Parent characteristics, economic stress and neighborhood context as predictors of parent involvement in preschool children's education

Abstract

This study examines factors related to three dimensions of parent involvement in preschool: school-based involvement, home-based involvement, and the parent–teacher relationship. Participants were 154 predominantly African American parents recruited from two Head Start programs. Results of bivariate and canonical correlation analyses support the validity of a multi-dimensional, ecological conceptualization of parent involvement. Perceived context variables, including economic stress and neighborhood social disorder, related negatively to parent involvement. Parent characteristics, including sense of efficacy regarding education and level of education, related positively to parent involvement. Regression analyses detected different patterns of association between predictors and the three dimensions of parent involvement. Parent characteristics were associated with home involvement, while perceived context variables were predictive of the teacher–parent relationship. Implications of differential predictors for different domains of parent involvement and directions for future research and intervention with low-income families are discussed.

Introduction

Children's development is influenced by factors at different ecological levels, including the family, the school, the neighborhood, and society (Aber, Gephart, Brooks-Gunn, & Connell, 1997). For many years, researchers examined the separate impacts of family and school on developmental trajectories, but focus has shifted to studying the link between these two settings as a determinant of child outcomes (Epstein, 1996, Grolnick and Slowiaczek, 1994). This home–school connection is represented in the early childhood and educational literature by the construct of parent involvement, which refers to parents' participation in the education of their children through behaviors that range from ideological support of education to active communication with school personnel. For children from low-income families, parent involvement in education can be a key protective factor that fosters cognitive and emotional resilience in the face of multiple stressors (Garmezy, 1991, Myers and Taylor, 1998, Shumow et al., 1999). Thorough investigation into parent involvement and the determinants of a high quality home–school connection is of considerable importance for understanding preschool children's development (Comer and Haynes, 1991, Epstein and Dauber, 1991).

Head Start, an educational program initiated in the 1960s, has developed into the largest federally funded program promoting school readiness for low-income preschool children. The enriched preschool services offered by Head Start, including formalized involvement of parents, help children enter kindergarten with better-developed cognitive and social skills (Takanishi & DeLeon, 1994). Because Head Start programs have long recognized parent involvement as a key component of school success for low-income children (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2000), they provide an ideal context in which to examine the complexities of the home–school relationship during the preschool years. Using survey data obtained from over 150 minority families with children attending a Head Start program, the current paper extends the literature by using a multi-method approach to study parent characteristics and contextual variables, including neighborhood features, which may be predictive of parent involvement.

Involving parents in the educational process is particularly important for maximizing low-income children's opportunities for academic success, as it has the potential to lessen the discontinuity between the home and school environment (Mendez and Fogle, 2002, Slaughter-Defoe, 1995). By involving parents, teachers' knowledge of their students' socio-cultural context is enhanced, thereby helping them to deliver more culturally appropriate educational services. Parents are also exposed to teachers who may model age-appropriate, educational interactions with children (Haynes & Ben-Avie, 1996). Parent involvement can promote positive adaptation to school and protect against negative outcomes for low-income children, such as conduct problems or school failure (Alexander & Entwisle, 1996). In a study of resilience among elementary-aged children, parent involvement was found to offset the negative effects of living in a low-income, high-crime neighborhood on children's academic performance (Shumow et al., 1999). Unfortunately, rigorous studies of the specific benefits associated with parent involvement for low-income families during preschool are lacking (Mendez, submitted for publication).

Parent involvement is frequently defined in school-centered terms, such as the frequency of parents' visits to the school to volunteer or attend a conference with a teacher (Fantuzzo, Tighe, & Childs, 2000). However, parent involvement in children's education can take a number of forms, both within the home and at school (Grolnick and Slowiaczek, 1994, Parker et al., 1999). As increasing numbers of low-income parents are experiencing significant time constraints related to work, it is important for schools to offer ways for parents to be involved at home (Marcon, 1999). Teacher and school characteristics may also be related to levels of parent involvement (Eccles & Harold, 1996). Research has shown that teachers who hold more positive attitudes toward parent involvement are more successful in involving “hard-to-reach parents,” including working parents, single parents, and parents with low levels of education (Epstein & Dauber, 1991). One study of Head Start staff practices found that when teachers received more in-service trainings and offered more academically oriented activities for children at school, parents of their students engaged in a greater variety of home-based learning activities (Barnes, Guevara, Garcia, Levin, & Connell, 1997). Assessment of parent–teacher relationships may therefore play an important role in enhancing our understanding of parent involvement.

Most recent models of parent involvement incorporate both home-based and school-based activities (Epstein, 1996, Fantuzzo et al., 2000), yet few studies include objective measures of involvement or consider the quality of the parent–teacher relationship. A major contribution of the current paper is the use of a multidimensional, ecologically based, multi-informant approach to the study of parent involvement. To this end, we obtained parent ratings of their involvement in education at home and school, teacher ratings of their relationship with each parent, and objective records of parent participation in Head Start center events and meetings. These four dimensions represent overlapping yet distinct components of our conceptual model of parent involvement during the preschool years.

Eccles and Harold (1996) developed a model for examining determinants of parent involvement that takes into account the multiple ecological systems influencing children. According to this model, parent involvement is determined at the most proximal level by parents' beliefs and values, as well as teachers' beliefs and practices specific to parent involvement. At more distal levels, other child, parent, teacher, school, and neighborhood characteristics may have both direct and indirect effects on parent involvement. For a fuller understanding of the factors that lead some parents to be more involved than others, the current study considered multi-level correlates of parent involvement, including a range of proximal and more distal factors. This section reviews some prior work involving key parent characteristics and contextual variables that are included as predictors of parent involvement in our study.

Family demographics are consistently related to levels of parent involvement in education. For example, single parents tend to be less involved in educational activities with their children than married parents (Zill, 1996). Studies of the role of socioeconomic status (SES) in parent involvement suggest that lower SES parents are typically less involved in their children's schools than middle or high SES parents (Dornbusch & Ritter, 1988). Parents with higher levels of education have also been found to be more involved in their children's learning than parents with lower levels of education (Fantuzzo et al., 2000). Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler (1995) argue, however, that while demographic factors play a role, they are not the primary determinants of whether and how parents become involved in their children's schooling. Instead, it is likely that demographic variables serve as proxy variables for more complex dynamics within individuals and communities (Coulton, Korbin, & Su, 1996), such as parenting efficacy, perceived economic stress, and neighborhood context.

Parenting efficacy (i.e., a person's belief in his or her own competence to achieve a desired parenting outcome) has been identified as a key determinant of parent involvement (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1995). Downer and Mendez (2005) found significant relations between African American fathers' self-reported efficacy regarding education and frequency of home-based educational activities with their children enrolled in Head Start. Similarly, there is evidence that parents with internal locus of control are more involved in educational activities at home and at school than parents with external locus of control (Schaefer, 1991). It seems that low-income parents are more likely than middle- and upper-income parents to view teachers as the “experts” in education, which may lead to a lower rate of involvement in educational activities with their children (Crozier, 1999).

Only recently have models of parent involvement acknowledged the influence of more distal factors, including neighborhood context, on parent involvement in education (Eccles and Harold, 1993, Smith et al., 1997). Neighborhood structural factors such as residential mobility, family disruption, housing and population density, and resource deprivation all contribute to weakened community processes in low-income neighborhoods (Sampson, 1997). Parents from higher-risk, lower resource neighborhoods may focus more on protecting children from dangers than on fostering children's skill development (Eccles and Harold, 1993, Furstenberg, 1993, O'Neil et al., 2001). In one of the few identified empirical studies of the issue, Smith et al. (1997) found that neighborhood climate was significantly associated with parent involvement at school and at home for elementary school students. Given the growing evidence for neighborhood effects on other family processes, further examination of the relationship between perceived neighborhood context and parent involvement is warranted, particularly among parents of younger children (Mendez, Stillman, LaForett, Wandersman, & Flaspohler, 2004).

The present study examines parent characteristics and perceived context in relation to the multidimensional construct of parent involvement. It is hypothesized that parent involvement in Head Start programs is best conceptualized as a set of interrelated dimensions involving home activities, school-related contact, and the relationships between teachers and parents. We intended to test whether parent involvement could be predicted by parents' perceptions of their neighborhood context, parents' perceived economic stress, and parents' self-concept-specifically, their sense of efficacy regarding their children's education. Thus, we investigated differential patterns of prediction for the three specific dimensions of parent involvement (home-based involvement, school-based involvement, and parent–teacher relationships). Analyses addressed the following questions: (1) How are parent-report, teacher-report, and an objective record of parent involvement activities associated? (2) How do parent characteristics (education, efficacy) and perceptions of context (street crime, neighborhood disorder, local social networks, economic stress) relate to parent involvement in Head Start? (3) What are the relative contributions of parent characteristics and perceived context to different dimensions of parent involvement?