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The results of a recent study on high school students in Quebec suggest that parents who
are involved, either in helping with homework or volunteering at school, their children
tend to earn higher grades. This study examined the factors that influence the parents of
high school students to be involved in their children’s education.
Methods
Data were collected in the late spring of 2001. The sample consisted of 770 parents with
children in five public secondary-school students from various areas of Quebec. The
percentages for the American equivalent of each grade level for the students were as
follows: 46% were in grade 7, 30% in grade 8, and 24% in Grade 9. Almost 51% were girls
and 49% were boys.
Surveys, based on constructs developed by Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler, were implemented to
assess the relationship between four motivators of parental involvement for adolescents in
grades 7-8: (a) the way parents understand their roles in their children’s education,
(b) their judgment of whether their own skills and knowledge are helpful to their
children, and (c) how they perceive the teachers’ expectations of them, and (d) how
they perceive their adolescent children’s expectations. Additionally, parents
reported demographic information and the activities they were involved in.
Results
The findings indicated that, for seventh-graders, the chief motivator for parental
involvement in the home was as a result of their adolescents’ specific requests that
they be involved. The second most popular motivator was the parents’ belief that it
was their responsibility to be aware of their children’s academic performance and the
activities that they were involved in.
For eighth -graders, the findings showed that the main precursors to parental involvement
were the students inviting them to participate and their perception of their own ability
to be helpful. Furthermore, positive interactions between teens and parents encouraged the
teens’ invitations for involvement.
For ninth-graders, the researchers found that it was the parents’ perceptions that
their teens’ ask for their involvement that made them most likely to offer their help
in the academic realm. Another prime factor, though less important, was their perceptions
that their teens invite them to be involved in the social realm.
Conclusion
The results of this study demonstrated that the motivators of involvement, of parents with
teens in —United States school system equivalents—grades 7 through 9, varied
from one grade to the next. More specifically, for the seventh grade there were three
factors that influenced parental involvement, whereas in the ninth grade there was only
one factor—perceived student invitations. Furthermore, the parents’ perception
of the importance of their role weighed almost twice as heavily at grade 9 than at grade
7.
Complete findings of the study appear in The Journal of Educational Research; 1/1/2005;
Authors: Bertrand, Richard
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