This is the third in a series of opinion pieces drawing on my experience as executive director of the Bermuda Education Network.

My last opinion piece discussed how teaching has become exponentially more challenging as the social needs of our children have grown.

I received comments that reminded me that tackling behavioural challenges and developing readiness for learning are not things that educators can do alone. Improvement in student achievement is a collaboration among schools, communities and the home.

This piece examines a little of what we know works in successful school-home partnerships to support student learning.

We know that home engagement is critical to children’s academic success. We often see recommendations in magazines and on websites about “what teachers wish parents would do” or “ten things that contribute to student achievement”.

Popular suggestions include establishing a bedtime, establishing routines for completing homework, reinforcing schools’ rules and expectations, attending PTA meetings and meeting with teachers, and providing children with support for the reading and homework they complete at home. These recommendations for home-school connection and co-operation are fairly common knowledge.

The good news is that there is even more powerful information about how home engagement can complement teachers’ work. Analysts at McKinsey & Company, a worldwide leader in social-sector consulting, took data from the Programme for International Student Assessment — the education arm of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development — and published results about factors that have the most impact on student achievement.

In its 2017 analysis of data from five worldwide regions, Pisa found that the most powerful factors were students’ attitudes about learning and their participation in lessons that blend teacher-directed and inquiry-based learning. These findings show that if parents and teachers work together on these two critical areas, we could see significant improvement in student achievement.

First is the matter of mindset. By mindset, we mean students’ attitudes or beliefs. We need to talk with our children explicitly about the roles that conscientiousness and persistence play in school achievement. Drawing from Stanford professor Carol Dweck’s research, we can talk with children about how ability is not fixed and how achievement can be strengthened through effort and stick-to-itiveness.

Dweck cautions us to remember that it is not enough to tell children to “try their best”. Instead, we need to talk about the importance of persistence, and illustrate how persistence pays off, using children’s own experiences. For example, we may start a conversation by noting: “Do you remember that time when you were really struggling with multiplication? You were so stubborn about keeping at it, asking questions, and asking for support; and then you finally figured it out! This is like that time. Because you kept trying, asked for help and investigated your questions, your ability in maths improved!”

The second area on which caregivers and educators can collaborate is developing children’s dispositions for curiosity and investigation. We need to help students to understand how to probe more deeply into their studies and how to realise and use what they learn from that inquiry. The Bermuda Education Network supports the development of primary-grade students’ critical thinking and inquiry skills through the experiential learning programmes we offer for public primary schools.

We transport children beyond their schools’ walls to participate in inquiry-based challenges, experiments and investigations. Our teachers and field educators design learning activities that engage students in deep investigations into new contexts — museums, research institutes — and into “usual contexts” such as beaches and open spaces that make the everyday “new”.

For example, expeditions have included discovering the story of the Gunpowder theft — on location in St George’s; developing curiosity about the “meaning” of paintings at Masterworks and the Bermuda National Gallery; and understanding how scientists think by participating in research with Dolphin Quest and doing experiments at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute. In short, through the BEN’s activities, students develop a curious mindset and engage in inquiry-based learning.

As parents, we need act on the knowledge that exposing children to a variety of experiences and talking about them can boost higher-order thinking skills and reading readiness. By discussing what children experience in novel contexts, we can increase their vocabulary knowledge, and children with higher-vocabulary knowledge are better prepared to match familiar-sounding words with their written representation.

I have two sons who, generally, were never very enthusiastic about taking a nature walk or visiting a museum — especially if they suspected that such a jaunt might include learning. I sometimes managed to reduce some of their eye rolling by using principles and techniques common in expeditionary learning. One basic strategy is to develop connections between the child’s existing knowledge and experience, determine a challenge for investigation, and ask guiding questions.

By providing children with enough scaffolds to struggle with a challenge, we can create optimal environments for formal and informal learning. Lev Vygotsky, a landmark psychologist, calls these environments “Zones of Proximal Development”. What is especially exciting is that it doesn’t cost much to provide children with varied experiences, to devise supports that will allow them to experience persistence, and to encourage them to learn the dispositions that will help to ensure school and, perhaps, college completion.

Schools can tell who is and is not receiving the home support that matters. While there are multiple reasons for some students’ reticence to engage, we do know that the habits of persistence, curiosity and inquiry — all which contribute to achievement — can begin at home. There is compelling evidence that parents and teachers can and do work together to create the appropriate challenge and develop the mindsets that allow students to thrive.

• Becky Ausenda is a public education activist who founded the Bermuda Education Network, a registered charity that since 2010 has supported students and teachers in public schools. Her education work in Bermuda includes collaborations with several other education organisations to create teaching conferences, design curriculum for the BEN’s programmes, help schools with project implementation and teach experiential learning lessons to primary students. She has also served on the Bermuda Educators Council. In 2018, she graduated from Harvard University with a master’s degree in education, specialising in language and literacy, and returned in July to continue leading the BEN as executive director