The Quality of Family Relations in Ensuring Sustainable Education

• Authors: Monica Sakk , Marika Veisson , Karin Lukk
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Family research is crucially important to teacher education and training because it delivers important insights for understanding the conditions of students' socialisation. Changes in family life, like longer working hours of parents, actual loss of adult company in children's life, less time spent on family activities, have raised the question of quality in family relationships. The current article discusses the main aspects of parental practices: care, control and family activities. The study analysed how students and parents understand family care, joint activities, vision of future and the differences of their conceptions. Two ethnic groups - Estonian and Russian families were studied. The current study was based on a questionnaire, which was administered to 4372 students in grades 4 through 12 of secondary schools and 2405 parents. The results were analysed using χ2-test. The results revealed that students worry about their future coping at school and about finishing the school significantly more than parents. There are differences between two ethnic groups - Estonian and Russian: Russian families tend to have higher levels of care and control than Estonian families and relations between children and parents are closer in Russian families as well. The article provides teachers with useful information to work with families of different ethnic groups.

Keywords

EN

students; parents; parental practice; care; vision of future

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 51-63

Dates

published

2009-01-01

online

2009-12-23

Contributors

author

Monica Sakk

• Tallinn University, Estonia

author

Marika Veisson

• Tallinn University, Estonia

author

Karin Lukk

• Tallinn University, Estonia

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10099-009-0040-3