A Longitudinal Assessment of Teacher Perceptions of Parent Involvement in Children's Education and School Performance

Abstract

This study examines the ways in which parental involvement in children's education changes over time and how it relates to children's social and academic functioning in school. Teachers provided information on parent involvement and school performance for 1,205 urban, kindergarten through third-grade children for 3 consecutive years. They rated the following four dimensions of parent involvement: frequency of parent-teacher contact, quality of the parent-teacher interactions, participation in educational activities at home, and participation in school activities. As predicted, the frequency of parent-teacher contacts, quality of parent-teacher interactions, and parent participation at school declined from Years 1 to 3. Every parent involvement variable correlated moderately with school performance and parent involvement in Years 1 and 2, and accounted for a small, but significant amount of variance in Year 3 performance after controlling for initial performance level. Participation in educational activities at home predicted the widest range of performance variables. Results suggest that enhancing parental involvement in children's schooling relates to improvements in school functioning.

Examining the Relationship Between Parental Involvement and Student Motivation

“…Two studies investigated students' academic school engagement measured by either the amount of acting-out behaviors, the quality of their work habits, task orientation, tolerance, focus, or coping with failure (Izzo et al, 1999;Steinberg et al, 1992). Four studies used scales of intrinsic/extrinsic motivation as measures for academic motivation (Ginsburg and Bronstein, 1993;Marchant et al, 2001;Ames et al, 1993Ames et al, , 1995.…”

“…Izzo et al (1999) examined how parent involvement related to 1,025 elementary students' (kindergarten through third grade) social and academic functioning. The authors addressed a number of issues in order to fully understand the relationship between parent involvement and children's school functioning.…”

“…For instance, if students perceive parental assistance in the home as over-controlling or if parents use extrinsic rewards, students may become dependent on external sources to guide their behavior (Ginsburg and Bronstein, 1993). Other results indicate that simply increasing the number of parent-teacher contacts may not be the most advantageous for students' motivation (particularly when those interactions focus solely on children's instances of misbehavior at school); it is the quality of these interactions that must be enhanced (Izzo et al, 1999).…”

Family involvement for children with disruptive behaviors: The role of parenting stress and motivational beliefs

“…Furthermore, students with disruptive behaviors whose family participated in an intervention to increase family involvement demonstrated improved grade point averages, attendance, and reduced drop-out rates relative to students participating in a standard program (Aeby et al, 1999), indicating the powerful effect of family involvement on student outcomes. Particularly, the frequency and quality of family-school communication have been identified as an important predictor of child social and academic functioning in school (Christenson & Sheridan, 2001;Izzo, Weissberg, Kasprow, & Fendrich, 1999).…”

Le rôle de la collaboration famille-école dans la réussite scolaire d’enfants ayant un trouble de déficit de l’attention/hyperactivité

“…La présente étude s'intéresse à une composante spécifique de l'implication scolaire parentale, la collaboration famille-école au sens que lui donnent Christenson et Sheridan (2001) 2 Plusieurs auteurs ont montré que la collaboration famille-école contribue au succès scolaire de l'enfant. Par exemple, Izzo, Weissberg, Kasprow et Fendrich (1999), qui ont suivi des enfants de la maternelle à la 3 e année, observent que la fréquence et la qualité des contacts entre l'école et les parents, les activités d'apprentissage à la maison sous la guidance des parents et la participation des parents à des activités à l'école sont associées positivement au rendement scolaire de l'enfant. (Christenson et Cleary, 1990;Christenson et Sheridan, 2001;Esler et al, 2002).…”