Parental Involvement in Education

Types of Involvement

Researchers broadly categorize parental involvement activities as either home based or school based. Examples of home-based activities include monitoring or assisting with homework, discussing school events, course issues, or academic goals, providing experiences pertinent to school success, and talking with the teacher. School-based activities range from volunteering at school and coming to meetings to driving on a field trip or staffing a booth at a school fair (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1997).

Grolnick, Benjet, Kurowski, and Apostoleris (1997) identify three types of involvement in children's schooling: behavioral, cognitive-intellectual, and personal. Most home-based and school-based activities described above constitute behavioral involvement. Cognitive-intellectual involvement includes exposing the child to intellectually stimulating activities, such as visiting a museum, reading to the child, or having discussions at dinner. Personal involvement is defined as knowing about and keeping abreast of what is going on with the child in school, including meeting with teachers and reviewing grades.

Child Outcomes

Parents have the ability to pass on work norms and ethics and values about education. Parenting practices, parent educational involvement, and parental expectations have been shown to affect child development and are generally found to be important in the learning and school success of children and adolescents (Shumow & Miller, 2001). Research has shown that parental involvement relates to children's and adolescents' efficacy (Eccles, 1983), school grades (Grolnick et al., 1997), and school orientation (Shumow & Miller, 2001). Parental involvement in homework has been found to relate positively to students' attitudes about homework, perceptions of competence and ability, understanding of tasks and strategies, and homework behaviors such as persistence and more time spent on homework (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2001).

Factors Influencing Involvement

Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler (1997) proposed a model of the parent-involvement process that considers several aspects of the involvement process, from parents' initial choice to become involved to the beneficial influence of that involvement on student outcomes. They consider several factors that may influence the actual involvement decision, such as [Page 786]parents' perceptions of their influence on their children's school achievement, a child's request for help, the school's expectations for involvement, and parents' attitudes toward the appropriate role for parents in their children's education. Parents are more likely to become involved when they believe their efforts will be effective, when they are encouraged to participate by school or child, and if they believe parents should play a role in their children's education. Factors influencing parents' decisions about how to become involved include parents' differing skills, levels of comfort with participation in school-related activities, and demands on parents' time and energy. Modeling, reinforcement, and instruction are the mechanisms through which parent involvement influences student outcomes. The model shows that when parents model academic-based attitudes and behaviors and use direct instruction, it reinforces behaviors fundamental to school success through interest, attention, and praise.

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