BRIEF DESCRIPTION ON THE FINDINGS AND SOME BENEFICIAL RESULTS

The article Parents’ Motivations for Involvement in Children’s Education: An Empirical

Test of a Theoretical Model of Parental Involvement, aimed to predict parents’ self-reported
involvement in education-related activities based at home (e.g., helping with homework) and at
school (e.g., attending school functions). A model by Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler provides
three major sources of motivation for parental involvement. The first includes parental role
construction and parental self-efficacy for helping the child succeed in school. The second is
parents’ perceptions of invitations to involvement (e.g., positive school climate). The third and
last source is personal life context variables. The study also included indicators of family SES
(Socioeconomic Status) as a test of the model’s ability to predict parents’ involvement activities
when controlling for SES – SES generally refers to a measure of an individual or family’s relative
economic and social ranking and can be constructed based on father’s education level,
mother’s education level, father’s occupation, mother’s occupation, and family income. The SES
variables were not significant in predicting variance in parents’ reported home-based
involvement, demonstrating that the model constructs continued to be significant predictors of
parental involvement even after controlling for SES. However, in predicting school-based
involvement, one SES predictor remained significant: spouse/partner’s education.
Participants were 853 parents of first- through sixth-grade children enrolled in a
socioeconomically and ethnically diverse metropolitan public school system in the mid-
southern United States. Measures of predictor constructs used an agree/disagree response
scale, whereas the measure of parental involvement practices used a response scale of never to
daily.
Moving on to the Predicting Age-Related Differences in Parental Involvement Activities
(Differences by Grade Level) data results, parental involvement generally decreased at each
grade level across the elementary and early middle school years; home-based involvement was
higher than school-based involvement at all grade levels. In Home Involvement, Elementary
(Grades 1–4) has a mean of 5.22 and a standard deviation of (0.87); Middle (Grades 5 and 6)
has a mean of 4.69 and a standard deviation of (1.02). While in School Involvement, Elementary
(Grades 1–4) has a mean of 2.50 and a standard deviation of (1.07); Middle (Grades 5 and 6)
has a mean of 1.86 and a standard deviation of (0.66). Parents of elementary school students
are significantly more home-based and school-based involvement than parents of middle
school students.
Additionally, the Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler model suggests that psychological
constructs directly impact parental involvement practices, so the researchers examined the
main effects of these variables. Moreover, the findings also serve as a potentially great
indicator to aid fruitful next steps for school practice. For example, given that home- and
school-based involvement relied heavily on specific invitations from teachers and children,
parental involvement programs must be emphasize to increase parents’ school-related
interactions with children at home. These programs may, in turn, enhance parents’ positive,
active engagement at both home and school because they are targeted at increasing parents’
active role construction (e.g., “It’s my job to be involved in my child’s education”) and self-
efficacy (e.g., “I can make a positive difference in my child’s education”).
In conclusion, parental involvement plays a big role in children's lives as it affects the
well-being of children may it be in emotional, social or psychological aspects in life; it helps them
boost their confidence in school with their parents’ proper guidance . Thus, various researches are
conducted concerning parental involvement that provides well thought and concise ideas to
answer questions and even come up with conclusions for the success of their children. Results
of the study are clearly organized in tables with the use of an empirical test and therefore they
conclude that "parental involvement is beneficial for children's academic success" however,
"little is known about parental motivations for involvement and how these motivations
influence specific involvement decisions."
Reference:

Christa L. Green and Joan M. T. Walker (2007). Parents’ Motivations for Involvement in
Children’s
Education: An Empirical Test of a Theoretical Model of Parental Involvement. Journal of
Educational Psychology. Vol. 99, No. 3, 532–544.