This paper reviews the research literature on the relationship between parental involvement (PI) and academic achievement, with special focus on the secondary school (middle and high school) level. The results first present how individual PI variables correlate with academic achievement and then move to more complex analyses of multiple variables on the general construct described in the literature. Several PI variables with correlations to academic achievement show promise: (a) communication between children and parents about school activities and plans, (b) parents holding high expectations/aspirations for their children's schooling, and (c) parents employing an authoritative parenting style. We end the results section by discussing the findings in light of the limitations of nonexperimental research and the different effects of children's versus parents' perspectives on academic achievement.
An important issue in identifying points of leverage in improving students’ academic achievement is determining how and to what degree parental involvement (PI) affects student achievement. Such knowledge might inform parenting practices as well as school-based policies, practices, and interventions that involve working with parents. For example, such research might help in the design and development of interventions that maximize parental involvement, where it has been shown to have the most positive and powerful effect. To assist in this endeavor, we reviewed the literature about the types of PI that might have an impact. We found that the literature on PI is quite “knotty”—complex and sometimes contradictory. This paper attempts to disentangle the knot by closely examining the current literature on the relationship between PI and academic achievement at the middle and high school levels.
The idea that parental involvement engenders students’ academic achievement is intuitively appealing to the point that society in general, and educators in particular, have considered PI an important ingredient for the remedy of many ills in education today. In the 1980s and early 1990s, studies were published that suggested the importance of parental involvement in school. In the mid-1990s, the popular press, policy makers, and school administrators actively advocated PI. Legislation was enacted, such as the Goals 2000: Educate America Act and the reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in the United States, which has made parents’ involvement in their children’s education a national priority [
Many practitioners and researchers support the policy direction of increased PI in their children’s academic lives, yet confusion persists regarding an appropriate definition of PI and the activities, goals, and desired outcomes of various PI programs and policies. Less is known about PI than is commonly assumed. Early studies suggesting the importance of PI are, unfortunately, treated as definitive, regardless of the equivocal nature of the data, and they are used to support the position that virtually all types of PI are important. According to Sui-Chu and Willms [
It is apparent that identifying the influence of PI on academic achievement is complicated by at least three factors: (a) researchers use different definitions for the PI construct, (b) there is a paucity of experimental studies in the PI research literature, and (c) mediating factors and interacting variables in the PI-academic achievement story are often ignored. Any effort to clarify the role of PI in academic achievement must consider these issues.
This paper examines the research literature on the relationship between PI and academic achievement, with particular focus on the middle and high school level. Research has shown that in addition to students’ personal goals and expectations in this age group, other variables such as PI might exert considerable influence on the students’ academic achievement and behavior [
This paper will examine how PI has been defined, describe the relationships between PI variables and academic achievement, attempt to generalize the results, and finally discuss key areas of controversy and areas for further research.
We began this literature review process by gathering and reviewing many books, reviews, meta-analyses, and individual articles relating to the PI literature. The following online databases were employed to search and collect these sources.
A database that provides extensive access to educational-related literature from two printed journals: Resources in Education (RIE) and Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE).
An online version of Psychological Abstracts that covers journal articles, book chapters, books, technical reports, and dissertations in psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines.
An online system that provides access to several periodical indexes or databases. These databases contain citations, abstracts and many full-text articles from magazines, journals, and newspapers.
In addition to these databases, Google Scholar, the Brigham Library at Educational Testing Service, and the Strozier Library at the Florida State University were used to search for and acquire specific references. Google Scholar is a web site providing peer-reviewed papers, books, abstracts, and articles from academic publishers, professional societies, universities, and other scholarly organizations. The Brigham Library at Educational Testing Service and the Strozier Library at Florida State University both house comprehensive collections of educational, psychological, sociological, and testing literature.
The focus of the search was to access full-text documents using various search terms and keywords such as
The majority of the documents we obtained were fifty individual studies reported in journal articles, book chapters, and research reports, followed by eight books, six longitudinal studies, five NELS:88 (i.e., the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, Institute of Education Sciences, n.d. [
Figure
Prominent aspects of parental involvement enacted at home and at school.
Many studies examine underlying aspects of PI, yet few do it in exactly the same way [
The results of the literature review are presented in terms of how PI variables impact student academic achievement, in two sections: (a) findings around single PI variables and (b) findings of large-scale studies that analyze the PI construct in terms of a set of underlying variables. Then, we discuss the findings in light of the limitations of nonexperimental research and the different effects of children's and parents' perspectives on academic achievement.
In this section, we look at the results of different studies on prominent PI variables, including parent-child discussions about school, parental aspirations and expectations, parenting style, reading at home, checking homework, school involvement, and home rules and supervision.
The parent-child discussion variable refers to ongoing conversations between parents and their children concerning school-related activities, programs, near- and long-term school plans, and other academic issues. This variable frequently yields the strongest positive association with academic achievement [
One interesting subtlety involving this variable is that talking with one’s mother is positively associated with academic achievement, but the association between talking with one’s father and academic achievement may depend on ethnicity and also on whether the child or parent is reporting [
Parental aspirations and expectations are often described collectively or used interchangeably in the literature. Taken together, aspirations and expectations reflect the degree to which parents presume that their child will perform well in school, now and in the future. This variable appears in many PI research studies and is generally shown to have a positive relationship to academic achievement. For example, parental aspirations/expectations is the strongest dimension in the Fan and Chen [
To date, of the PI papers we reviewed, the articles and large-scale studies that focus on parental expectations report a generally positive effect on student achievement. More specifically, Baker and Soden [
This PI variable is defined as a complex set of behaviors and/or attitudes by which parents demonstrate and communicate the values, behaviors, and standards that their children are expected to adopt. According to various researchers [
A cross of responsive and demanding parenting, yielding four distinct styles.
An
We examined 28 articles that studied parenting style in some form or another and its relationship to academic achievement. Representative characteristics of parenting style in the literature include authoritative style, joint decision making, PI in children’s lives, behavioral supervision, discussion of education with one’s children, firm disciplinary practices, permissive (or indifferent) styles, limit setting, strong communication, and maternal and paternal styles. The following are mixed findings in the literature on the variable of parenting style.
Authoritative parenting style is characterized by parents who develop and maintain close, warm relationships with their children while at the same time establishing structure and guidelines that are enforced as necessary. This parenting style was referred to in seven articles. They all reported a positive association with student achievement [
In some studies, parental affective support appeared to be one of the strongest predictors of students’ academic achievement. For example, in a study by Deslandes et al. [
These positive associations may be due to the ability of parents with an authoritative parenting style to be loving and supportive and yet maintain an adequate level of discipline in the household. Parents with this parenting style also demonstrate qualities such as trust and approachability that motivate children to discuss academic problems and expectations with their parents. Additionally, such parents are more likely to make contact with teachers when students have academic or behavioral problems [
PI in the form of behavioral supervision has shown either no association or a negative relationship with academic achievement [
On the other hand, Deslandes et al. [
Fairly consistent associations between other PI variables and academic achievement include the following.
To summarize, there is seldom more than a small-to-moderate association between any individual PI variable and academic achievement. The strongest associations appear to be (a) discussions about school activities between parent and child (positive), (b) parents’ aspirations/expectations for their children (positive), and (c) parental styles, particularly authoritative style (positive) and authoritarian and permissive styles (negative).
While each of the PI variables presented in this section has shown some relationship to students’ academic achievement, it is also clear from recent research that the effects are complex. For instance, studies have found interactions between some of these PI variables and academic engagement/involvement (e.g., time spent on homework and paying attention in class), ethnicity, race, family structure, family characteristics (such as parents’ education), maternal employment status, socioeconomic status, and gender [
In this section, we describe six large-scale studies that have been conducted in the area of PI and academic achievement: (1) Fan and Chen [
The first study is a meta-analysis conducted by Fan and Chen [
The result from their analysis regarding the correlation of overall PI to academic achievement is
Similarly, our second large-scale study reported by Jeynes [
Results revealed that the general PI variable yielded statistically significant outcomes of .50 to .55 of a standard deviation unit. The Hedges’
Desimone [
The regression results of the same 12 variables on two other achievement variables—scores on a standardized test of reading, and an average of self-reported grades in English, mathematics, science, and social studies—were similar to those reported for mathematics. These other regressions showed
Among the 12 variables predicting mathematics outcome, the strongest predictors of achievement include (a) students reporting that they talk with their parents about school (positive relationship), (b) parents reporting contact with the school (negative relationship), and (c) students reporting that parents check their homework regularly (negative relationship).
One interesting finding from the study concerns whether the student or the parent was reporting on
Desimone [
A fourth large-scale study that reported a positive relationship between PI and academic achievement was conducted by Keith et al. [
Some of the variables that were shown to best fit the causal model relating PI and student achievement included (a) talking about school, (b) aspirations/expectations, (c) structure in the home in the form of rules, and (d) participation in school activities such as PTO. Figure
Original four variables underlying the PI construct in the Keith et al. [
Results showed that these four variables are not significantly correlated to one another, and thus PI is multidimensional. In fact, when the structure and participation variables were removed and other variables added (e.g., family background, previous achievement, and ethnicity), as shown in the model depicted in Figure
Keith et al.’s [
The student achievement variable (on the right of Figure
Additionally, Keith et al. [
Our fifth large-scale study, conducted by Chen [
Data were collected through questionnaires administered to 270 Hong Kong students in the three grade levels. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis revealed interesting findings regarding parental support. The first finding showed that the indirect relationship of the students' perceived PI to academic achievement was mediated by perceived academic engagement. This finding, however, was significant only for 9th grade students (
In our final large-scale study, Sui-Chu and Willms [
All of the variables were significant at the
After reviewing the PI literature, it is worth noting some of the main limitations of PI research in conjunction with their possible ramifications. These include the following: Use of nonexperimental design leads to the inability to distinguish between correlation and causation. Inconsistent definitions of PI leads to difficulty in comparing/interpreting findings across studies that define this construct differently. Lack of isolation of PI effects leads to the inability to distinguish effects due to PI from genetic and other environmental variables.
One observation from reviewing this literature concerns the need to be cautious about interpreting correlational data. For instance, we saw earlier that the variable
In addition, there may be other mediating factors relating to PI effects on student achievement that have not yet been adequately researched. For example, as part of their research and analysis using structural modeling, Keith et al. [
Relationship between PI and achievement with homework and television viewing as mediating variables. Note: adapted from “Does parental involvement affect eighth-grade student achievement? Structural analysis of national data,” by T. Z. Keith, P. B. Keith, G. C. Troutman, P. G. Bickley, P. S. Trivette, and K. Singh, 1993,
The literature we reviewed has paid little attention to possible interactions among classes of important variables. In short, caution is warranted in attributing direct effects of parenting, genes, or social/environmental factors because all three may interact with each other in predicting academic achievement.
As noted earlier, the literature shows that children’s perceptions about PI variables appear to be better predictors of student achievement than parents’ perceptions [
The fields of education and psychology appear to be adjusting to the challenge directed toward the more traditional view that parenting has a very large influence on children's development. What the emerging view will be remains to be seen. One possible view might be similar to the view expressed by Cohen [
Despite the relative modesty of the influence of PI in the research cited in this paper, there is a need for caution in underemphasizing the importance of parents’ efforts on behalf of their children, academically and otherwise. Even Harris [
Thus, Harris affirmed the key role of parents in protection, care, and support of learning. Furthermore, given that parents play a key role in selecting or otherwise determining a child’s home, school, neighborhood, and cultural group, we can see that parents have an importance that may not be fully captured in these studies. And, as Levitt and Dubner [
Parents appear to have an important opportunity to influence their children’s academic achievement though the influence may not be as great as traditionally believed. Correlational studies have found modest associations between various PI variables and student academic achievement, with some of the most consistent relationships being reported for (a) parents talking with their child about school [
Given that parents have limited influence over the child’s peer relationships, direct parental influence remains an opportunity to leverage those factors for the benefit of the child, including their academic achievement. The design of policies, practices, and interventions should reflect an understanding of these findings about the nature and magnitude of parental influence on children’s academic achievement.