Parental involvement and adolescent aspirations toward achievement

Parent Involvement and Student Achievement

Parental Involvement and Student Academic Achievement

TA administration and staff believe schools are seeing a decrease in parental involvement as students enter high school. Research conducted by the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) Dropout Prevention Resource Guide (2008) has demonstrated the positive effects of parental involvement in schools.

Parental involvement in the eighth grade had a strong positive effect on the grade point average of 10th graders (Keith, T.Z., Keith, Quirk, Sperduto, Santillo, & Killings, 1998). In contrast, Balen and Moles (1994) and Hurst (2002) suggest when parents have a positive attitude regarding education and demonstrate trust that their children can do well, children perform better in school. However, parental involvement tends to decrease as students become older (p. 3).

Problem Statement

Historical and current studies have investigated the impact of parental involvement and student achievement. Diverse studies have considered how well students perform academically when their parents are involved in their educational process compared to students whose parents are not involved. Sartor and Youniss (2002), in their study about the relationship between positive parental involvement and identity achievement during adolescence, found high parental awareness of adolescent behaviour and parental support would be positively associated with identity achievement. Barber's (1997) study lends support in that the author suggests a theoretical foundation for comprehending the relationship between parenting and adolescent identity development. Furthermore, Barber believes in healthy parent-adolescent relationships; parents provide structure with enough flexibility that adolescents can securely engage in identity exploration.

Of interest to this researcher; however, is a little different than just the direct relationship between student achievement/success and parental involvement as the research seems abundant enough already, but instead an interest in the relationship between parental involvement and the more subjective essence of adolescent aspirations regarding adulthood and the mechanisms of influence that these aspirations have on a student's fight in the future with success.

Wong, Wiest, and Cusick (2002), Eccles and Midgley (1990), Paterson, Field, and Pryer (1994) suggest adolescents' secure parental attachment may allow them to achieve a sense of academic competence, as well as actual school achievement, by providing them with a secure emotional foundation., it is an understanding of the mechanisms for this influence that is noticeably absent in research, which this researcher seeks to understand. One set of researchers, Hill, et al., (2004) aimed to study these mechanisms, but still left room for more rigorous and reliable, empirical design. Thus, this researcher aims to do so.

Literature Review

For Hill (2004)a longitudinal model was implemented including a variety of socioeconomic factors, including ethnicity, as independent variables to discover their relationship on dependent variables. Socioeconomic status was broken down into related subtopics such as level of parental education and each of these were tested separately (Hill, 2004). The study included the perspectives of related parents, teachers, and adolescents on parent involvement (Hill, 2004).

Hill (et al.) (2004) was designed as parents in selected schools were approached at random during preregistration for Kindergarten and asked if they would participate in the study. A practical problem arose because 15% of children were not preregistered (Hill, 2004). Parents in selected schools were approached by the first day of school by letter or telephone. In this case, 75% of families responded (585 families) with 463 of those families still available for measurement when the students entered 11th grade, a 79% retention rate (Hill, 2004), which is extremely high for a longitudinal study. Different measurements were collected as related to academic achievement, adolescent aspirations, and school behavior problems.

In the end, Hill, et al., (2004) found that parental academic involvement showed significant correlations with the strength of aspirations for the future, and school behavioral success. Hill, et al., (2004) found significant correlations between aspirations that arose particularly in middle school remaining throughout high school and contributing towards achievement, especially for students with low socioeconomic status and with parents whose education levels were lower.

One of the primary variables that Hill, et al., (2004)wanted to study was ethnicity; yet, the sample showed a large majority of white students/families (89%). This researcher would like to ensure a wider range of diversity in this category as well as in other important demographic categories. The key will be the selection of participants and the districts from which these participants are selected. This researcher will also screen for significant life events (i.e., moving, trauma, death in the family) and consider its influence on the variables. Further, other important variables are the presence of student motivation (as determined by their own perceptions), student perceptions of competence, self-esteem, efficacy, and self-assessment of their own attitudes and perceptions of their own behavior (contributing to social control).

Hill et al., (2004) noted particularly that a mother's perspective is not the best measurement and they failed to include the possibility of another caregiver being more readily available or knowledgeable like a father, grandmother, aunt, uncle, friend, or foster parent. In the end, it is possible as well that a more objective measurement for social control/behavior would have been more accurate. However, based on this researcher's desire to explore the underlying mechanisms that influence student achievement/success, the best possible variable to measure is students' perceptions of their own behavior, aspirations, support networks, achievement, attitudes, competencies, expectations, etc.… in order to receive the more reliable results for ongoing theory development.

In general, the Hill et al., (2004) study did not accurately assess for student perceptions or consider the nature or strength of these underlying mechanisms. Though, it was not necessarily intended to. However, it also seems to fall short of truly reliable results surrounding the data analyzed from interviews with students, parents, and teachers, written evaluations from teachers, and archival reviews. Although these data are important and potentially valuable, the conclusiveness of the results needs to take more into account.

Further, there may be concealed variables in this study, which the researcher may not be aware of all the influences within the teen's life, such as that of a colleague or other family member; independent studying that teen may do, influence from particular media, etc. Even though the researchers were careful to interview the teacher who was most familiar with that particular individual, there are many aspects of a student's life that teacher and parent are unaware of, even that student himself may be unaware of or prefer not to reveal.

On a much larger sample of children (6,400 Americans, 14-18 years old) (Steinberg, 1992) conducted within the same two years that the previous researchers had started their study (1987-1988), Steinberg et al. (1992) found that parental involvement is more likely to promote adolescent school success as long as this academic involvement occurred in the context of an authoritative home environment.

This study was structured so as to examine long-term parenting style, including parental academic involvement with school performance in a sample of high school youth. Nine high schools from Wisconsin and North California were used in this study (Steinberg, 1992). Diversity was achieved as far as possible between different communities, ethnic population, family structures, and socioeconomic status levels. Self-report surveys were filled out by the students on two days of survey administration during the schools years of 1987-1988 and of 1988-1989 (Hill, 2004). In this case, I agree with the emphasis on self-reporting but the analytical framework, again, needs to be much stronger for truly measuring student perceptions as that is where the core of the mechanisms emerges.

The standard active consent form for ethical procedures was not used here since studies have shown that it would screen out individuals with possibly disengaged parents and it was precisely these individuals whom the researchers wished to include. Their procedure, therefore, was to request active consent from adolescents and passive consent from parents