Preparing parents to be partners in children's education: What works? For whom? Under what circumstances? And how?

Abstract

High-quality home-school partnerships are essential for children's development, learning, and wellbeing. While research has extensively explored school and teacher strategies to enhance these partnerships, there is limited focus on building parents' capacity. Guided by the questions "What Works? For Whom? Under What Circumstances? And How?", Tianyi's talk summarises a program of work conducted at the Parenting and Family Support Centre (PFSC). While explaining the key findings and implications on important role of parental self-regulation in parent's capacity in engaging in children's education, the presentation also highlights innovations in research method to answer questions beyond simply "what works". The talk will briefly touch on method includes Stepped Wedged Cluster Randomised Trial Design (an alternative to parallel RCT design), Minimisation as an alternative to randomisation, multilevel meta-analysis method, Cross-lagged Panel Model (CLPM)/Random-Intercept Cross-lagged Panel Model (RI-CLPM), multilevel modeling (MLM), latent growth curve modeling (LGCM), and mixture modeling (e.g., latent profile analysis/latent transition analysis). 

Bio

Tianyi Ma is Postdoctoral Research Fellow who recently commenced his new role with the School of Psychology. While being early in his career, his research has been recognised through over AU$100,000 in grants, 15 refereed journal articles, one book chapter, 13 conference presentations, and various academic prizes including the McElwain Prize (2021) for the best psychology honours thesis at UQ and a Commendation at the Postgraduate Student Research Excellence Award 2024. His work investigates family-level risk and protective factors of positive child development and child mental health and their integration into the wider ecological system. He is also interested in the evaluation of evidence-based strategies to promote child mental health, such as evidence-based parenting programs. He is skilled in advanced quantitative analyses and modelling, evidence synthesis methodologies, and clinical trial research. Tianyi leads research projects in the field and is a sought-after methodologist and statistician. Tianyi is currently serving on the Early-Career Editorial Board of Prevention Science, the flagship journal of the Society for Prevention Research (USA).