Parental Involvement and Adolescent Academic Outcomes: Exploring Differences in Beneficial Strategies across Racial/Ethnic Groups

Abstract

Gaps in educational outcomes between racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups persist in the United States, and parental involvement is often cited as an important avenue for improving outcomes among racially/ethnically diverse adolescents. This study utilized data from the Education Longitudinal Study 2002-2013 (56% female, N = 4429), which followed 10th-graders through high school and ten years post-high school, to examine the links between parental involvement strategies and academic outcomes (grade point average and educational attainment). Participants included white, African American, and Hispanic/Latino adolescents from low-SES families. This study used recursive partitioning, a novel analytic strategy used for exploring higher-order interactions and non-linear associations among factors (e.g., parental educational involvement strategies) to predict an outcome (e.g., grade point average or educational attainment) through step-wise partitioning. The results showed that the combination of greater academic socialization and school-based involvement was beneficial for all adolescents' grade point average, whereas the combination of home-based involvement with academic socialization and school-based involvement yielded mixed results. Greater academic socialization and home-based involvement appeared beneficial for educational attainment among African American and Hispanic/Latino adolescents, but not white adolescents. More home-based involvement and less academic socialization were associated with less educational attainment for white adolescents. Overall, the findings showed different combinations of parental educational involvement strategies were beneficial for adolescents across racial/ethnic groups, which may have implications for practice and policy.

Parents’, Teachers’ and Principals’ Views on Parental Involvement in Secondary Education Schools in Greece

“…The enhanced willingness of Principals to encourage parental involvement may reflect their leadership vision in engaging school-family collaboration, implementing at the same time the legislative guidelines on parental involvement. In fact, diversity within in each group and between each group, on the issue of PI have been reported in other countries [2,4,10,11,28,35].…”

“…School leadership can make a difference with the initiation of policies which could encourage parents to be involved and the formulation of in-service training activities which could improve teachers' competence and attitudes in parental involvement [6,15,[19][20][21][22]35,38] Parental Involvement can be a tool for increasing educational outcomes and performance of schools [1,2,4,23,27]. Towards this can also serve the development of a strategic parental involvement plan to encourage parents becoming more engaged in their children's education, including parents and teachers communicating and partnering with one another and developing a climate of communication and cooperation between school and family [5,12,[42][43][44]46,47].…”

“…In recent decades, there has been a wide interest concerning the degree and nature to which parents are involved in their children's education [1][2][3][4][5]. Parental involvement in Secondary Education has come under immense scrutiny and criticism by both teachers and principals.…”

The Effect of Parental Involvement and Socioeconomic Status on Junior School Students’ Academic Achievement and School Behavior in China

“…Data for parental involvement with more comprehensive measures are needed to promote the current study. There were validated measurements in the prevailing literature, such as the measurement in the research of Wang and Sheikh-Khalil (2014) or Day and Dotterer (2018) . However, as a national representative investigation, the number of items should be taken into account.…”

“…For example, using data for 15,240 middle school students in America, Benner et al (2016) tested the relationship between parental involvement (i.e., home-based involvement, school-based involvement, and academic socialization) and academic achievement. With the American data of Education Longitudinal Study 2002–2013, Day and Dotterer (2018) assessed the connection between parental involvement (i.e., home- and school-based involvement and academic socialization) and academic achievement. However, such framework should be modified in the Chinese context ( Lau et al, 2011 ).…”