International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning, 2016

VOL. 11, NO. 2, 91–102

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/22040552.2016.1227250

Parental involvement in schools and class inequality in

education: some recent findings from Hong Kong
Paula Kwan and Yi-Lee Wong
Faculty of Education, Department of Educational Administration and Policy, The Chinese University of Hong
Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Embedded in a new understanding of the concept of parental Received 7 October 2015
involvement is that parents work as a collaborator with the school to Accepted 2 March 2016
improve student learning; through involvement in school activities,
KEYWORDS
parents tend to better understand the curriculum and be more Parental involvement;
closely connected with teachers. However, the literature shows that parents’ socio-economic
opportunity available for parental involvement can be better seized status; parents’ behavioural
by those who are of a higher socio-economic status (SES). In addition dispositions; Hong Kong
to SES factors, there are also studies that attempt to relate parental
involvement to their behavioural dispositions. In this study, we seek
to link parental involvement to both SES and parental behavioural
dispositions, namely their expectations in their children, self-efficacy
in helping their children, and understanding of their children’s school
life, simultaneously, based on a data-set comprising 921 parents of
Hong Kong primary school leavers. Discussions and implications of
the findings in the cultural and political contexts will be included.

Introduction
It is well documented that parental involvement – in terms of parental assistance in a
so-called traditional sense – could promote students’ academic success at school. But, this
traditional sense of parental involvement has been changed gradually, in that many school
leaders have started to involve parents in school activities and treat parents as collaborators
in enhancing school effectiveness. At first glance, it seems a win–win situation for school
leaders to get parents more involved in school activities, in that this collaboration could
both enhance school effectiveness by creating an environment conducive to quality learning
and promote students’ academic success through creating such a quality learning environ-
ment. However, this rosy depiction appears to overlook potential class inequality in education
underlying such parent-and-school collaboration.
In this paper, using Hong Kong as an example, we seek to provide a critical perspective
on the issue of parental involvement in schools, in the hope that this would alert school
leaders to potential inequality embedded in promoting parental involvement and could
thus make more informed decision on designing and implementing any collaboration
schemes with their students’ parents. To this end, we shall refer to a quantitative study

CONTACT  Yi-Lee Wong  wongyilee@cuhk.edu.hk

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
92    P. Kwan and Y.-L. Wong

recently conducted in Hong Kong. In what follows, we shall first review relevant studies from
sociology of education, concerning parental involvement in particular, in order to underscore
potential issues concerning educational inequality that the advocacy of parental involvement
in schools might overlook. Then, we shall describe briefly the quantitative study and report
on our analyses. After that, we shall discuss our major findings and underscore their practical
implications for school leaders in designing collaborative schemes with parents.

Literature review on parental involvement and educational inequality

It is well documented that despite variation across classes in parental assistance, parents
would do their best in using resources of various kinds to promote the educational success
of their children (e.g. Crosnoe, 2004; Esping-Andersen & Wagner, 2012; Reese, 2002; Treiman
& Yip, 1989). Apart from this common and/or general understanding of parental involvement
in their children’s education, there is no lack of discussion over the contribution of parental
involvement in terms of collaboration between parents and schools to their children’s aca-
demic success at school (e.g. West, Noden, Edge, & David, 1998). Nevertheless, seemingly
not much scholarly attention has been directed to the implications of such parent-and-school
collaboration for educational inequality. To begin with, do parents of all classes enjoy an
equal access to getting themselves involved in school activities?
Perhaps, some studies from the field of sociology of education on the nature of schools
could shed insights into a critical understanding of the issue of parental involvement. What
is of particular relevance is a debate over the class nature of schools. In seeking to explain a
class gap in students’ learning outcomes, some studies demonstrate that there is a class
difference in teaching (even in the same subject) across schools with regard to subject con-
tent and teaching methods. More specifically, in schools which are composed of most mid-
dle-class students or students of a relatively advantaged class background, school knowledge
is about discovery and creativity, and teachers adopt a student-centred teaching approach
to engage students in stimulating class discussion and give students challenging tasks to
do; in stark contrast, in schools which are composed of most working-class students or
students of a relatively disadvantaged class background, school knowledge is about facts
and simple skills and teachers use a didactic approach whereby students are not expected
to inquire but only sit there to listen and do a lot of drilling exercises (Anyon, 1981; cf. Oakes,
2005). While insightful, what is at issue is whether the nature of schools varies according to
the class composition of their student bodies. Alternatively, it is argued that despite such
variation in curriculum and/or pedagogy, schools are essentially a middle-class institution
in terms of their setup, including a school hierarchy and the so-called hidden curriculum
(e.g. school rules and regulations, daily routines and practices, and norms governing the
interactions between teachers and students and between students and students) (e.g.
Anyon, 1980; Labaree, 1986; Lynch & O’Neill, 1994; Rata, 2012).
In this sense, where parental involvement is concerned, school leaders and teachers, as
spokespersons of a middle-class institution, may perhaps design school activities from a
middle-class perspective. For example, schools may expect parents to attend open days and
parents’ days, help their children with schoolwork and monitor very closely the learning
progress of their children, and discuss such progress with their children’s form teachers
(Lareau, 2000). In order to fulfil such expectations from schools, parents are required to have
resources of various kinds, including free time and certain capabilities. Parents have to have
 International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning   93

free time so that they could attend open days or parents’ days organized by schools and/or
discuss problems facing their children with the children’s form teachers. In order to able to
monitor their children’s daily learning progress, parents also have to have some free time or
at least certain free time after work every day. Expectedly, parents (especially single parents)
who have a low-paid job (thus having a necessity for working overtime or having more than
one job) or work very long hours or have to take shifts so as to have their ends met simply
could not afford to have such free time to take care of their children’s schoolwork, let alone
making time to attend activities organized by schools (e.g. Fergusson, Horwood, & Boden,
2008; McLanahan & Percheski, 2008). Besides, in helping their children with schoolwork and
identifying academic problems facing their children, parents themselves are required to
have a certain academic knowledge as well as knowledge about the operation of the school-
ing system. Consequently, parents with low/no education are more likely to be in a disad-
vantage than parents with a relatively high level of education (e.g. Erickson, 1996; Fergusson
et al., 2008; Lareau, 2003; Reay, 1996). In short, a particular, if not classed, understanding of
parental involvement upheld by schools, may be in disfavour to parents of a relatively dis-
advantaged class vis-a-vis their relatively advantaged class counterparts. And therefore, an
advocacy of parental involvement may, indirectly, play a part in perpetuating, if not exacer-
bating, the existing class inequality in education.
Hong Kong, as with its counterparts in the West, is found to exhibit class inequality in
education (e.g. Post, 2004). And, it is also found that in Hong Kong parents of different classes
differ in their ability to use resources of various kinds to promote the educational success
of their children (e.g. Wong, 2005; cf. Wong, 2007). In addition, like its counterparts in the
West, schools in Hong Kong have also been promoting collaboration between parents and
schools, encouraging parental involvement in promoting students’ academic success. But,
so far, not much systematic effort has been made to examine parental involvement or col-
laboration between parents and schools against the context of class inequality in education.
In filling this gap, we seek to take up this issue and use Hong Kong as an example for
illustration.
This exploratory study specifically aims to understand if parents’ demographic back-
ground (as a proxy of a sociological understanding of class background or a general under-
standing of socio-economic status) is a factor influencing their involvement in school
activities. And, it also attempts to understand if their behavioural dispositions, viz. their
expectations of their children, their understanding of their children’s school life, and their
sense of self-efficacy in helping their children will affect their degree of involvement in school
activities, with the effect of their demographic background being factored out. Let us now
turn to the quantitative study from which data are derived for discussion in this paper.

The quantitative study in Hong Kong

Data for this paper are drawn from a quantitative study in Hong Kong. In this section, we
shall first report on how the targeted respondents for this study are recruited and how the
study is conducted. And then, we shall discuss how an instrument is designed in this study
on which our subsequent analyses are based.
We targeted parents of primary school leavers as our respondents for their participation
in school activities being more encouraged by schools compared to parents of secondary
school students, and for their acuter attention to their children’s school performance
94    P. Kwan and Y.-L. Wong

Table 1. Summary of respondents’ profiles.

Family Below HK$10,000– HK$15,000– HK$20,000– HK$30,000– Above
income HK$10,000 $14,999 $19,999 29,999 $39,999 HK$40,000
236 (25.9%) 239 (26.3%) 204 (22.4%) 110 (12.1%) 58 (6.4%) 63 (6.9%)
Father’s Primary 121 Junior sec- Senior sec- Post-secondary
academic (13.3%) ondary 294 ondary 439 46 (5.1%)
attainment (32.3%) (48.2%)
Father’s age Below 35 36–40 41–45 46–50 51–55 56–60 Over 60
19 (2.1%) 97 (10.7%) 226 (24.8%) 437 (48.0%) 85 (9.3%) 24 (2.6%) 22 (2.4%)
Father’s Since birth Immigrant
length of 546 (62%) 346 (38%)
residence
in HK
Mother’s Primary 124 Junior sec- Senior sec- Post-secondary
academic (13.6%) ondary 389 ondary 351 46 (5.1%)
attainment (42.7%) (38.6%)
Mother’s age Below 30 31–35 36–40 41–45 46–50 Over 50
16 (1.8%) 75 (8.2%) 287 (31.5%) 397 (43.6%) 108 (11.9%) 27 (3.0%)
Mother’s Since birth Immigrant
length of 477 (52.4%) 433 (47.6%)
residence
in HK

compared to parents of other primary graders. We sent invitations to 30 randomly chosen

schools in 2 school districts and among which, 18 schools agreed to participate. The ques-
tionnaires were then sent to the parents of the primary form 6 children in these 18 schools
and 1003 parents responded, resulting in a satisfactory response rate of 59.2% in the local
context. Having taken out the incomplete questionnaires, 910 responses were retained in
the analysis. The distribution of respondents by their family income and educational attain-
ment exhibited a fair resemblance to the distribution of population in Hong Kong in general,
and therefore we took that the data provided a fair representation of the views of parents
in Hong Kong. Table 1 is a summary of the profiles of respondents.
Given that parents’ degree of involvement in school activities is contingent on their behav-
ioural dispositions in addition to their demographic characteristics, we used hierarchical
regression analysis in order to have the effect of the former controlled for in the analysis, so
that the effect of the demographic variables could be identified. Drawing on the literature
of educational administration, we posited in this study that parents’ degree of involvement
(e.g. Driessen, Smit, & Sleegers, 2005; Fantuzzo, Tighe, & Childs, 2000; Grolnick, Kurowski,
Dunlap, & Hevey, 2000; Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2001; Jeynes, 2005) would be affected by
their level of expectations on their children (e.g. Fan & Chen, 2001; Froiland, Peterson, &
Davison, 2013), their sense of self-efficacy in helping their children (e.g. Flores-Alcazar, 2014;
Reed, Jones, Walker, & Hoover-Dempsey, 2000), and their degree of understanding of their
children’s school life (e.g. Sad & Gürbüztürk, 2013). An instrument, comprised of 15 items,
measuring these four constructs was developed with such inputs from local parents. The
dimension of parental involvement was further divided into two orientations: child-centred
and school-centred; the former focused on parental effort that would directly benefit their
own children whereas the latter attended to parental effort that contributed to the effec-
tiveness of the school as a whole. Respondents were asked to indicate the degree of cor-
rectness on a 5-point scale to which they considered the item description could represent
their views. A higher score in the construct means represents a greater level of involvement
in school activities, a better understanding of their children’s school life, a greater sense of
 International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning   95

Table 2. Reliability, means and standard deviations of the constructs.

Construct Reliability alpha Mean No. of items SD
Sense of self-efficacy .748 2.415 3 .765
Understanding of child’s school life .637 3.782 3 .587
Expectations on child .761 3.921 4 .632
Involvement in school activities .823 3.001 5 .702
  Child-centred involvement .780 3.203 3 .754
 School-centred involvement .705 2.699 2 .821

self-efficacy in helping their children, and a higher level of expectations sought in their
children, as perceived by the respondents. A section was devoted to collecting personal
information about the respondents: their age, their academic attainment, and their length
of residence in Hong Kong (since birth vs. immigrant), and such information about their
spouse, together with their household income. The detailed item descriptions are shown in
Appendix 1.

Analysis
The alpha reliabilities of all constructs were first checked; and, all were found to fall in a
satisfactory range (from .637 to .823). The means and reliabilities of the constructs are shown
in Table 2. Respondents reported a fair degree of involvement in school activities in general
(M = 3.001, SD = .702). However, there was a significant difference (t(900) = 21.576, p = .000)
in their degree of involvement in child-centred activities (M = 3.203, SD = .754) and
school-centred ones (M = 2.699, SD = .821). Apparently, respondents were keener to partic-
ipate in activities that would directly benefit their child than in those that contributed to the
whole school.
Although parents in Hong Kong showed a high degree of expectations on their children’s
academic performance (M = 3.921, SD = .632), and although they believed that they had a
good understanding of their children’s school life (M = 3.782, SD = .587), they did not have
a strong sense of self-efficacy in helping their children (M = 2.415, SD = .765), as far as the
results showed. And, a significant disparity was noted among different income groups in
their sense of self-efficacy (F(5,904) = 3.005, p = .011); parents’ sense of self-efficacy was found
to be positively related to their household incomes.
Table 3 shows that the behavioural constructs were highly correlated with each other. In
particular, parents’ sense of self-efficacy was related negatively to all other constructs. Given
the highly correlated relationships among these behavioural variables, a hierarchical regres-
sion was run, with these variables entered as the first block of factors and the respondent’s
demographic variables as the second block, so that the effect of the first block could be
factored out in the analysis. Table 4 indicates that the entry of the first block of variables
yielded a significant regression (R2 = .209, F = 79.621, p = .000), suggesting that behavioural
variables contributed significantly to the prediction of parental involvement in school activ-
ities. The regression coefficients of this model revealed that the two variables of “understand-
ing of their children’s school life” (β = .431, p = .00) and “parents’ sense of self-efficacy”
(β = −.127, p = .000) predicted the level of general parental involvement but parents’ expec-
tations of their children did not (β = −.046, p > .05). The coefficients in Table 4 show that the
better parents could understand their children’s school life, the more involved they tended
96    P. Kwan and Y.-L. Wong

Table 3. Correlations among constructs.

Understanding
Sense of of child’s school Expectations on Involvement in Child-centred
Construct self-efficacy life child school activities involvement
Sense of 1.000
self-efficacy
Understanding of −.172 * 1.000
child’s school life
*
Expectations on −.390 .251* 1.000
child
Involvement in −.183* .442* .112* 1.000
school activities
* * *
Child-centred −.198 .474 .118 .928* 1.000
involvement
School-centred −.119* .290* .075** .858* .604*
involvement
**.05 level of significance.
*.01 level significance.

Table 4. Model summary of sequential regression predicting parental involvement.

Independent variables R2 F p ∆R2 ∆P
Model 1 .209 79.621 .000
Block 1: Parent behavioural variables
Model 2 .222 25.710 .00 .014 .027
Block 1: Parent behavioural variables
Block 2: Parent demographic variables
Standardized coefficients of sequential regression Standardized β p
Block 1: Parent behavioural variables
 Understanding of child’s school life .431 .000*
  Parent self-efficacy −.127 .000*
  Parent expectations on child −.046 .158
Block 2: Parent demographic variables
 Family income .021 .559
 Father’s academic attainment .008 .825
 Father’s age −.012 .741
 Father’s length of residence in HK .013 .728
  Mother’s academic attainment .091 .014*
  Mother’s age .033 .348
  Mother’s length of residence in HK .077 .025*
*Significant values.

to be in school activities. But, parents who had a stronger sense of self-efficacy in helping
their children appeared to be less involved. It was of interest to note that parents’ expecta-
tions of their children were not related to their involvement in school activities.
The entry of parents’ demographic factors as the block two variables into the regression
also yielded a statistically significant improvement (∆R2 = .014, ∆F = 2.270, ∆p < .05), sug-
gesting that this set of variables was a statistically significant predictor of parental involve-
ment, although its magnitude was not great. The regression coefficients showed that two
out of the seven demographic variables had an effect on parental involvement; they were
all related to mother, namely their academic attainment (β = .091, p = .014) and their length
of residence in Hong Kong (β = .077, p = .025). The results suggested that the degree of
involvement of parents with the same level of behavioural dispositions was linked to the
educational attainment of children’s mothers and their length of residence in Hong Kong.
These two variables were examined further for their possible interaction effect on parental
 International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning   97

Figure 1. The relationship between mother’s academic attainment and degree of parental involvement
by mother’s length of residence.

involvement, but no significance was found (F(3,902) = 1.456, p > .05). As shown in Figure 1,

the degree of parental involvement increased with the educational attainment of children’s
mothers; in addition, immigrant mothers were found to be more greatly involved in school
activities in general.
Given a significant difference found in parents’ involvement in child-centred and
school-centred activities, the analysis went further to examine if this would be related to
parents’ demographic variables. Two hierarchical regressions, with child-centred involvement
and school-centred involvement as the respective dependable variables, were run. The set
of analyses on child-centred involvement was examined first. Again, two significant regres-
sions (R2 = .241, F = 96.009, p = .000; R2 = .014, F = 2.385, p = .020) were yielded. Similar to
the findings on general parental involvement, the regression coefficients showed that par-
ents’ understanding of their children’s school life (β = .464, p = .00) and their sense of self-ef-
ficacy (β = −.138, p = .000) predicted the outcome; and, when these two variables were
controlled for, mother’s academic attainment (β = .080, p = .029) and mother’s length of
residence in Hong Kong (β = .078, p = .020) were found to have an effect on parental involve-
ment in child-centred activities. The results of the analyses on school-centred involvement
were different. Although the first block of behavioural disposition variables yielded a signif-
icant regression (R2 = .086, F = 29.679, p = .000), the block of demographic variables were
not found to be significant (R2 = .089, F = 1.347, p > .05). Moreover, the explanatory power
of the first block of factors on parental involvement in school-centred activities was found
to be relatively small, as indicated in its R2 value.
98    P. Kwan and Y.-L. Wong

Discussion
This empirical study was the first of its kind that attempted to examine the effect of class
inequality in parental involvement in Hong Kong. Given the literature on educational ine-
quality, parents having more resources, of various kinds, are found to be more likely and also
more able to promote the educational success for their children; and therefore, presumably,
they would be more likely and able to be involved in school activities. Indeed, the findings
confirmed that parents who perceived themselves as capable of helping their children, which
was predictably positively correlated to parents’ income, and parents had a good under-
standing of their children’s school life were more likely to be involved in school activities.
Yet, the findings further showed that parental involvement was linked to parents’ sense of
self-efficacy (negatively) and their understanding of children’s school life (positively) but not
to their expectations of their children. The fact that the former two measures are better
predictors than parents’ expectations of their children for parental involvement somehow
provides insights into an ongoing debate over whether class differences in promoting chil-
dren’s educational success result from parental differences in resources or values towards
their children’s education. What is at issue is whether the differences between advan-
taged-class parents and their disadvantaged-class counterparts in promoting their children’s
educational success are due to resources availability or value preferences (e.g. Kohn, 1977;
Lewis, 1959; cf. Carter, 2005). The results suggested that firstly, parents across various income
groups and with different educational levels (a proxy of social class) did not differ but had
similar educational expectations of their children, and secondly, whether they would get
themselves involved in school activities, thus helping their children to become advantaged
in their educational careers, were (dis)enabled by the resources that they could mobilize. In
other words, while class differences were found in parental involvement, there was no class
difference in parental expectations of their children. But, it should be cautious in interpreting
this finding: this study is about parents in a Chinese society; whether the finding of no class
difference in parental expectations of their children is also true of other societies should be
examined further.
In addition, the findings indicated that mother’s academic attainment was positively
correlated to parental involvement. Two points are noted. First, in getting themselves
involved in school activities, parents are required to have a good understanding of children’s
school life, which is already demonstrated in our finding; and, in order to have such a good
understanding, parents are required to be familiar with the operation of schools and schools’
expectations of them. And this familiarity is somehow reflected in parents’ academic attain-
ment: it seems reasonable to expect that parents who stay longer in the education system
would be more familiar with its operation. In fact, this is consistent with the existing findings
on educational inequality. Second, this finding is also in line with the gendered parental role
reported in the literature: mothers rather than fathers are more likely to be responsible for
their children’s academic development (O’Brien, 2009).
Furthermore, the results showed that parents were willing to be involved in school activ-
ities that could bring direct benefit to their children’s learning but were less enthusiastic
about participating in other school activities. It appears that parents in Hong Kong are prag-
matically strategic, in that they are more concerned about whether their own children could
get ahead than collaborating with schools to create an environment conducive to quality
learning for all students. This finding can be explained in part by the operation of the local
 International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning   99

schooling system: it is highly competitive to get into better performing schools. There are
four main types of schools in Hong Kong: government, aided, Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS),
and private/independent schools; and, government and aided schools comprise the great
majority (about 85%). All but private/independent schools are funded by the government,
albeit in different ways, and are ranked in a banding system. Primary school leavers are
centrally allotted to government and aided schools by the Education Bureau in accordance
with their academic achievement; the highest achieving one-third are allocated to band-one
secondary schools, the middle third to band-two secondary schools, and the bottom third
to band-three secondary schools. DSS schools do not participate in this allocation scheme
but are allowed to select students from whom tuition fees are collected. Given the school
banding system, parents tend to see school placement as a competition and other children
as rivals to their own children in this competition. Then, it becomes apparent why parents
in this study are so pragmatic and/or strategic.
One possible side effect of this pragmatic and/or strategic attitude of parents, as far as
we can see, is that they tend not to interfere in schools in which their children study so as
to protect their children from any possible negative consequences upon which an inference
may bring. This possible effect should be understood in a Chinese context. When compared
to other cultures along the dimension introduced by Hofstede (2001), Chinese culture may
be regarded as collective (group-oriented) rather than individualistic. It stresses group mem-
bership and a sense of belonging and emphasizes the importance of harmony. In contrast
to their counterparts in western societies, where power is distributed relatively more equally,
school leaders in Chinese societies generally command a great deal of respect from the
community as well as from parents and teachers. Any behaviours that challenge decisions
made by principals would be considered inappropriate (Kwan, in press). As a consequence,
the involvement of parents may tend to serve a supplementary and peripheral role to help
out in the daily operations of schools rather than assuming an active and essential role to
formulate strategies for the long-term benefits of the schools. And so, we cast doubt if a
collaborator role sought in parents as that discussed in the international literature is appli-
cable in Hong Kong.
What is worth noting is a negative relationship between parents’ sense of self-efficacy and
the other behavioural disposition variables. That was, parents perceived that they were more
capable of helping their children tended to be less involved in school activities. This finding
reinforces our speculation that parents in Hong Kong are pragmatically strategic: they perceive
the purpose of parental involvement as an instrumental means to benefit their children, rather
than as a channel for collaborating with schools to create a quality learning environment for
all students. The very fact that parents reporting a lower level of confidence in their ability to
help their children tended to seek more benefits from schools through active involvement
implied that a sense of uncertainty or insecurity drove parents to get more involved in school
activities. This is consistent with the finding that mother’s length of residence in Hong Kong
is negatively correlated to their involvement in school activities. Similar to local-born mothers,
mothers of immigrant families are also seen as the ones responsible for their children’s edu-
cation. But, local-born parents are understandably more familiar with the Hong Kong educa-
tion system and thus perceive themselves as more capable of helping their children than
immigrant parents. In line with our finding that parents with a stronger sense of self-efficacy
tend to involve less in school activities, it does not seem surprising to find that immigrant
mothers in general tend to be more active in school involvement. That is, their sense of
100    P. Kwan and Y.-L. Wong

uncertainty or insecurity derived from their unfamiliarity with the education system drives
immigrant mothers to get more actively involved in school activities.
Finally, the results also suggested that parents with a stronger sense of self-efficacy tended
to make less effort to understand their children’s school life. This finding suggests that parents
in Hong Kong do not seem to fully understand their roles in the schooling of their children,
or that they do not have the same understanding as schools of parents’ roles in their children’s
schooling. To reiterate, if parents see no direct benefits to their own children from their
involvement in school activities, they tend to participate less. And, what is striking is that
classes do not differ in being pragmatically strategic. This is an area to be addressed by school
management and policy makers.

Conclusion
This empirical study reveals that parents of social classes in Hong Kong, measured in proxy by
their income levels and educational attainments, do not participate in school activities to an
identical extent. In particular, mothers of a relatively high level of education, especially those
relatively new to Hong Kong, are more likely to participate in school activities. On one hand,
the findings are in line with the existing findings on class differences, as well as gender differ-
ences, in parental effort, including parental involvement in school activities, made to promote
their children’s educational success. However, on the other hand, contrary to an expectation
derived from a common finding that parents of higher social classes (higher income-groups
in this case here) are more able to participate in school activities, in this study parents who
perceive themselves as more capable of helping their children tend to be less involved in
school activities. Besides, this study also reveals that Hong Kong parents are pragmatically
strategic in their involvement in school activities, in that instead of participating in school
activities of all kinds, they deliberately choose to involve themselves more actively in activities
which would bring direct benefits to their own children’s academic performances. In other
words, such class differences in parental involvement are observed in Hong Kong not purely
because parents of different classes enjoy unequal access to school activities, as the existing
findings in the literature would have us believe, but mainly because parents of all classes take
parental involvement in school activities as an additional battlefield in which they compete
with each other to enable their children to get ahead in making an educational career.
What deserves more of our attention is parents being so pragmatically strategic towards
their involvement in school activities. It is true that parents who have a better understanding
of their children’s school life are found to be more involved in school activities. But, appar-
ently, the conception that parents are collaborators of schools in helping their children grow
is yet to be developed in Hong Kong. Seemingly, to most parents in Hong Kong, the ultimate
purpose of schooling is for getting their children a relatively advantaged qualification
(through getting into a well-performing secondary school first, which then bridge them into
a prestigious university), in the hope that it will eventually give them a competitive edge in
the future labour market. As a consequence, what parents immediately seek to achieve in
getting themselves involved in school activities is to enable their children to be competitive
in the schooling system, outperforming other children and thus succeeding in getting a
place in a prestigious secondary school within the existing school banding system. Then,
school activities that seek to create a quality learning environment for all students may well
be seen by parents as of secondary significance at best, if not threatening vis-a-vis parents’
 International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning   101

individual effort tailor-made to enable their own children to be competitive in the schooling
system. This parental attitude, together with class differentials summarized above, has prac-
tical implications for the advocacy of parental involvement and the promotion of parent-
and-school collaboration. This calls for more attention from school leaders and policy makers
in collaborating with parents as well as designing school activities seeking for parental
involvement.

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Appendix 1. Constructs and their respective item descriptions.

Construct Item description

Understanding of child’s school life I always ask my child about his/her learning in school
I keep a close eye on my child’s student handbook and school
circulars
I talk to my child daily to understand his/her school life
Sense of self-efficacy in helping their child I will be relieved if the school can provide more help to my child
academically
I will be relieved if I can consult the school on my child’s learning
and behavioural issues when I am in need
I would not be able to select a secondary school for my child
without the help of the teachers
Expectations on their child I expect my child to study independently and voluntarily
I expect my child to be a high-achiever in his/her school
I expect my child to outperform his/her peers in all aspects
I wish my child a bright future
Parental Involvement Child-centred Involvement I cooperate with the school to solve my child’s learning
problems
I approach the school to understand my child’s performance
I channel my views on my child’s learning to school
School-centred involvement I participate in activities organized by the school
I volunteer at school
Notes: Negatively worded statements are shown in italics.
Chinese language was used in the instrument with a view to soliciting a better response from parents. The item descriptions
shown were translation.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.