Maternal parenting styles, homework help, and children’s literacy development in language minority and Finnish-speaking families

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the role of mothers' (language minority mothers, LM, n = 49, and Finnish-speaking mothers, MP, n = 368) parenting styles and maternal help with their children's homework in the children's (mean age 11.43 years) literacy skills at fourth grade in Finland. In addition, the moderating effect of a child's gender on this relationship was investigated. The results showed that the LM mothers used psychological control more than MP mothers. Furthermore, the more LM mothers used warmth and psychological styles of parenting, the more they helped their daughters, not sons, with homework. The more LM mothers used behavioral control the less they helped the daughters. MP mothers' parenting styles did not relate to their children´s reading and spelling skills. Maternal help negatively related to children's reading skills in both groups. This research provides new information to teachers and educators who work in multicultural teams. Because our findings could be applied in the educational settings of multilingual students, they are likely to be of great interest to the visionary scientists, researchers, teachers, and trainees.

How Finnish and Portuguese Parents’ Implicit Beliefs About Learning Actualize at Home

“…In other words, focusing on the holistic development of the child. Although not generalizable, the fact that our strongest subcategory was cultivating the relationship adds a building block to the research regarding the importance of supportive and warm parenting styles in learning-related activities at home (OECD, 2012;Goodall, 2013;Silinskas et al, 2015;Sikiö et al, 2017). The results also point to the necessity of shifting the central role of homework involvement as the major context of parent learning-related engagement at home (Hill and Tyson, 2009) among parents of school age children.…”

“…As a result, there has been extensive interest about the parental role in education over the decades, as researchers have questioned how this could better serve the schooling process (Grolnick et al, 1997). More recently, there has been a shift from a school-centered to a learning-centered approach, attention being directed to interactions in the home and parenting styles, instead of mere parental participation in school or schooling (e.g., Goodall, 2013;Sikiö et al, 2017).…”

“…It is reported in a quantitative study among Portuguese elementary-and middleschool children (Mata et al, 2018) that those who perceived their parents as being more interested and learning-engaged tended to see interactions related to homework and conversations about school as more positive. Accordingly, quantitative longitudinal studies involving Finnish children at elementary school and their mothers (Silinskas et al, 2015;Sikiö et al, 2017) assessed maternal help in homework, maternal levels of warmth and behavioral control in parenting styles, as well as children's reading comprehension and pseudoword spelling abilities. According to the results, the most beneficial style of involvement with homework entailed positive parental affect and interaction.…”

Parental Engagement in Children’s Learning: A Holistic Approach to Teacher-Parents’ Partnerships

“…Various authors [2,22,30,63,64] have recently studied the impact of parental styles at home. Goodall [2] points to the authoritative style of parenting as one that effectively supports children's learning throughout their lives, once it encompasses parental warmth, discussion, and appropriate level of control regarding the stage of development of the child, underpinning parental interest and involvement in children's learning.…”

“…Such school's guidelines can also make a difference in engaging both mothers and fathers in the children's learning and therefore turning engagement even more effective. It is true, for both research and practice, that even though, today, families as institutions encompass much more different structures and dynamics than 15 or 20 years ago, the presence of mothers is still more common regarding school-and education-related issues, over the presence of fathers [64,70,71]. This constitutes an obstacle for engagement as each of the child's parents have their unique relationship and perspective regarding their child [72], and a fuller picture of the child's home life is only possible when the teacher can reach both mother and father.…”