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The Impact of Parent Involvement on Student Achievement
Introduction
In her 1996 Democratic Convention Speech, Hillary Clinton reiterated the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” No sooner had she said this, than Republican senator, Robert Dole, offered a rebuttal in his nomination acceptance speech at Republican Convention in August of that same year. Dole posited that “it does not take a village to raise a child. It takes a family to raise a child.” However, like Clinton, more and more educators are coming to the realization that the family alone cannot raise the child, nor can the school alone raise the child. It takes a partnership between the home and school for the child to be raised properly, and for the child to achieve optimally. Carter (2004) emphasizes the need for all adults in the child’s life to work cohesively in order to ensure the academic success of the child when he writes:
To help our students achieve, we must bring together all of the adults who have an enduring influence on their academic success. As revealed in a recent Education Week poll, educators recognize the need to improve parental involvement. Eight-five percent of teachers responded that they believe increased parental involvement would help eliminate the achievement gap. We cannot allow parents to remain an untapped resource because of cultural, language, or education barriers. We must find innovative ways to meet the diverse needs of students and parents in our changing society ….
Richard Riley (1994), former U.S. Secretary of Education, propounded that “thirty years of research show that greater family involvement in children’s learning is a critical link to achieving a high quality education and a safe disciplined learning environment for every student.” Even though “some studies have reported minimal positive effects or even negative effects for parental involvement…. [with] many parents report[ing] that they feel unprepared to help their children….” (Marzano, R., Pickering, D., 2007), several researchers (Fields-Smith, 2005; Epstein, 1997; Balli, Demo, & Wedman, 1998; Davis, 1989) have endorsed the notion of the positive impact of parent involvement on student achievement. Since achievement is a key term in this paper, let us avoid ambiguity by looking at the meaning of this word in the context of this study.
Achievement has to do with how well an individual carries out or accomplishes the goals that he/she sets for him/herself, or the goals that others set for him/her. Within the school system achievement is measured against a set of learning standards that is mandated by each State’s Department of Education. Undoubtedly, achievement is measured according to how well a student performs in school. Usually this performance is tied to the amount of effort a child puts into his/her school work; hence achievement is neither accidental nor is it as a result of natural ability. It is something that is acquired through the hard work and commitment of not only the child, but the school and home as well. In December 2002, the British Colombia School Trustee Association (BCSTA) task force on students’ achievement reported that:
It should be recognized, however, that achievement is not necessarily permanent. Otherwise, one would remember everything and not forget anything. Achievement is also not an all or nothing process; one achieves some things partially, and some things wholly depending on one's level of maturity. For example, how one understands "democracy" is dependent on many factors, and we do not really know if anyone understands tit completely. Achievement is tempered by context; that is, one may know something if not under stress, but forget it completely if stressed. Achievement is also situation-dependent -- on needs to learn times tables backwards and forwards -- apparently, 9x8 and 8x9 are learned separately if intended for quick recall. And, finally, the achievement attained is not necessarily the same as what was intended. For instance, children learn what their parents do, not what they say!
Achievers are aware of their accomplishments. They choose to meet challenges; they engage and put forward effort; they recognize their own accomplishments. Goals may be initially set by someone else, but choosing to engage in the challenge is an intensely personal action. No one else can accomplish a goal for you.
(BCSTA Task Force on Students’ Achievement)
However, before the student reaches the level of achiever, he/she needs the help of parents and teachers to help to steer him/her in the right direction. Consequently, the hypothesis of this study comes from the premise that achievement is indeed situation-dependent. It is therefore my firm belief that a child who finds him/herself in a supportive home milieu will perform at a higher level than a child who lacks parental support and involvement.
The Importance of Parental Involvement
In a number of communities in the lower socioeconomic stratum of society, the burden of educating the child is left entirely up to the school. Yet, only about a third of the child’s time is spent in school. The majority of his/her time is spent at home. This is the primary reason why the parental involvement plays such a crucial role in the child’s achievement in school. Most people in academia hold as true the tenet that when parents are actively involved in every aspect of their child’s school life, the child will perform at a much higher level than his counterpart who lacks parental involvement, since parents are by and large the child’s first teacher. A 2001 report out of the Michigan Department of Education claims that, “the earlier in a child’s educational process parent involvement begins, the more powerful the effects.” The report also posits that, “86% of the general public believes that support from parents is the most important way to improve the schools.” For this reason, parental involvement is more than just an occasional visit to the school’s PTA meetings; it involves a wide range of activities - from reading to a young child, to helping a child set academic goals, to checking a child notebook to ensure that he has had a productive day.
It probably would be safe to say that every parent wants his child to achieve, but many are guilty of not doing what it takes to achieve this end. The problem of poor parental involvement has remained an area of concern since it is often times difficult to get especially the single, working parent as involved as one would like them to be. Allen (2005) postulates that a stronger parental involvement in school is integral to students’ achievement. He further states that educators who are:
… focused on school renewal are finding that strengthening parents' involvement in their children's education just may be the "missing link" for improving student achievement.
The increasing inclusion of parents in many aspects of school life, including school decision making, signals a movement away from the century-old "factory-model school" that rarely invited parents in and accepted a 20 percent student failure rate as inevitable, explains Arnold Fege, director of the Public Education Network in Washington, D.C.
Carter (2004) points to the work of renowned educational researcher, Robert Marzano, in What Works in Schools. He states that “Robert Marzano identifies community and parental involvement as one of 11 factors that are highly effective in enhancing student achievement.” However, many schools find that the challenges they face, especially with at-risk students, is to build the trust and confidence of parents who might have had negative experiences as a student (Lueder, 1989). This trust, once gained, could mean the beginning of a mutually fulfilling relationship. Joyce Epstein, eminent researcher on parent involvement, points out in a talk with Brandt (1989) that “in [her] work with administrators, teachers, policy leaders, and other researchers, [she has] identified five major types of parent involvement. These five types occur in different places, require different materials and processes, and lead to different outcomes.” There is no one-size-fit-all solution to parent involvement. The parent activity that yields amazing result for one child might come up lacking for another child. The most factor in this equation has to be sustained parent involvement, and the perception of the child that the school and the home are a part of one team.
Parent Expectations
Expectation plays a significant role in students’ achievement. Expectation has a lot to do with parents and students anticipate from the school, as well as what the parents and school anticipate from the student. Expectation is tied to what psychological term self-fulfilling prophecy:
Self-fulfilling prophecies have an influence on behaviors, both inside and outside of the classroom. These prophecies operate in a cyclic nature; they begin as expectations, which elicit confirming behaviors and strengthen the original perception. Research has shown that teachers' expectations can result in self-fulfilling prophecies that impact on students' performance…. Teachers' impressions and expectations of a student can become self-fulfilling prophecies, in which the student may live up or down to what is expected of them.
Self-fulfilling prophecies, first defined by Robert Merton in 1948, are expectations about a person that elicit behaviors that conform to the expectations. These resultant behaviors essentially work to confirm the original perception of the person and continue the prophecy. In the classroom, self-fulfilling prophecies can be helpful if the expectations are high, and detrimental if the expectations are low (Sisson, 2007 as cited in Tauber, 1997).
In the same way that teacher’s expectation can have a negative or positive effect on students’ achievement, so too can the expectations that parents have of their children. When parents have high expectations of their children, often times the children work hard to fulfill those expectations. At times there seems to be an obvious disconnect between what parents expect of students and what the school seems to expect. This disconnect is usually as a result of stereotypical views of different ethnic groups. Landsman (2004) provides an anecdote that illustrates the need for parents to verbalize their expectations to their children:
In an affluent suburb of New York City, in the midst of large backyards and roses along stone walls and the kind of broken beauty I have always loved from my own childhood there, a black man sits at the breakfast table with his two sons, ages 7 and 9. He looks from one to the other and, with great seriousness and hope, tells them they are spectacular boys. As he does every morning, he tells them they can do anything in this world, dream any dream. Then the boys finish breakfast and go off to the nearby elementary school.
It is important to note here that the demographic makeup of the boys’ school is predominantly Caucasian, with less than five percent of the students being Black. The father developed the above ritual with his boys to counter what he believes to be the low expectation that many educators have of minority students – the expectation that is fueled by the stereotype that Blacks are “innately less intelligence.” This notion is also expressed by Campbell & Campbell (1999).
Teaching practices and classroom behaviors emerge from the beliefs educators have about their students. Sensitive to these perceptions, students respond to the unspoken attitudes of their teachers. For better or worse, student achievement mirrors the expectations of those who teach them. Simply put, teachers get from students what they expect.
Too often, teachers develop low expectations for students because of a number of limiting beliefs. Beliefs can be based on superficial factors, such as sex role stereotyping or negative assumptions about minority students, limited-English-proficiency students, those in poverty, those who turn in messy assignments, or wear unusual clothing, or sit in the back of the room. Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences corrects negative, implicit beliefs or inappropriate external factors that diminish expectations and weaken student achievement.
Self-Efficacy and Internal Locus of Control
A number of factors may influence students’ achievement, and key among those may be the students’ level of self-efficacy. What could be more powerful than a student’s belief that he has the capability and is able to achieve anything he sets his mind to. It is that same self-efficacy that motivates the child to put more effort into a project he finds challenging, or to study all night for a test because he made a pact with the boy sitting next to him that he will out score him. But how much of students’ self-efficacy can be traced back to parent efficacy and involvement? Patterson & Kelleher (2005) points to two components in the realization of self-efficacy:
Your confidence and competence are key indicators of your personal efficacy, and confidence and competence are inextricably connected. Increased self-confidence leads to undertaking more challenging tasks and to developing higher levels of competence. Greater competence in turn increases self-confidence in a positive, upward spiral.
Neill (2006) claims that “psychological research has found that people with a more internal locus of control seem to be better off… they tend to be more achievement oriented and to get better paid jobs.” One of the goals of the home and the school is to help the student develop a degree of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy boosts the child’s confidence and helps him to believe in his worth as an individual.
Often times, student self-efficacy is inextricably bound in parent efficacy. A parent who has a high level of efficacy tend to get more involved in the school, and this increased involvement tend to result in greater academic achievement for the child.
It is imperative for the teacher to acknowledge that parent involvement is integral to a child having a successful academic journey. More and more States’ Department of Education are becoming aware of this. Still, the onus remains on the teacher, who desires the best from her students, to come up with creative ways to get parents involved in the learning process.
Proposed Research
The purpose of this research study is to ascertain the extent to which parent involvement impact student achievement in a grade ten class
Hypothesis
Greater parental involvement in a heterogeneous mix of students from a grade ten English class will result in improved student achievement.
REFERENCES
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