Towards a psychological model of teacher-parent communication in Hong Kongprimary schools

Teacher attitudes and practices are considered as essential in fostering pa rental involvement in school education. In Hong Kong, amongst possible type s of home-school links, teacher-parent communication about children's learn ing has been agreed to be the primary concern of both schools and parents. This paper reports a test of a psychological model of teacher-parent commun ication in Hong Kong primary schools. The model has taken into account the theory of planned behavior, self-efficacy theory, expectancy theory and the ories of family school relations. Scales for measuring the criterion and pr edictor variables have been developed Variables that associated with teache r communication intention and practices were identified and path analyses l inking the variables in a conceptual model were conducted. Results show tha t teacher commitment and teacher efficacy in working with parents have sign ificant predictive power for teacher intention. Teacher intention, together with teacher commitment, has predictive power for teacher's time spent in communicating with parents. Relationships between individual teacher belief s and the criterion variables are also described and discussed.