Parents , Teachers and Children S Perception of Parental Involvement in Relation with Pupils

7th International Conference of the European Research Network about Parents in Education DIVERSITY IN EDUCATION ERNAPE 2009 ISBN 978-91-86238-82-2

Parents’, teachers’ and children’s perception of parental involvement in relation with pupils’ learning achievement and wellbeing

Lien Ghysens, Ghent University, Belgium

Abstract

In this study, the association between parent, pupil and teacher perceptions, and their relationship with child achievement and wellbeing were questioned. A survey was administered to 117 fifth- and sixth grade teachers, 484 parents and their children. The results indicated congruence between parent and child perceptions, but parent and teacher ratings tend to diverge. This is especially true for dimensions concerning home involvement and estimations for lower SES parents. For pupil achievement as well as wellbeing, parental involvement seemed to be an influencing factor, however exerting only a little to moderate effect. Parental involvement measures were the best predictors for children with low educated parents and traditional families. Suggestions for future research are integrated.

1.Introduction

In the field of study related to the effective schools movement, parental involvement has been argued to be an essential component to improve global school quality and, in particular, to increase student’s learning achievement (Comer & Haynes, 1991; Mortimore, Sammons, Stoll, Lewis & Ecob, 1988; Schneider, 1993). Other research has added that parent’s interest in and support of the child’s schooling acts as a protective factor for pupils at risk, resulting in decreases in the levels of learning difficulties these children are faced (Berger, 1995). Parental involvement would even exert a mediating influence between parents’ background and student achievement (Stevenson & Baker, 1987). In addition to these positive effects of parental involvement on the school results of children, favourable effects on the behaviour on the part of the child have also been found (Domina, 2005; McNeal, 1999). Moreover, Barnard (2004) points to the long-term effects in addition to the more direct effects: a significant positive association has been proved between parental involvement in elementary school and indicators of school success a decade later. Taking these empirical evidenced effects into account, the goal of parent involvement in education cannot merely be to get parents involved. Rather, it is a means to establish important connections between contexts important for the child in order to facilitate children’s learning and development (Carter, 2002; Christenson & Sheridan, 2001). Although parental involvement has been found to influence positively children’s cognitive and social development, research remains unclear about which specific types of involvement are effective.

Nevertheless parents’ involvement mediates between the family’s background and the child’s achievement, studies have indicated considerable variation in the degree of involvement, dependent on the socio-economic and ethnic profile of the parents (Boethel, 2003). However, a lack of involvement of lower SES parents in the school does not implicate that they are not involved at all in the schooling of their children. The involvement model expected by schoolsrefer to upper-class parents’ behaviours, congruent with the culture of the school (de Carvalho, 2001). Because of these culturally- and class-specific presuppositions about parental involvement, lower SES parents who are not active within school can be considered as not engaged in their children’s school life. For teachers, such a perception can easily result in making the parent unjustly responsiblefor underachievement of pupils (Huss-Keeler, 1997; Tett, 2004). Consequently, teachers’ perceptions of parental involvement is an important issue, especially in the relation with the achievement of children.

In many studies, only parent and/or teacher rating of parent involvement are taken into account, which means an important methodological deficit in the research domain. Children are not passive recipients of inputs of these actors, but can actively shape their parents’ involvement in their education (Edwards & Alldred, 2000; Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994). For this reason, some have argued that pupil ratings – whose development is the object of the whole parental involvement process – are most appropriate. The argumentation is that the child’s perception of the involvement is more influential on later child outcomes rather than the actual activities (Keith, 1991). Moreover, parents and teachers cannot produce successful pupils, they only can motivate and support (Epstein, 1995).

The main purpose of this study is twofold. First, we seek to gain insight into parent, child and teacher perceptions of parental involvement in the child’s schooling. Examining the association between the several perceptions and the achievement and wellbeing of the child is the second goal of the present study. Thereby, special attention is paid to background characteristics of parents and children. For this purpose, the following research questions are formulated: (1) How strong is the interrelationship between parent ratings, teacher ratings and pupil ratings of parental involvement?; (2) What is the effect of parent, teacher and pupil ratings of parental involvement on the learning achievement/wellbeing of pupils?

1.1The relation between parents’ socio-economic background and involvement

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of child development (1979), which can be considered as the fundamental framework of this study, states that child development takes place through processes of progressively more complex interaction between an active child and the persons, objects, and symbols in its immediate environment. To be effective, the interaction must more occur on a fairly regular basis over extended periods of time. (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998, p. 996). This model acknowledges that a child is affected by the settings in which he/she spends time. Since a child spends the most time in the family, this is the most important system for him/her. An other influencing setting is the educational programs and environment the child participates. A child’s development is determined by what it experiences in these settings with people and objects surrounding it, the so called primary engines of human development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998). The number and quality of the connections between the contexts the child pertains to also have important implications for its development. Because of this significance of children’s experiences in primary educational systems, research has focused to the relation between thebackground of families children live in and the level of parental involvement they experience.

A whole range of studies about the relation cultural capital – parental involvement belong to the parental involvement research domain. An important structural background variable is parents’ educational level, which has resulted in various conclusions. A variety of studies dating to the late 1980s and early 1990s pointed to a positive correlation between parent educational level and involvement (e.g. Astone & McLanahan, 1991; Dauber & Epstein, 1989; Stevenson & Baker, 1987). Differences in parental involvement can be due to the gap between home and school culture, rather than to a lack of interest in low educated parents (Lareau, 1989). Low-educated parents may have doubts about the child’s schooling, because of the lack of educational skills, with an absent parent-teacher relation as a consequence. More recently, the stereotype ‘the lesser educated, the lesser involved’ is somewhat abandoned and the relation ‘educational level – parental involvement’ is considered as differential. Not as much the degree, but rather the shape the involvement takes might be influenced by parents’ educational level. For example, it has been indicated that parent education is strongly related to the cognitive-intellectual dimension, but less strongly related to parents’ affective behaviour at home (Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994). Contrary to these findings, other researchers argued that this background variable causes no substantive differences at all (e.g. Balli, Wedman & Demo, 1997;Sui-Chu & Willms, 1996).

In common with the conclusions as described above, the same tendencies are found with regard to the ethnicity of parents. The results vary from ‘no effect of ethnicity on parental involvement’ (e.g. Drummond & Stipek) over ‘a differential relation between both variables’ (e.g. Yan & Lin, 2005) to ‘ethnicity exerting a significant effect on involvement’ (e.g. Griffith, 1998).

Social capital (Coleman, 1988) is an essential condition for the child to take advantage of whatever cultural and economic capital the parent possesses. To have the informal and formal contacts and connections at one’s disposal, determined by the number of parents in the household, is an indicator of children’s social capital within the family. On the basis of this conceptual definition of social capital, it can be argued that there is a relation between family structure and the degree of parental involvement (Astone & McLanahan, 1991; Lee, 1993). Children who live with a single mother or father, implying a structural deficit in the family’s social capital, tend to receive lower educational aspirations, less overall supervision and daily monitoring than children who live with both biological parents (Astone & McLanahan, 1991; Grolnick, Benjet, Kurowski and Apostoleris, 1997; Lee, 1993). According to Grolnick et al. (1997), traditional families are also higher represented in the participation or school board or the parent committee than single-parent families. The average lower degree of parental involvement in single parents can be explained by the time and economic burdens they face (McLanahan, 1985).

In addition to the availability of parents in the family, the strength of the attachment between parent and child indicates children’s social capital. This second indicator makes it possible to place an interpretation to the negative correlation between a stepparent family structure and parents’ involvement (Astone & McLanahan, 1991). In general, the stepparent’s willingness and ability to provide the child with time and attention and the child’s receptivity to step-parental overtures are lower than in biological-parent families. Traditional family structures wherein both parents working outside the home also can experience a lack of capital due to demanding working schedules (Balli, Wedman & Demo, 1997).

1.2The relation between child characteristics and parental involvement

It has been argued that some characteristics of the child exert influence on the parents’ involvement. Research about the relationship between parental involvement and pupil achievement yields quite diverse, even contradicting, results because of the absence of a univocal definition. Broadly, it can be stated that parents are more likely to be involved when their children earn good results (Dauber & Epstein, 1989). Specified to the various dimensions of parental involvement, it has been indicated that parents of children with learning or behavioural difficulties initiate more frequently communication with the teacher to discuss the child’s difficulties; whereas their school and home participation are pointed out to be low (Sui-Chu & Willms, 1996). In contrast, Shumow and Miller (1996) find parents of struggling children to be more involved at home, which is particularly true for the degree of homework support, but they confirm the higher level of participation within the school of caregivers of well achieving children.

1.3The effect of involvement on the child’s achievement and well-being

Various explanations have been offered for the observed relation between parents’ background and pupil achievement. Jensen’s (1972) statement that the school success of children is genetically determined, has been challenged by different theorists. Bourdieu and Passeron (1970)arguethat the cultural capital of parents is an important determinant of the child’s school career. Not all societal classes start with the same kind or level of cultural capital. Children socialised into a dominant family culture will have an advantage over children not educated in such a culture, because schools tend to reproduce a general set of dominant cultural values and ideas. A lack of social capital in lower-class families, is the argument Coleman (1987) proposes for the lower achievement of children living in these families. In line with this social capital theory, a more recent approach considers low achievement as a consequence of an insufficient level of the involvement of parents in their children’s schooling.

To test this hypothesis, a lot of studies have examined the association between the variables parent involvement and educational outcomes of children, resulting in divergent conclusions. Numerous studies show a direct positive effect of an involved attitude on students’ academic achievement (e.g. Bogenschneider, 1997; Fehrmann, Keith & Reimers, 1987; Flouri & Buchanan, 2002; Zellman & Waterman, 1998). Other researchers observe an indirect (e.g. Brody, Stoneman & Flor, 1995) or a differentialimpact (Sui-Chu & Willms, 1996). A little or no effect at all of the involvement of parents on the academic achievement of pupils, is found in only a few studies (e.g. Desimone, Finn-Stevenson & Henrich, 2000; Domina, 2005). In their examination of the relation with learning achievement, ascarce amount of authors distinguish between parent ratings and teacher ratings of involvement. They indicated that teacher ratings are associated more strongly to the child’s academic performance, in comparison with parent ratings (Barnard, 2004; Bakker, Denessen & Brus-Laeven, 2007).

Some findings suggest that parental involvement does not improve children’s learning, but certain involvement activities do prevent behavioural problems (e.g. Domina, 2005). The effect of involvement on the well-being of children only have received limited attention. Lareau (1989) warns for the dark side of parent involvement. When parents are too intensively involved in their child’s education, they risk to create tensions and fear in children. But, empirical evidence about the relation between these variables is scarce.

1.4The need for multiple informants

Parental involvement is typified as a contextual process, formed by schools as well as individual (f)actors (Kerbow & Bernhardt, 1993). Consequently, it is necessary to involve several perspectives to describe parental involvement. The reporter of parental involvement is an important issue to consider in parental involvement research, certainly with respect to the interpretation of results (Barnard, 2004; Kohl, Lengua, McMahon, 2000). Exemplary is the repeatedly found discrepancy between teacher’s perception of parental involvement and parents’ report of involvement, in particular with regard to the dimension ‘home-based involvement’. Moreover, teachers typically judge parents with a higher level of education and two-parent families as being more involved in the education of their children than lower-educated and single parents. In contrast, parents with different levels of education do not report different levels of involvement in the school careers of the children. This finding shows that teachers apparently hold a rather stereotyped image of the involvement of parents in the academic development of their child (Bakker, Denessen & Brus-Laeven, 2007; Epstein, 1996). It also confirms that teachers only have little knowledge about parent behaviours at home, especially when the family culture differs significantly from school life (Bastiani, 2000).

To assess parent involvement, most of the studiestake parent or teacher perceptions into account. Only a few studieshave been conducted concerning the degree of parental involvement perceived by children.According to Bronfenbrenner’s ecological system model (1979) and Epstein’s theory of school, family and community partnerships (1995), and empirically evidenced by Keith (1991), children’s perceptions of their parents’ involvement are as important influences on their development as are parents’ actual behaviour. They locate the pupil at the center of their model. The inarguable fact is that children are the main actors in their education and development. School and family, and partnerships between both systems cannot simply produce successful students. Rather, involvement activities may be designed to engage, guide and motivate students to produce their own successes. The assumption is that, if children feel cared for and encouraged to work hard in the role of pupil, they are more likely to deliver efforts, which stimulates positively the development (Epstein, 1995). Paulson and Sputa (1996)indicated that pupil ratings of parental involvement are lower than parents’ ratings.

Though, focussing exclusively on the child’s perspective is insufficient for assessing parental involvement. Multiple informants have to be used since different raters may be more or less qualified to evaluate certain aspects of involvement (Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994). Furthermore, parents tend to report more accurately when they know that other informants will also provide information about their involvement (Morsbach & Prinz, 2006).

2.Method

2.1Procedures

The research group included 117 primary school teachers in the fifth and sixth grade, employed in schools spread over all regions in Flanders. The children in the classes of these teachers were informed about the research in their classrooms. They received a letter to take home containing further explanation about the project and asking for their parents’ permission to participate. The proportion of returning positive answers differed strongly in the classes, ranging from only 10% to more than 60%.In collaboration with the teacher,four parents were selected out of the group reacting positive to the call for participation in each class, in order to obtain maximal heterogeneity in the background profile of the respondents. Each parent was surveyed orally by means of a structured interview to assess their involvement, taking place at the parent’s home. Before interviewing the parent, the same survey was presented to the child, separated from the parent. Teachers completed a written version of the survey to assess the degree and nature of the involvement of parents in the child’s schooling.

2.2Measures

2.2.1Parent background

Socio-economic status (SES) refers to the position of an individual or group within a hierarchical social structure (Reynders, Nicaise & Van Damme, 2005). In this study, SES was measured by fourseparate variables: educational level and ethnicity, which are proxies for social status (Lee & Bowen, 2006), family structure, a proxy for social capital (Coleman, 1988), and the number of hours the parent works per week.For the educational level, three categories were created: ‘0 = at most lower secondary education’, ‘1 = higher secondary education’, and ‘2 = higher education’. Home language was an indicator for the parent’s ethnicity. The original variable consisting of seven categories was recoded into a dichotomous variables: families with Dutch as home language were coded ‘0’ and families not speaking Dutch at home were coded ‘1’. The variable family structure provided additional information about the background of the respondents.Three categories were made: ‘0’ for traditional two-parent families, ‘1’ for recomposed families and ‘2’ for single-parent households. According to the approach of Green, Walker, Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler (2007, p. 536), the variables assessing SES were entered separately into a single block in regression analyses because aggregating or simplifying SES measures could ignore the complexity and fluctuations that may characterize the components of family SES.