Community Participation in Education: A Case Study Of Taungzalat School In Kalay, Myanmar

This study aimed to investigate the types of community participation in Taungzalat Primary School in Kalay, Myanmar, to provide information in order to develop guidelines, and to enhance community participation in school. A mixedmethods research was employed in this study. Quantitative data were collected from 245 community members using a multiple-response questionnaire. Qualitative data were collected using in-depth interviews and a focus group discussion with 19 participants. The data were analysed using Basic Statistics and content analysis and were integrated through triangulation. The results revealed that parents and community members differently involved in children’s learning and school development through all the six types of involvement by Epstein, but their participation was more directly related to student learning improvement than to school development. Community leaders, businesspersons and influential people in the community were involved in school development through PTA, representing the community, in the areas of decision-making, fundraising and school maintenance. Apart from teaching, teachers had roles of facilitating, communicating, networking and mobilizing for school development and students’ success. Research showed that the most common form of participation is resource contribution for school development. Therefore, the research suggests that all stakeholders focus on student learning improvement and on resource contribution for school development.


Background and rationale of the study
It has been known for a long time that community participation in education or school, family and community partnership is important because of its association with a number of positive outcomes for students and school development Hoover-Dempsey, et al., 2005). If community and school work hand in hand and have a good relationship and The fifth type, decision making, is to include community members, parents and families in school decision making, to have parent leaders and representatives in school meetings (Epstein & Sheldon, 2002;Williams, 2017). By involving community members in educational leadership roles, the represented leaders may become the information sources to family and community members in order to support the school (Epstein, 2010;Washington, 2016). If parents and teachers collaborate in leading school with some goal and interest, children will benefit with experience enhancement (Epstein & Sheldon, 2002;Mombourquette, 2007).
Activities in the fifth type allow community members to contribute their ideas concerning about school improvement, policies and plans. Because most of family and community members do not really want to be part of the committees or the leading roles but want to raise their voices and want someone will present their ideas and opinions for them, it is crucial to appoint parent leaders who can be the representatives of family and community and who will serve on the school council, school improvement teams, parent-teacher association (PTA), parent-teacher organization (PTO), advisory group and committees (Washington, 2016). Appointed community leaders should be active and must get ideas from parent, family and community member in order to share with the school. They must also be active at sharing the information of the school's decision, programs and activities to parents, family and community members (Epstein & Sheldon, 2002).
When choosing community leaders to involve them in school decision making, it is important to select parents from all racial, ethics, socioeconomic, and other groups within the school population (Derrick-Lewis, 2001). They must also be trained appropriately so that their leadership skills will improve and they will be able to represent other families properly (Epstein & Sheldon, 2002). Moreover, Epstein and Sheldon suggested that for the upper level, school should also have student representatives in decision making. When parents are involved in decision making, actively collaborating with school, teachers and school will know what the stakeholders want. They will gain insight to families' perspectives regarding to school policies and school decision making. In turn, parents will respect teachers and understand school policies and decision making better; moreover, their leadership skills will also be improved. As a result, school performance and students' achievement will get higher (Williams, 2017).
The sixth and final type, collaborating with the community, is to identify and integrate resources as well as services from the community in order to strengthen school programs, family practices, and students' learning (Epstein, 2010). Schools will get support from the community, and their relation with business in the community will be reinforced if schools' collaboration with community is effective (Williams, 2017).
School community is a component of everybody who has a great interest in improving the quality of education or in providing quality education (Derrick-Lewis, 2001). Furthermore, school community is not just parents and families, but it also refers to the various individuals, groups, businesses, and institutions that invest in the welfare and vitality of a public school and its community -i.e., the neighbourhoods and municipalities served by the school (Epstein, 2010). The involvement of community will bring a great amount of beneficial services to students and schools such as business partnerships, cultural organizations, healthcare, recreational centres, senior citizen programs, faith-based programs, governmental agencies, and other groups (Washington, 2016). Furthermore, services including mentoring, tutoring after school care, social development activities and volunteer services to support school can be involved. Collaboration with community can also help improve children's skills, enrich their knowledge and talent through curricular and extracurricular experience and exploration. Moreover, children will also gain self-confidence and ownership of the community they grow up and live in, as they participate in collaborating activities in the community (Epstein, 2010;Williams, 2017).
Collaboration with community will also enhance school staff members', teachers' and administrators' knowledge of the community and make them aware of the community resources that they can use for curriculum development and enriching Journal of Education in Black Sea Region Vol. 5, Issue 1, 2019 103 | P a g e students' experience (Epstein, 2010;Mombourquette, 2007). As the benefit of the services offered by the community is huge, especially to administrators assisting parents and children, school should really consider how to increase community involvement.
Epstein's theory of overlapping spheres provides a model of the involvement of the family, school and community in education of children (Epstein & Sheldon, 2002;Washington, 2016).  developed a framework to measure the degree or level of community participation in education by integrating Bray's (2000) framework and Epstein's (2010) theory. According to Bray (2000), participation includes genuine participation and pseudo-participation. Genuine participation is the process by which participants voluntarily participate in the development process with equal rights, power and influences in decision making. In contrast, in pseudo-participation, people participate only in counselling and collecting information needed to complete development, research, or surveys. Participants have no authority or authority. Between pseudo-involvement and genuine involvement, there are (1) use of services, (2) donation of resources, (3)attendance at meetings, (4) counselling, (5) involvement in service delivery, (6) delegated power, and (7) real power. In order to measure parent or community participation in education, these two theories - Bray's (2000) f and Epstein's (2010) -were integrated by  as shown in Table 1.

Research Design
This is a single case study employing a mixed-methods research.

Population and Sample
Taunghzalat Primary School (TPS), Kalay, Myanmar was chosen as the research site. There were 700 community members in the community of the selected primary school. For quantitative phase, Taro Yamane Formula n = N/1+N(e)2 was applied, where n = sample size, N = population, e= acceptable of sampling error, and p < 0.05, 229 participants (n=229) meeting the inclusion criteria were recruited using random sampling method. For qualitative data, 19 participants, who met the inclusion criteria, were interviewed, including the school principal, 5 teachers, 3 community leaders, 8 school committee members, and 3 parent who had experience in participation.

Research Instruments
For the quantitative phase, a multiple response questionnaire was used to collect the data. The questionnaire was piloted with 30 samples, and the Cronbach's Alpha value for the reliability was .75. Content validity was tested by three experts, and the result was acceptable. For the qualitative phase, in-depth interviews, focus-group discussion and observation were used to collect primary data. Secondary data were collected from the documents and records.

Data Collection
After questionnaire adjustment was carried out, it was translated, duplicated, and sent to the participants along with a cover letter introducing and explaining the purpose of the study stressing the confidentiality of responses and enlisting the response of the participants. Afterward, in-depth interviews were conducted, followed by focus-group discussion and observation. With permission, the secondary data were collected from documents and record of the community and school.

Data Analysis Procedure
Quantitative data were analysed using Basic Statistics: mean, frequency and percentage. After conducting the interviews, the researcher transcribed Burmese conversations of the interview, which were then translated into English. The data from interviews, documents and record were coded and analysed using content analysis. The results of quantitative and qualitative data analysis were integrated using triangulation. The degree of community participation was measured using the model by  that integrated Epstein's types of involvement (Epstein, 2010) and Bray's Framework (Bray, 2000).

Ethical Considerations
This study followed the concept of Smith's (2003) "Five Principles for Research Ethics" and the guidelines of MoE, Myanmar to protect participants' confidentiality.

Characteristics of Survey Respondents
A total of 229 subjects, students' parents and other community members working in the leading roles, participated in this study.
Of the subjects, 75 (32.8%) were males with mean age of 44.8, and 154 (67.2%) were females with mean age of 34.5. 1.3% of the subjects had a master's degree level, and 18.8% had bachelor degrees, while the majority (72.1%) had high school levels of education. 7.9% did not mention their educational level, and 45 (19.7%) respondents did not want to mention their occupation.
A majority (18.3%) of the respondents were unemployed. The reason why they were unemployed was that they were the mothers in the family and dependent on the husbands. The second most significant occupation was famer (13.1%), followed by home

Types of community participation in school
The results of the study showed that various groups of community members of the Taungzalat Primary School, comprising of teachers, students' parents, local authorities (community leaders), businesspersons and students, participated in children's learning and school development. All the stakeholders had different perspectives towards community involvement and involved in education differently. The different ways of participation included activities such as parenting, learning at home, communicating, volunteering, decision making and collaborating.  Table 3). In connection with decision making and collaboration as shown in table 6, this study found that parents, school supported committees, community leaders, and the churches in the community participated in school development. However, their participation in decision-making could be assumed as low even though their opinion were asked (45.9%). 6.8% of the community reported to have participated as members of school committee, and 3.9% in school program planning and evaluating. Community

Qualitative research findings 4.2.1. Characteristics of interview key informants
For qualitative phase, the key informants included 19 personnel comprising the principal of the school, 4 teachers, 3 community leaders, 8 school committee members and 3 parents who had experience in participation.

Interview results on types of community participation
One of the key findings of the qualitative method application was that the majority of the community members of Taungzalat School had a positive attitude towards education, getting good education was very important for their children. The common views among them on community involvement was that distributing financial help and materials to the body of school for improving school and education is important.
Interview results confirmed the quantitative findings by revealing that, apart from teacher and school staff, the most involved groups in children learning and school development were parents of the students, members of the school committee, and local authorities. Students' parents more directly participated at home than at school, while local authorities and members of school committee participated more directly in school development.
Regarding parenting and learning at home, observation revealed that parents and siblings of children, especially those who had little kids, took their children to school and picked them up after school. Parents also had alternative ways if they themselves could not take or pick up their children.
In terms of communication between school and community, one of the ways to disseminate the information about school activities and development was annual meeting, held three times a year. The second way to spread news and information about school activities and school development to all community members was fulfilled through students, members of school committee and local authorities. In fact, if the school had an upcoming meeting, they would 1) ask students to deliver invitation letters to their parents, 2) ask local authorities to make announcement about an upcoming meeting, and 3) ask members of school committee to deliver invitation letters to homes where students could not reach. Communication between school (teachers) and parents was commonly carried out through parents' visits to school, formal written communication tools, phone calls, and teacherparent meetings. Most effective and convenient ways to discuss children's learning and behaviors at school seemed to be phone calls and teacher-parent meetings.
Volunteering activities of community members found in the interview results were encouraging children in the community to attend school and sharing educational information in the community. The community members were inspired by a common purpose to improve education for the next generation. They all believed that education would equip the next generation well to become efficient leaders or get well-paid jobs. However, these stakeholders too much focused on participating through contributing physical materials in education that consumed significant community resources.
Another important finding of the interview was that school boards and community leaders were working closely with schools to develop education, including fundraising and school maintenance. Schools always discussed school projects, These data were collected from school documents and records. Taungzalat Primary School was founded as a self-supported school; however, the school was later developed and recognized as a public primary school by the Ministry of Education, Myanmar.
According to the results from document as seen in Figure 2, within the TPS School, the principal is the head of the school who makes sure that the school runs properly in accordance with rules and regulation of MoE, Myanmar. The principal is also the key person in planning, drawing strategies, and implementing those strategies for school success and students' academic achievement. Schoolteachers and volunteer teachers in cooperation with school board (PTA), community leaders, and parents supported the principal. In this school, businesspersons (donors) and community leaders also played important roles in administration system. Education Administration Department (EAD) heads the TPS. EAD oversees and monitors TPS to function properly according to the rules and regulation of MoE, Myanmar. EAD also gives consultation related to school planning and primary education (See Figure 2).

Teachers Volunteer Teachers
School Board (PTA) Parents, community leaders who are interested in education 4.2.4. The formation, structure, and administration system of Taungzalat community Figure 3. The formation, structure, and administration system of Taungzalat community Similarly, these data were collected from Taungzalat community documents and records. In Taungzalat community, there is one community head (chief administrator), ten hundred household administrators and one clerk. All of them are appointed by the community, and they are responsible for improving the community in every aspect including peace, safety, education, and mobilization for a common cause -designing courses of community action in order to overcome the challenges with dedication, honesty and integrity (see figure 3).

Discussion
Scholars on child behavior development generally have accepted the assumption that parents as primary caregivers probably have the greatest impact on child development (Pretorius, 2000). Thus, child development is greatly influenced by the parenting style, environment and culture (Zaman, et al., 2014). The results from activities found in this study support routine schooling, such as taking children to school and preparing children for school with study materials and proper dressing. Parents have also reported that they have approached the teacher to obtain information about their child's progress. They discussed their children's learning and progress with teachers. These activities are considered parenting because parents have created opportunities for their children to obtain knowledge through education (Epstein & Salinas, 2004;. These findings are best aligned with the previous study conducted by . Participation showed that parents have taken care of their children's future. They responded to government policies that encourage parents to send their children to school and help their children with schooling.
It also reflects parents' understanding of the value of education.

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Vol. 5, Issue 1, 2019 113 | P a g e Analysis of data showed that parents helped their children study at home after school. The ways of parent participation found in the study are supporting their children with study through teaching and checking on a daily basis if their children have finished schoolwork and homework. Most parents encouraged their children and asked them to study before they go to bed. The findings are consistent with Nguon (2012) and . The school encouraged parents to send their children to school and advised parents to provide learning support to their children. However, specific knowledge was not provided to parents and caregivers concerning the ways to help children with their learning and achieve challenges. This indicated that parenting knowledge (Epstein, 2010;, which is important for improving child learning, was not the focus of the school. This might be because the government has not paid any attention to these skills. Parental involvement in two forms of parenting and learning at home fell at the moderate level in the table of degree of parental involvement by . Despite the absence of evidence for taking part in decision making, the results showed that parents participated in discussions and informal talks. These two types of participation were, therefore, undoubtedly at the level of consultation. According to Bray (2000), counseling is about the extent to which participants share information and discuss educational programs and the progress of their children.
In terms of communication, it was clear that parents, community members and school shared school information by different means of communication, including meetings, written and oral communication tools. These findings are consistent with Epstein's theory and previous research conducted by , and Nguon (2012), indicating that community members (parents or non-parents) of the students, local authorities and other stakeholders have received updated information from meetings, letters and telephone communication. For school development, school communicated with community members and parents through meetings, and those who attended the meetings disseminated information to the community members who did not attend, so that members of the community could understand the value of education and participated in children's learning. This process meant that parents and community members have participated in communicating and interpreting educational information to a wider community. Local authorities and school boards were also found to participate using a variety of means of communication, such as meetings, telephone calls and school visits. These activities are considered as communicating activities (Epstein and Salinas, 2004). The school has helped community, parents and school committee spread information to a broader community, especially to the members with lower levels of information literacy. These results showed that communication through phone calls was used to communicate formally about children's learning outcomes between schools and parents. This kind of communication was more appropriate and effective than written communication with parents whose ability to read and write are low (Epstein, 2018;. Other options that could be applied, too, such as meetings and home visits. They, together with phone calls, require more effort from the teacher and the parent. Regarding volunteering, research showed that there were a group of 8 persons volunteering as paid teachers and a group of 16 community members working with schools to develop and improve schools as volunteer groups. A school board member was a community representative of a school composed of multiple members, such as local authorities, retired teachers, teachers, and parents. The school board members participated in meetings with teachers to develop school development plans, discuss school and educational development, and conduct fundraising activities for school development. These results are consistent with Epstein's Theory (Epstein, 2010) and results by . Students also volunteered for school environmental clean-up, school safety and other school voluntary service activities. Community members, family and local authorities also volunteered by participating at school meetings and at some school events. Because this area seemed to be left to teachers, I could not find any voluntary activity related to teachers helping to develop the classroom and curriculum. These results showed that community members are actively contributing to the improvement of schools and education. It has been reported that people in the

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Vol. 5, Issue 1, 2019 114 | P a g e community were active in disseminating educational information. The nature of community and parental involvement in the above education is consistent with the fifth level of participation.
Participation in decision making is involvement of parents and community members in school advocacy for school decision making, management, and school and educational development through school boards (Hornby, 2011;Epstein, & Salinas, 2004).
It was clear that the school committee had a variety of rights and certain powers in the decision-making process, especially in school buildings and road construction. This finding was best aligned with the views of Botes and Van Rensburg (2000), indicating, to some extent, that school committees have represented the views and perspectives of parents. The school and the school committee were observed to have the power shared in the decision-making process in budget planning and monitoring the school. Schools worked in partnership with the school committee to develop school, in which the power was distributed. These findings are consistent with Epstein's (2010) theory. Based on Bray (2000), it has become clear that genuine participation occurs as power is dispersed between community and school. However, school committees were not invited while making decision for curriculum development and teaching methods.
In terms of collaborating between school and community, research showed that the most common form of participation in education was resource contribution. Community members, local authorities and family donated available resources such as money, materials and labor to school fees and environmental improvements when the school asked for it. As government budget was not enough, their contributions have been found to be important for school development. The practices reported in this study reflect Rose's (2003) claim that community contributions are desirable when public resources are not sufficient. These findings are consistent with Sanders (2001) in terms of factors that improve community involvement in education. Community, parents and school collaborative activities have been reported to occur at different levels, from resource allocation to power withdrawn. Local communities, parents, students, teachers, and local authorities reportedly worked in partnership in fundraising and networking for child safety. This engagement indicated that the community and the teachers respected each other in decision making. Thus, cooperative participation can be assumed as reaching the level of Bray's "delegated power."

Recommendations
This study provides a better understanding of community involvement in Myanmar education. It is recommended that: 1. the school management team uses the results of this study to reflect their approach to community involvement in schools; 2. decision makers involving in educational policies of local and national government agencies should be informed of these results in connection with developing community participation policies for educational services.
3. Further research into community participation in education in Myanmar could be useful in several areas. It is desirable to conduct: 4. a study on the effect of community and parent involvement on students learning; 5. a correlation study to investigate relationship between community involvement and primary, middle and high school students' academic performance factors -to name a few: achievement, attendance, attitude toward school and student engagement;

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Vol. 5, Issue 1, 2019 115 | P a g e 6. research focusing not only on the ways how community resources are mobilized, but also on how local people should be engaged more in children's learning process.