This article explores the relationship between parental engagement and student achievement (11-16 yr olds). Currently, it is one of the best ones I have read to confirm the importance of my inquiry.
Harris, A., Goodall, J. 2008. Do Parents know they matter? Engaging all Parents in Learning. Educational Research 50 (3): 277-289.
The following are are important points I have taken from the article:
- Of the non-school factors of student achievement like socio-economic background, parents’ educational attainment, family structure, ethnicity and parental engagement, it is the latter which is the most strongly connected to achievement.
- Reasons for parents not being involved/engaged include: “hard to reach” parents, socio-economic status, lack of time, work commitments, and childcare difficulties – predominantly for women and those working full-time. Single parents feel very restricted.
- Parents tended to view parental engagement as offering ‘support to students’ while teachers viewed it as a means to ‘improved behaviour and support for the school’. Schools used parental ‘engagement’ and ‘involvement’ interchangeably. There was a view among several schools that any form of parent participation was a ‘good thing’.
- Most schools involve parents in school-based activities, but evidence shows that this has little or no impact on learning in young people.
- The impact of parental engagement comes from parental values and educational aspirations exhibited through parental enthusiasm for and their own experiences of education.
- Parents were more likely to be involved in their children’s education when they believed that such involvement was a key part of what it meant to be a responsible and caring parent. Students valued the moral support parents gave to their learning more highly than the nature or type of their involvement:
- “If they weren’t interested, then you wouldn’t be.” (student, School D)
- “If they didn’t want you to do well, then you wouldn’t want to do well because it wouldn’t make much difference.” (student, School C)
- Students saw the value of parental engagement as being about valuing education. Students were also clear that their peers who lacked this form of support were less likely to do well academically:
- “You can tell the difference between someone whose parents are involved and when they’re not. When they are involved you can see that, like, you work a bit harder, because you’ve got someone to realise that you are working harder. If my parents weren’t involved, I’m not saying I’d go off rails but I wouldn’t be as concerned because there’d be no one to realise I was working hard. (student, School D)”
- “Your parents are your main influence, really – if they don’t care about it, you don’t take as much of an interest in it, do you?” (student, School V)
- “If your parents aren’t involved and don’t really care, then you don’t realise how important it is, and then you just don’t turn up to lessons and go downhill and that’s it, and you sort of slide downwards.” (student, School D)
- Students believed that parental interest in their education had a direct and positive effect on their in-school behaviour. If students faced parental sanctions for bad behaviour at school, that bad behaviour was less likely to continue.
