Parental Involvement

Elisapee Flaherty

As a young teenager forced to leave her small home community to attend the residential high school in Frobisher Bay, Elisapee Flaherty found her contact with her parents reduced to short phone calls. She persevered to complete her high school and become a teacher. Now an Inuktitut program consultant, she finds herself wondering about the importance of parental involvement in schooling, the extent to which it has improved since her experiences as a student, and what might be done to improve it further. Her current research explores these questions and draws upon her own experience, interviews with representative stakeholders, and a review of research on parental involvement in schools in other contexts. Although improved access to higher grades in small communities has increased the potential for parental involvement in Nunavut schools, she finds there remains room for improvement and suggests strategies for doing so.