8 ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL EDUCATORS ’ AND PARENTS ’ COOPERATION POSSIBILITIES : PROMOTING AND HINDERING FACTORS

The article deals with the peculiarities of social educators’ and parents’ cooperation possibilities in schools. The article presents the analysis of a qualitative semi-structured interview with parents (N=15) and a quantitative study with school educators (N=176). Employing targeted content analysis of parents’ and teachers’ opinion and written quantitative questionnaire, the peculiarities and possibilities of the cooperation between the participants of the educational process have manifested themselves. These include possible cooperation areas, factors promoting and hindering this process.


Introduction
In the modern society one of the key characteristics of the organisation in the learning society is cooperation grounded activity.According to Hargreaves (1999), one of emergent and most promising meta-paradigms of the post-modern age is that of collaboration as an articulating and integrating principle of action, planning, culture, development, organisation and research.Cooperation becomes an effcient response to the world, which makes it impossible to foresee problems, when the solutions of the latter are unclear and requirements become increasingly intensive.In such context cooperation is diverse, broad and is offered as a solution for many various challenges with which the society, educational institutions and their communities encounter.Hence, at the moment, cooperation is a particularly signifcant factor of society improvement and development, which is treated by scientists as a modern approach and strategy, in which the educator's new position towards pupils and families manifests itself.This position manifests itself by a pedagogical ability to treat participants of the educational process as tantamount partners (Kontautienė, 2006(Kontautienė, , 2010)).
The Dictionary of Modern Lithuanian Language (1993) defnes "cooperation" as a joint work acting together, concentrating intellectual capacities, helping each other and joining forces.The scientists' community has to acknowledge that we can hardly fnd a common, universal cooperation model that would be suitable for various social welfare areas; the activities of communities of educational and upbringing institutions is not an exception.Moreover, communities of these institutions encounter with substantial challenges, complicated social and educational problems because learners' experience becomes increasingly intense and diverse, it happens to work with children from single parent families or from families who went abroad, with children who are inclined to commit a crime, poor achievers.A big share of responsibility for children's welfare falls on educators, who would fnd it diffcult to provide quality support and ensure children's welfare on their own, without the assistance and collaboration with families, school and other institutions (Dobranskienė, 2002;Ališauskienė & Miltenienė, 2003;Merfeldaitė, 2007Merfeldaitė, , 2009a;;Anafara & Mertens, 2008;Kontautienė, 2010).Collegial cooperation enables decision making, sharing responsibilities between the participants of the educational process and search for new solutions.

Analysis of Social Educator's and Parents' Cooperation Possibilities
To fnd out parents' and educators' cooperation possibilities in various activity areas, the respondents were given statements, disclosing joint activity and activeness areas of educational process participants (pupils' self-education, achievements, behaviour, drug usage, inappropriate behaviour prevention, informal education, etc.).Analysing the research data on cooperation in various activity areas, internal reliability indicator Cronbach's alpha of the questionnaire (internal consistency measure α=0,860) was established, enabling to state about the reliability of the questionnaire.Educators, parents and other participants of the educational process cooperate solving various problems related to (self-) education and social support.At this stage of the survey it was sought to analyse in which areas of the educational process the respondents cooperated the most and in which areas more activeness and cooperation should be sought.Various areas of cooperation were distinguished in the study.Analysing the data, it was found that according to educators, cooperation with parents had to take place analysing children's self-education and achievements (t ≤ 0,020), solving risk group pupils' problems, analysing inappropriate behaviour (t ≤ 0,028), (t ≤ 0,002), analysing the situation of pupils receiving social and material support, involving pupils in school events (t ≤ 0,050) and organising, conducting educator's and parents' meetings (t ≤ 0,051).The research data show that learners' achievements, behaviour, drug usage, material wellbeing (especially of children from risk families) are those problematic activity areas, successful solution of which require joint parents', children's and educators' efforts.Respondents see meaningfulness of cooperation in ensuring family wellbeing, parents' participation at the meetings (t ≤ 0,051), pupils' involvement in school events (t ≤ 0,050).Statistically reliable data were obtained in these activity areas.
Senior and junior age educators maintain that it is important to cooperate in the areas of project preparation, informal education, and organisation of joint events with parents, development of social abilities, school truancy, adaptation, meeting special needs or even inservice development.Although in these areas of cooperation no statistically reliable data were obtained, the results show the tendencies of possible development of these areas, encouraging versatile school-family cooperation.
The areas of educator-family cooperation that manifested themselves in the study are also provided for in the most important documents regulating social educators' activities (Social Educator's Job Description (2001)

, Social Educator's Qualifcation Requirements (2001), Regulations of Provision of Social Pedagogical Support (2011).
The study aimed to analyse both educators' and parents' opinion about cooperation development possibilities in school communities.For this purpose a qualitative in-depth study was conducted: a semi-structured interview, involving the analysis of cooperation success cases, promoting and hindering factors.The research data were processed employing the content analysis method according to the foreseen diagnostic areas.Parents were asked to

ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL EDUCATORS' AND PARENTS' COOPERATION POSSIBILITIES:PROMOTING AND HINDERING FACTORS
Daiva Alifanovienė, Asta Vaitkevičienė, Žydra Musvicienė express their opinion about the factors, which in their opinion, were promoting or enabling successful cooperation between the participants of the educational process.Parents' statements enabled to distinguish the following factors grouped into categories (see Table 2).The research data show that parents treat specialists' personal features as the main factor promoting the cooperation with educators.Parents are of the opinion that cooperating with a mature personality, successful resolution of social and educational problems can be expected.Informants attribute respect, sincerity, empathy, understanding, care, goodwillingness and positive attitude towards learners to the features of the educator's mature personality.Parents' opinion apparently shows that not only subject knowledge and competency are important in the interaction of participants of the educational process but also the maturity of the personality, positive self-evaluation and positive evaluation of the child (Maslow, 2006(Maslow, , 2011;;Rogers, 2005).In the interaction "person-person" (not "person-machine"), the features and maturity of the specialist's personality become important.Parents fnd it easier to address a teacher, who is frank, tolerant and not blaming, not diminishing learners' abilities, a teacher who is good willing, envisages advantages, and respects children and parents, hoping for positive cooperation and support.
The research results demonstrate that solving social and educational problems of learners and families, parents think that it is important that the social educator should work together with other professionals (a psychologist, special educator, subject teachers, class tutors), sharing important information and informing in a timely manner.According to parents, the factor promoting positive cooperation is involvement of families in school life is the organisation of open lessons, after-school activities and meetings.Then parents will feel not only as creators of material welfare of school community, "fre-fghters" of arisen problems but also tantamount members of the community, equal participants searching for the way out, who are able to get involved into this process as tantamount members of the social education process.The research data analysis demonstrates that the main factor hindering cooperation, according to parents, is again not the teacher's subject-based and professional competencies but personality features.Parents envisaged that educators working in schools are educated, they are university graduates but, according to parents, they lack personality maturation.In parents' opinion, a mature person can much more successfully help to solve social and educational problems arising in families and, on the contrary, an immature teacher does not ensure the success of the support provision process.Informants attribute indifference, lack of

ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL EDUCATORS' AND PARENTS' COOPERATION POSSIBILITIES:PROMOTING AND HINDERING FACTORS
Daiva Alifanovienė, Asta Vaitkevičienė, Žydra Musvicienė good willingness and tolerance, disrespect, moralising, imposing one's opinion, unconcern, disinterest in children, unwillingness to cooperate, in many cases formation of preconception about children to lack of maturity.
In parents' opinion, pupils not always can trust educators; teachers' opinion is often categorical, one-sided, not attempting to understand children's needs.According to parents, successful cooperation is hindered by teachers' big workload and fatigue; constant attempt to adjust to changing working conditions causes permanent tension, fatigue.Parents' frequent visits and work abroad, when children are left to live with grandparents or other relatives, can also be a factor hindering cooperation.
A small share of informants indicated that, in their opinion, there are no factors hindering cooperation; they stated: "I would think that there are no such factors because all services and teachers are working for the sake of the child", "there is only a lack of wish and efforts seeking cooperation, even if you work abroad, you can fnd ways how to take interest: there is Skype, e-mail, etc.".

Generalisations
• Analysing qualitative research data, key cooperation areas of participants of the educational process manifested themselves.Statistically reliable data show that teachers think that the cooperation with parents should take place while analysing children's self-education and achievements (t ≤ 0,020), solving risk group pupils' problems (t ≤ 0,028), analysing inappropriate behaviour (t ≤ 0,002), situation of pupils receiving social and material support (t ≤ 0,050), involving pupils in school events and organising parents' meetings.Cooperation is equally important seeking good academic achievements, appropriate behaviour, drug usage prevention, parents' and pupils' involvement in school community life.• The analysis of the qualitative study enables to state that parents think that the most important factor promoting cooperation with educators is educators' personal features, to which parents attribute respect, sincerity, empathy, understanding, care, goodwillingness and positive attitude to learners.Cooperating with the mature personality, successful resolution of social and educational problems can be expected.Data analysis shows that not only subject knowledge and competency are important in the interaction of educational process participants but also the maturity of the personality, positive self-evaluation and positive child's evaluation.The social educator's work together with other professionals of the child's welfare (a psychologist, special educator, subject teachers, class tutors) and parents' involvement in school life (organisation of open lessons, after-school activities, meetings) should also be treated as an important factor promoting cooperation.• Research data analysis demonstrates that the main factor hindering cooperation, according to parents, is not the teacher's subject-based and professional competencies but personality features.Teachers working in schools are educated, they are university graduates but according to parents, they lack personality maturation to which they attribute indifference to the problems of children and community, lack of goodwillingness and tolerance, disrespect, moralising, imposing one's opinion, unconcern, unwillingness to cooperate, often formation of preconception about children.
researches related to the explored problem, disclosing the essence of cooperation, its signifcance, hindrances and success factors of this process.Qualitative research data were analyzed employing the qualitative content analysis method.Qualitative research data were validated on the basis of education expert's conclusions.The results of the qualitative study were distributed into diagnostic areas and categories.
Analysing qualitative research data, key cooperation areas of participants of the educational process manifested themselves.Statistically reliable data show that teachers think that the cooperation with parents should take place while analyzing children's self-education and achievements (t ≤ 0,020), solving risk group pupils' problems (t 0,028), analyzing inappropriate behavior (t ≤ 0,002), situation of pupils receiving social and material support (t ≤ 0,050), involving pupils in school events and organizing parents' meetings.Cooperation is equally important seeking good academic achievements, appropriate behavior, drug usage prevention, parents' and pupils' involvement in school community life.
The analysis of the qualitative study enables to state that parents think that the most important factor promoting cooperation with educators is educators' personal features, to which parents attribute respect, sincerity, empathy, understanding, care, goodwillingness and positive attitude to learners.Cooperating with the mature personality, successful resolution of social and educational problems can be expected.Data analysis shows that not only subject knowledge and competency are important in the interaction of educational process participants but also the maturity of the personality, positive selfevaluation and positive child's evaluation.The social educator's work together with other professionals of the child's welfare (a psychologist, special educator, subject teachers, class tutors) and parents' involvement in school life (organization of open lessons, after-school activities, meetings) should also be treated as an important factor promoting cooperation.
Research data analysis demonstrates that the main factor hindering cooperation, according to parents, is not the teacher's subject-based and professional competencies but personality features.Teachers working in schools are educated, they are university graduates but according to parents, they lack personality maturation to which they attribute indifference to problems of children and community, lack of good willingness and tolerance, disrespect, moralizing, imposing one's opinion, unconcern, unwillingness to cooperate, and often the formation of preconception about children

Table 1 .
Educators' Cooperation in Various Activity Areas

Table 2 .
Factors Promoting Cooperation (N=15) *cooperation with a class tutor, social educator, psychologist (if necessary); *if one wants to achieve successful cooperation, mutual devotion is required (from parents, teachers, social educator, special educator), sparing both time and money, to discuss with teachers more often and share information;*close cooperation with subject teachers and parents; *operative reacting to problems, their solution.

Table 3 .
Factors Hindering Cooperation (N=15) *unwillingness to communicate and hear about the arisen problem.Dissociation from everything and hope that everything will settle by itself; *indifference to the pupil's education, wish to show off.Let the child be educated by school: my task is to feed and dress the child (parents' opinion); *uncontrolled emotions, lack of good-willingness; *indifference, intolerance, non-understanding; *I think, one of the key factors is unwillingness to cooperate; *unwillingness to fnd the way of solving the problem; subject teachers and pupils should learn to tolerate new, unique and