Parental Involvement in Children's Education: How to Get Involved at Home...

If you are wondering how to get more involved in your child’s education, look no further!

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Why Is It Important?

Parents play a pivotal role in the early education of their students. Parental involvement in school is believed to be one of the key promoters of students’ school-related outcomes such as achievement, motivation, and well-being (Dettmers et al., 2019). More specifically, parental engagement in early childhood education at home is linked to improvement in academic readiness/performance, well-being, behavior, and communication of the child (Barnett et al., 2020; Dettmers et al., 2019; Ogg & Anthony, 2019). Defining parental involvement in early education is multidimensional. Some frequently recognized ways in which parents get involved in their student’s education at home is through providing accessible educational settings, reading with the child, facilitating discussions about school, outlining educational expectations, and providing homework supervision (Ogg & Anthony, 2019; Sad & Gurbuzturk, 2013). These types of supports, along with parental warmth, are longitudinally associated with positive child outcomes in academics and overall well-being (Ogg & Anthony, 2020). But it takes a little more than just asking your child how their school day is...

How To Get Involved

Christenson and Sheridan (2001, as cited in McWayne et al., 2004), find that by engaging in educational activities with children at home, such as reading aloud or providing homework help, parents are communicating clear expectations for achievement. Simultaneously, this engagement provides opportunities for the parent to integrate school curriculum goals within the home. Having a family-school-home connection makes children’s lives easier, because expectations remain universal between contexts. When school is a common topic and practice in the home, children are better able to transition between the home and school environments. In addition, parental warmth has been linked to positive child achievement outcomes (Ogg & Anthony, 2020).

Two proposed pathways that explain how home-based involvement contributes to student achievement are the skill developmental model and the motivational developmental model. Parent involvement related to motivation includes involvement in the context of a warm and supportive relationship (Darling, 2007). For example, parents may communicate that academic tasks are enjoyable to increase motivation in the student at home. On the other hand, a parent with a cold or unresponsive parenting style, may reduce the child’s motivation for learning because performing educational activities with the parents may be stressful for the child (Ogg & Anthony, 2020). In terms of the skill developmental model, warm parenting, that includes positive behaviors and attitudes, may provide the child with comfort and willingness to try new skills. Findings indicate that home-based involvement and parental warmth are both statistically significant predictors of growth in science achievement (Ogg & Anthony, 2020).

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Homework Help

Universally, homework assignments are given to students at the start of elementary school, since it is believed that homework improves achievement (Dettmers et al., 2019). As a result, once the child enters elementary school, homework help and supervision becomes one of the main ways that parents get involved in their child’s education in the home. A potential predictor of the effectiveness of homework is parental homework involvement. For example, parents are often the first to raise the topic of homework and parents must often engage in substantial efforts to get the child to start the homework (Dettmers et al., 2019). In the early elementary school years, parents also often take responsibility for keeping track of assignment deadlines and assisting the child with the actual accomplishment of the assignments (Wingard & Forsberg, 2009). The quality of parental homework involvement is positively associated with school performance and overall child well-being. Furthermore, effective family-school communication is a key factor in helping improve the quality of parental homework involvement (Dettmers et al., 2019).

Although homework is the child’s responsibility, parents become involved in the homework process in a number of ways (Wingard & Forsberg, 2009). Through self-reported surveys in the United States, it is estimated that more than 80% of parents believe that homework is important for learning and 73% of parents reported helping their child with homework completion (Dettmers et al., 2019). Again, homework help is a multidimensional construct that can be divided into two types of help: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative help involves doing homework with the child and providing answers when they are unsure, while qualitative help involves avoiding distractions, providing rules for homework completion, and providing support for finding answers to questions (Dettmers et al., 2019). Additionally, it is important to note that while supportive homework help has positive effects on students’ achievement, intrusive homework help was negatively related with later achievement. Rather than providing answers when the child is stuck on question, parents should focus on fostering self-regulated learning and children’s autonomy (Dettmers et al., 2019).

Ways to Support the Zone of Proximal Development

Fostering self-regulated learning and children’s autonomy can be accomplished by supporting the child’s zone of proximal development. For example, if the child is struggling to learn how to read a certain word in the homework problem, they may get frustrated quickly. Parents can support the child in this scenario by helping them sound out the words and use word recognition strategies. Therefore, rather than just telling the child the word, they are having to use their skills which build autonomy. As a result, these skills within the child will be strengthened, and they will be more likely to try independently in the future. Overall, when parents are able to spend their time and energy on supporting their children’s homework process, rather than merely doing their homework for them, they are actively engaging in their child’s education (Wingard & Forberg, 2009). Clearly, as a parent, you have the opportunity to play a pivotal role in their child’s educational success. It is up to you whether you want to take this opportunity or not.

Video: Learn More About the Zone of Proximal Development....

References

Dettmers, S., Yotyodying, S., & Jonkmann, K. (2019). Antecedents and outcomes of parental homework involvement: How do family-school partnerships affect parental homework involvement and student outcomes? Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1048. http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.lib.calpoly.edu/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01048.

Ogg, J., & Anthony, C. J. (2019). Parent involvement and children's externalizing behavior: Exploring longitudinal bidirectional effects across gender. Journal of School Psychology, 73, 21–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2019.02.002.

Ogg, J., & Anthony, C. J. (2020). Process and context: Longitudinal effects of the interactions between parental involvement, parental warmth, and SES on academic achievement. Journal of School Psychology, 78, 96–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2019.11.004.

Sad, S. N., & Gurbuzturk, O. (2013). Primary school students' parents' level of involvement into their children's education. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 13(2), 1006-1011. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1017261.

Wingard, L., & Forsberg, L. (2009). Parent involvement in children's homework in American and Swedish dual-earner families. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(8), 1576-1595. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216608002105.