific objective of this project is to investigate whether new methodological approaches to parental communication are useful for greater parental participation in school life. For this reason, 6 schools of Kosovo were chosen, of which 3 in urban and 3 in rural areas. Each school has chosen two school representatives, one from the school staff (mainly the headmaster of the school) and one from the parents, who participated in a two-day workshop where the procedures and new methodology for communication with parents were drafted. During the workshop, it was agreed to draft methodology and procedures for individual meetings with parents, which are not common practice in Kosovo schools. Methodology and procedures have been presented and distributed to the teachers of selected schools. Teachers are asked to hold individual meetings with parents where they are monitored during these meetings. Finally, information was collected from the selected teachers and school principals on the cooperation with parents in general and the usefulness of individual meetings using the methodology and procedures developed.