Elsevier

Educational Research Review

Volume 24, June 2018, Pages 10-30
Educational Research Review

A review of the relationship between parental involvement indicators and academic achievement

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2018.02.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The most consistent relation between parental involvement and academic achievement was found for parents holding high expectations.

  • Parental involvement does not diminish as children grow older but it does change in nature.

  • Several studies challenge the common assumption that parental involvement is directly related to academic achievement.

  • Not all forms of parental involvement are positively related to academic achievement.

  • The association between parental involvement and academic achievement is not the same for all ethnic/racial groups.

Abstract

This paper reviews the research literature on the relationship between parental involvement and students' academic achievement with 75 studies published between 2003 and 2017. The results first present how individual parental involvement variables correlate with academic achievement based on an age-related classification. Then we move to a more profound review of the literature to determine which variables are moderating or mediating the relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement. Finally, we describe the advancements that were made with studies from the last decade with special focus on the construct of parental involvement. Parental involvement variables that show promises according to their correlations with academic achievement are: (a) reading at home, (b) parents that are holding high expectations/aspirations for their children's academic achievement and schooling, (c) communication between parents and children regarding school, (d) parental encouragement and support for learning.

Introduction

Educational researchers have long been interested in the positive effect that parental involvement may have on the academic achievement of their children (e.g., Epstein, 1991; Fan & Chen, 2001). The perception that parental involvement has positive effects on students' academic achievement has led to a voluminous body of literature about parental involvement (Hill & Tyson, 2009; Jeynes, 2003; Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008). Policymakers and researchers seem to have agreed that parental involvement is a critical ingredient for children's academic success (Graves & Brown Wright, 2011; Mattingly, Prislin, McKenzie, Rodrigues, & Kayzar, 2002). Parents who are active participants in their children's education are thought to promote children's social, emotional and academic growth (Green, Walker, Hoover-Dempsey, & Sandler, 2007).

Despite the widespread belief that parental involvement is a critical ingredient for children's academic success, there are some issues related to the research on parental involvement (Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003). The degree of inconsistency surrounding findings with regard to parental involvement and its association with student's academic achievement is perhaps the most troubling aspect of current research (McNeal, 2012). Studies have found positive relations, negative relations, and also a lack of relations between parental involvement and student achievement (Fan & Chen, 2001).

A closer look at the empirical studies leads to the conclusion that these differences in the literature exist, because research has been conducted without a widely accepted theoretical framework. The concept of parental involvement has been operationalized, measured and applied in so many ways that it has become somewhat unclear what exactly is meant by the concept (e.g., Bakker & Denessen, 2007; Fantuzzo, Davis, & Ginsburg, 1995). Georgiou (1997) pointed to problems in the empirical literature which are still not resolved. These problems stem from the concept's complexity and the confusion that exists because of the absence of a clear definition. The issue of a wide range of research on parental involvement, reflected in different study methodologies, research questions, operationalizations, and findings, can benefit from a research synthesis (Wilder, 2014). The purpose of this article is to review existing empirical literature and present the specific types of parental involvement that are related to academic achievement.

A lack of consensus regarding parental involvement starts with the definition of the construct, and the fact that “despite its intuitive meaning, the operational use of parental involvement has not been clear and consistent” (Fan & Chen, 2001, p. 3). Definitions vary from inclusive, such as the one provided by Grolnick and Slowiaczek (1994) who describe parental involvement as “the dedication of resources by the parent to the child” (p. 238) and LaRocque, Kleiman, and Darling (2011) who explain parental involvement as “the parents' or caregivers' investment in the education of their children” (p. 116) to more specific ones that define parental involvement as parental activities at home and at school that are related to children's learning in school (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1997). In other studies, researchers avoid a general definition of parental involvement and instead they focus on specific involvement types. For example, Epstein (1987) and Comer (1995) distinguished between two specific types of parental involvement: home-based strategies, such as providing structure and support with regard to learning and education at home, and school-based strategies, such as communicating with the teacher or attending school events.

The relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement has been the primary interest of researchers for years. Overall, the results of prominent meta-analyses in the field indicate that in general statistically significant relationships exists between parental involvement and academic achievement (e.g. Fan & Chen, 2001; Jeynes, 2005, 2007; Hill & Tyson, 2009). However, empirical research does not provide a clear picture about which specific types of parental involvement are predictive of achievement. This lack of clarity is the result of mixed findings from a variety of studies. Some studies have shown that certain parental involvement types are associated with positive academic achievement, whereas others found that it is not associated with changes in students’ academic achievement. Additionally, studies also found parental involvement to be negatively associated with achievement.

For example, Singh et al. (1995) explored the effect of four components of parental involvement on the achievement of 8th graders namely; parental aspirations for children's education, parent-child communication about school, home-structure and parental participation in school related activities. They showed that parental involvement in school activities was not related to achievement, whilst home structure had a slight negative association. Parental involvement in the form of parent-child discussions had a moderate positive impact. And parental aspiration had the strongest positive relationship with achievement. On the contrary, Ho Siu-Chu and Willms (1996) found that parent-child discussions at home had the strongest positive relationship with 8th graders academic achievement. They also found that parental involvement in school had a moderate impact on achievement. These studies are just examples indicating that, as is often the case with complex phenomena, findings regarding parental involvement and its relationship with academic achievement are full of inconsistencies.

This paper examines the research literature on the association between parental involvement and student academic achievement. Our goal was to examine how parental involvement has been defined, describe the relations between parental involvement variables and academic achievement, and to generalize the results. Because studies included various ages of children across different educational contexts in their samples, we decided to organize the studies based on age-related categories. The following categorization was used:

  • 1.

    Early childhood education (up to the age of 6)

  • 2.

    Elementary school (ages 6–12)

  • 3.

    Middle, high school and beyond (ages 12–18)

Section snippets

Literature search

Studies investigating parental involvement and their relation with children's academic achievement were identified through a search in the databases of ERIC, PsycINFO, and Web of Science. After several trial runs, the final searches were conducted in September 2017 with the following queries: [(“parental involvement” OR “parental participation”) AND (“academic achievement” OR “student outcome” OR “student effect” OR “student impact” OR “student influence”)]. The Web of Science search resulted

Results

In the next section, the results of our analysis will be presented. We discuss how prominent individual parental involvement variables correlate with academic achievement. This analysis will be presented in three sections based on age-related categories. The results will be presented for (a) early childhood education, (b) elementary school and (c) middle school and beyond. We end the result section by discussing variables that influence the relation between parental involvement and academic

Conclusion

This review analyzed the results of 75 studies examining the relation between parental involvement and academic achievement. Findings of studies published between 2003 and 2017 confirm that parental involvement is related to children's academic achievement. However, this association is not as great as traditionally believed. Correlational studies have found small to medium associations between various parental involvement variables and academic achievement. The most consistent and positive

Relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement

In this review we considered two dimensions of parental involvement, namely parental home-based involvement and parental school-based involvement. Research has provided some interesting insights with regard to the home-based involvement dimension. Several indicators that belong to this dimension were consistently found to be related to the academic achievement of children. Interestingly, the association with academic achievement was often found the strongest for one particular measure: parental

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