Antecedents of different qualities of home-based parental involvement: Findings from a cross-cultural study in Germany and Thailand

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2014.02.002Get rights and content

Abstract

The purposes of the present study were to identify factors that explain differences in the quality of home-based parental instruction (PI) and to explore the role of culture by analyzing antecedents of PI in two rather individualistic (Germany) versus collectivistic (Thailand) societies. SEM-analyses based on data from 288 German parent–child dyads and 494 dyads from Thailand were conducted in order to investigate, whether variables derived from a modified and extended version of the model of Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler (2005) can be assessed reliably and validly in both samples and possess comparable predictive power. Overall, the results suggest that the newly developed instruments are applicable in both cultures. Nevertheless, it seems that motivational beliefs, role conceptions, and interpersonal conditions may affect PI in a somewhat different way depending on culture.

Introduction

Among the different aspects of parental involvement, home-based parental involvement is, however, considered to be the most important aspect that strongly fosters pupils' learning and achievement (Desforges and Abouchaar, 2003, Sacher, 2008). Home-based parental involvement refers to all kinds of non-formal learning and teaching practices in relation to school that take place at home. These include parents' assistance with the child's school-related tasks (e.g., helping with homework, helping prepare for future examinations), how parents respond to their child's academic achievements (e.g., test results), and parent–child communication on school-related issues (e.g., discussing what happened at school as well as problems that may occur at school) (Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler, 2005, Sacher, 2008, Wild and Lorenz, 2010).

When it comes to the child's educational benefits from parental involvement (see Cooper, in this issue, for a more general approach to parents' role in students' educational success), most empirical research has focused on the links between pupils' school performance and the quantity of parental involvement. This means, how often do parents become involved in such school-related activities (e.g., Bronstein et al., 2005, Eamon, 2005, Green et al., 2007, Shumow and Lomax, 2002, Shumow and Miller, 2001). However, there has been an increase in the amount of research emphasizing the quality of parental involvement—how and in which way parents become involved in their child's schooling—showing the kinds of parental help and instruction matter (e.g., Exeler and Wild, 2003, Knollmann and Wild, 2007, Wild and Remy, 2002).

In order to derive a multidimensional conception of the quality of parental involvement, Wild (1999) has referred to self-determination theory (SDT), an approach to human motivation and well-being (see also Lorenz & Wild, 2007). This theoretical approach proposes that support from parents may be functional to the extent that it fulfills three basic needs of their children—the needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence (Grolnick, 2009). When basic needs are satisfied, children may internalize such uninteresting but socially prescribed activities as completing homework into personally important behaviors. This internalization process, in turn, nurtures children's performance, psychological health, and well-being (see, Deci & Ryan, 2000, for more information).

By applying SDT to research on parental involvement in education, the quality of home-based parental involvement can be operationally characterized by four dimensions of parental instruction. These dimensions are (a) autonomy-support (e.g., encouraging the child's self-initiated action, providing rationales), (b) responsiveness or involvement (e.g., taking the child's perspectives, dedicating resources and time), (c) structure (e.g., providing clear expectations and rules), and (d) control (e.g., pressurizing the child to behave in particular ways) (see, Grolnick and Pomerantz, 2009, Wild and Lorenz, 2010, for reviews).

The consequences of the quality of parental instruction seem to contribute to differences in pupils' optimal functioning in learning contexts. In a positive way, empirical results support the core hypothesis of SDT that parents' provision of support in a more authoritative manner (i.e., high autonomy-support and responsiveness) increases the extent to which children's regulation of their learning behaviors is autonomous rather than controlled (e.g., Exeler and Wild, 2003, Grolnick and Ryan, 1989, Grolnick et al., 1991, Lorenz and Wild, 2007, Soenens and Vansteenkiste, 2005).

In contrast, the quality of parental instruction provided to pupils in a more authoritarian setting (i.e., high control and structure) has been found to result in negative outcomes. For instance, when parental involvement becomes controlling, their children are more likely to experience negative learning moods such as feeling angry or bored (e.g., Gläser-Zikuda and Fuß, 2004, Knollmann and Wild, 2007) and even tend to avoid completing their assignments (Flett et al., 1995, Vahedi et al., 2009).

Although the differences in the quality of home-based parental involvement may contribute to either an enhancement or a discouragement of pupils' learning outcomes, little is known about the factors that influence or motivate the parents' decision to adopt different dimensions of home-based instruction. The current research differentiated between protective factors that encourage parents to become more authoritative (i.e., highly autonomy-supportive and responsive) in their involvement and risk factors that enhance their authoritarian conceptions of instruction (i.e., highly controlling and structured).

To theoretically explore factors that may contribute to the prediction of the quality of parental instruction, we referred to the model of the parental involvement process proposed by Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler, 1995, Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler, 1997. Overall, the model proposes that parents become more or less involved in their children's education depending on their motivational beliefs and self-efficacy, different kinds of invitations as well as options or restriction in their personal life context.

The model was revised due to empirical findings found in a series of four studies (see Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 2005); the latest version was confirmed by studies showing the predictive power of the theoretical assumed antecedents. Nevertheless, Green et al. (2007) tested the latest version of the model empirically and interestingly found that in older pupils, the significant predictor constructs were more likely to predict the amount of home-based parental involvement rather than school-based involvement.

Although the Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler's model has been empirically validated in previous studies, the aims of those studies were to study the prediction of differences in the amount of parental involvement. When using this model to explain differences in the quality of home-based parental involvement, some adaptations were necessary in the present study.

The original measure of “role construction” distinguishes three kinds of responsibility beliefs for the child's education, namely, parent-focused, partnership-focused, and school-focused. Our preliminary analyses did not replicate this 3-factorial model but, rather, suggest a binary differentiation between active and passive forms of responsibility constructions. Whereas the former combines parent-focused and partnership-focused conceptions, the latter refers to the conviction that it is in the responsibility of schools and teachers to inform parents.

Apart from parents' beliefs about who (e.g., parents or schools) should take responsibility for the child's school success (Hoover-Dempsey, Wilkins, Sandler, & O'Connor, 2004), past studies in the field of educational psychology have suggested that pupils may adopt different kinds of goal orientations (e.g., Dweck and Elliott, 1988, Nicholls, 1984), which may be prompted or reinforced by their parent's role conceptions in learning situations at home. In this context, Renshaw and Gardner (1990) have suggested that parental behaviors in home-instruction may be a function of two different role conceptions, namely goal orientation towards learning versus performance. In line with their expectations, they empirically found that process-oriented parents—who interpreted home-based instruction as an opportunity to foster self-regulation competencies of their child—were less directive. In contrast, product-oriented parents—who tend to focus on “the outcome” of informal learning situations—were more directive and controlling (see also Helmke, Schrader, & Lehneis-Klepper, 1991). Therefore, the present study assumed that differences in parents' role conceptions may also contribute to quality differences of home-based parental involvement.

The present study included the predictor construct of parental (teaching) efficacy beliefs and distinguished between parental efficacy beliefs in the general domain and in the specific domain. The Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler's model focuses only on parents' efficacy beliefs in general while research in educational psychology has underlined that pupils' self-efficacy may vary across domains (e.g., Cleary & Zimmerman, 2004). Thus, it might be reasonable to assume that parents' levels of efficacy beliefs in different school subjects might be not similar. Particularly, the focus of the current study was on the domain of mathematics due to several reasons. For instance, mathematics is regarded as an essential tool for the foundation of education (Asiedu-Addo & Yidana, 2004). In almost every country, mathematics has been considered to be one of main school subjects because of its central status in the school curriculum (Quadling, 1982).

The present research took into account the predictor construct of parents' perceived invitations for involvement. Originally, this construct included three patterns of perceived invitations (i.e., general invitation from the school, specific teacher invitation, and specific child invitation). However, results of previous research indicated that the specific invitation from school is not a significant predictor of parental involvement (Green et al., 2007). Therefore, the two patterns of perceived invitations from the school and the teacher were combined.

Although Hoover-Dempsey and colleagues propose parents' self-perceived time and energy as an important aspect of parental life context, Green et al. (2007) found that parental knowledge and skills did not predict parental involvement. Nevertheless, we took the valence towards school into account which was not included in Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler's original model. Taylor, Clayton, and Rowley (2004) pointed out that parents' own school experiences may influence parental behaviors. For instance, parents with negative own school experiences may hesitate to become engaged in their children's school related activities. Thus, the present study included valence towards school as one of antecedent factors in parental life contexts.

Past research has underlined the critical role of parental involvement. It has been noted that the ways parents define the meaning of parental involvement and their motivations to become involved in the child's education may vary across ethnicities (e.g., Hill and Craft, 2003, Lynch and Stein, 1987).

In the cross-cultural psychology, we are relating to1 the most strongly emphasized aspect of cultural value, that is, the difference between individualism and collectivism (Hofstede, 2000). Markus and Kitayama (1991) proposed that Western culture is viewed as an individualistic construct focusing on self-reliance and independence, whereas Eastern culture is viewed as less individualistic but more collectivistic or group-oriented.

Previous research has confirmed that parents in collectivistic cultures (e.g., non-Western nations) are more authoritarian in their parenting practice. They see this way of parenting practice as normative and necessary to support the child's optimal development. In contrast, an authoritative parenting style is more appropriate for individualistic cultures (Miller, 1997, Rudy and Grusec, 2006).

Taken together, it could be assumed within this framework that parents from different cultural settings differ in the use of their instructional strategies (e.g., more autonomy-supportive or more controlling) due to variations in their motivational beliefs, interpersonal conditions, and family contexts. That is to say, these antecedent factors may contribute more to authoritative parental instruction in individualistic cultural settings (e.g., Western countries) on the one hand. On the other hand, they would rather predict authoritarian parental instruction in collectivistic cultural settings (e.g., Eastern nations).

The present study was designed to test the assumption, whether parents adopt different instructional strategies due to variations in their responsibility and role constructions, their efficacy beliefs and perceived invitations as well as their former experiences in education. Since earlier empirical research has confirmed that the quantity and quality of parental involvement may differ according to socio-economic status (SES) of family (e.g., Chen and Berdan, 2006, Heymann and Earle, 2000, Hoff-Ginsberg and Tardif, 1995, Lee and Bowen, 2006, Wild and Gerber, 2007), family SES was taken into consideration as a control variable in order to estimate the impact of psychological antecedents of parental instruction over and beyond socio-economic constraints.

Apart from this, the assumed antecedents of parental instruction were heavily derived from a model that claims universal generalizability. Yet, it has been empirically tested, up to now, only in US-American studies. Thus, we were interested in gaining a deeper insight into the assumed antecedents of parental instruction in different cultural settings in more depth.

The current research focused on two distinct cultural settings—Germany and Thailand. As a representative of an individualistic culture, Germany was chosen because its culture has been viewed as having individualistic value orientations (Guess, 2004). In contrast, Thailand was chosen because it is recognized as collectivist rather than individualist, as strongly indicated by, for instance, living in extended families (Burn and Thongpasert, 2005, Hofstede, 2000). Moreover, the study by Gouveia and Ros (2000) has empirically confirmed that the German culture appears to be more individualistic than the Thai culture. The present study is the first cross-cultural comparison of this aspect of research in both countries.

Our assumptions can be condensed into the following hypotheses:

  • 1)

    Parents are more likely to adopt authoritative kinds of parental instruction (high levels of autonomy-support and responsiveness) the more they hold an active view of their responsibility for the child's education, frame the child's learning situations as opportunities to develop their self-regulated learning (process-oriented), report high teaching efficacy beliefs (either in general or in a specific domain), feel invited by the child and school staff to become involved, have time and energy to take care of the child's school-related issues, evaluate their own school experiences in a positive way, and report high family SES;

  • 2)

    Parents may create home-based learning situations in an authoritarian manner (high levels of control and structure) the more they hold a passive view of their responsibility and evaluate the child's learning situations as opportunities to strive for school performance (product-oriented). Moreover, parents may be less likely to adopt authoritarian kinds of instruction the more they are confident in their teaching skills, feel invited by the child and school staff, have time and energy, report their own school experiences in a positive way, and have high family SES;

  • 3)

    The linkages between antecedents and the both types of home-based parental involvement should vary across cultural groups. In the German setting, antecedent factors may rather predict authoritative kinds of parental instruction, while in the Thai setting, they might contribute more to the prediction of authoritarian kinds of parental instruction.

Section snippets

Procedure

Before conducting the main study, the pilot study in Thailand was conducted in order to ensure that the explanation of general characteristics of home-based parental involvement is similar in both countries. The expected result showed that parents are mostly responsible for home-based instruction in Thailand, which was in line with the earlier research in Germany (e.g., Gerber and Wild, 2009, Wild and Lorenz, 2010). Among homework in different school subjects, the largest proportion of Thai

Cross-cultural measurement invariance of the parent and pupil scales across the German and Thai samples

In Table 2, the MCFA-findings are presented. The findings showed that, in every scale, the model of configural invariance (the most unconstrained model of invariance) was the best-fit-model, as indicated by acceptably good fit indices.

Three of the six parent scales (i.e., active responsibility, role conceptions, and parental efficacy beliefs) achieved the highly restrictive levels of invariance across the German and Thai samples. In other words, not only equal were the factor structures and the

Discussion

The main focus of the current research was to identify parental and familial factors that explain different qualities of parental instruction in two different cultural contexts. Two cross-sectional surveys were conducted in Germany and Thailand by using parent and pupil questionnaires that achieved acceptable levels of cross-culturally measurement invariance. The overall findings from the two cultural groups generally supported our hypotheses.

The SEM analyses showed that most of the predictor

References (60)

  • S.K. Asiedu-Addo et al.

    Mathematics teachers' knowledge of the subject content and methodology

    Mathematics Connection

    (2004)
  • N. Bellin et al.

    The importance of class composition for reading achievement: Migration background, social composition and instructional practices. An analysis of the German PIRLS data

    IERI Monograph Series: Issues and Methodologies in Large-Scale Assessments

    (2010)
  • P. Bronstein et al.

    Parental predictors of motivational orientation in early adolescence: A longitudinal study

    Journal of Youth and Adolescence

    (2005)
  • J. Burn et al.

    A culture-based model for strategic implementation of virtual education delivery

    International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology

    (2005)
  • E. Chen et al.

    Socioeconomic status and patterns of parental adolescent interactions

    Journal of Research on Adolescence

    (2006)
  • T.J. Cleary et al.

    Self-regulation empowerment program: A school-based program to enhance self-regulated and self-motivated cycles of student learning

    Psychology in the Schools

    (2004)
  • C. Cooper

    Cultural brokers: How immigrant youth in multicultural societies navigate and negotiate their pathways to college identities

    Learning, Culture and Social Interaction

    (2014)
  • E.L. Deci et al.

    The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior

    Psychological Inquiry

    (2000)
  • C. Desforges et al.

    The impact of parental involvement, parental support and family education on pupil achievement and adjustment: A literature review

    (2003)
  • C.S. Dweck et al.

    Goals: An approach to motivation and achievement

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

    (1988)
  • M.K. Eamon

    Social-demographic, school, neighborhood, and parenting influences on the academic achievement of Latino young adolescents

    Journal of Youth and Adolescence

    (2005)
  • J. Exeler et al.

    Die Rolle des Elternhauses für die Förderung selbstbestimmten Lernens

    Unterrichtswissenschaft

    (2003)
  • G.L. Flett et al.

    Dimensions of perfectionism and procrastination

  • J. Gerber et al.

    Mit wem wird wie zuhause gelernt? Die Hausaufgabenpraxis im Fach Deutsch

    Unterrichtswissenschaft

    (2009)
  • M. Gläser-Zikuda et al.

    Wohlbefinden von Schülerinnen und Schülern im Unterricht

  • V.V. Gouveia et al.

    The Hofstede and Schwartz models for classifying individualism at the cultural level: Their relation to macro-social and macro-economic variables

    Psicothema

    (2000)
  • C.L. Green et al.

    Parents' motivations for involvement in children's education: An empirical test of a theoretical model of parental involvement

    Journal of Educational Psychology

    (2007)
  • W.S. Grolnick

    The role of parents in facilitating autonomous self-regulation for education

    Theory and Research in Education

    (2009)
  • W.S. Grolnick et al.

    Issues and challenges in studying parental control: Toward a new conceptualization

    Child Development Perspectives

    (2009)
  • W.S. Grolnick et al.

    Parent styles associated with children's self-regulation and competence in school

    Journal of Educational Psychology

    (1989)
  • W.S. Grolnick et al.

    The inner resources for school achievement: Motivational mediators of children's perceptions of their parents

    Journal of Educational Psychology

    (1991)
  • C. Guess

    Decision making in individualistic and collectivistic cultures

    Online readings in psychology and culture, unit 4

    (2004)
  • J.F. Hair et al.

    Multivariate data analysis. A global perspective

    (2010)
  • A. Helmke et al.

    Zur Rolle des Elternverhaltens für die Schulleistungsentwicklung ihrer Kinder

    Zeitschrift für Entwicklungspsychologie und Pädagogische Psychologie

    (1991)
  • S.J. Heymann et al.

    Low-income parents: How do working conditions affect their opportunity to help school-age children at risk?

    American Educational Research Journal

    (2000)
  • N.E. Hill et al.

    Parent–school involvement and school performance: Mediated pathways among socioeconomically comparable African American and Euro-American families

    Journal of Educational Psychology

    (2003)
  • E. Hoff-Ginsberg et al.

    Socioeconomic status and parenting

  • G. Hofstede

    Culture's consequences: Comparing values, behaviour s, institutions, and organizations across nations

    (2000)
  • K.V. Hoover-Dempsey et al.

    Explorations in parent-school relations

    Journal of Educational Research

    (1992)
  • K.V. Hoover-Dempsey et al.

    Parental involvement in children's education: Why does it make a difference?

    Teachers College Record

    (1995)
  • Cited by (29)

    • Quality features of family–school partnerships in German schools: Measurement and association with parent–child communication about school

      2020, Children and Youth Services Review
      Citation Excerpt :

      Fourth, we assessed the amount of parent–child communication about school as an important aspect of parental involvement at home. In fact, past research underlined that it is the quality of parental involvement (rather than the quantity) that matters for students’ school success (e.g., Dettmers et al., 2019; Moroni, Dumont, Trautwein, Niggli, & Baeriswyl, 2015; Yotyodying & Wild, 2014). Future studies should therefore take the distinction between the quantity and quality of parental involvement into consideration.

    • Effective family–school communication for students with learning disabilities: Associations with parental involvement at home and in school

      2019, Learning, Culture and Social Interaction
      Citation Excerpt :

      Numerous studies underlined different sources of family barriers that are beyond school control—such as family hardship barrier (e.g., parental income, parental educational attainment), pragmatic barrier (e.g., responsibility of child care, inflexible working schedule), cultural barrier (e.g., language differences), and psychological barrier (e.g., past negative experiences about school)—that may hamper parents' abilities to communicate with their child's school effectively, as well as their abilities to become involved in their child's education (for a review, see Hoover-Dempsey & Walker, 2002). It is important to note that most of the past research assessed parental SES by using three main indicators: Parental educational attainment, parental occupation, and parental income (e.g., Dumont, Trautwein, Nagy, & Nagengast, 2014; Green et al., 2007; Kohl et al., 2000; Patrikakou & Weissberg, 2000; Yotyodying & Wild, 2014). Therefore, the term family hardship can also refer to a lower family SES.

    • Predictors of the quantity and different qualities of home-based parental involvement: Evidence from parents of children with learning disabilities

      2016, Learning and Individual Differences
      Citation Excerpt :

      On the other hand, active parents of children with LD are more likely to deliver a structuring home-based learning environment. Our results extended the working model of Yotyodying and Wild (2014). That is, active role conception can be predictive of parental structure when it is measured in terms of parents' provision of competent feedback.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text