The Impact of Parental Involvement on Students' Academic Performance

CHAPTER 1

Problem Rationale

Introduction

Education is one of the most influential and important factors of an adolescents's life.

This is because countries are made up of people and education aims to help them develop as

capable individuals and responsible members of society. That common goal is to produce

students of high calibre and to have outstanding academic results. The more educated the people

of a society are, the more civilized and well-disciplined the society might be.

Mainly family has responsibility to socialize children for making them productive.

Parental involvement has been an important variable in children's education. The more the

parents involve in the process of imparting education to their children, the more the children

might excel their academic career.

It has been assumed that academic achievement of students may not only depend on the

quality of schools and the teachers, rather the extent of parental involvement has vital role to

play in academic achievement of their children because learning begins at home through

interaction with one's family. Children try to copy them and considered them that they are

always right so parents can shape their life as they can, especially in building their personalities.

It is an influential source that can encourage student's natural talents, improve students'

behavior, increase classroom attendance, promote classroom compliance and increase adolescent

achievement. Parents will become more involved with the child's education when they believe
their involvement is expected and effective. For these reasons, it is important to fully understand

the impact of parental involvement on student academic success in order to prevent student

academic failure.

Parental involvement may include activities like helping children in reading, encouraging

them to do their homework independently, monitoring their activities inside the house and

outside the four walls of their house, providing coaching services for improving their learning in

different subjects and attending in school activities.

However, parents may face different challenges that could prevent them from being

proactively involved with their children's schooling. Regardless of how much parents may want

to be involved, parents may not have the time, energy or money to be fully involved. This may

be for a variety of reasons such as a low income family who is unable to provide extra

educational resources, or a single mother who must work fulltime as the head of the household

and then does not have the extra time to help his/her child with their homework.

Nevertheless, no matter how challenging it may be for parents it may be necessary for

parents to become more involved in order to solve educational problems of their children.

Research Rationale

Academic achievement and social adjustment are predicted by the level of parental

expectations such as high-achieving student have parents who set higher standards than those

parents of low achieving students. The interactions between parents and their children are the

most common connections held during a child’s early years. The relationship formed from these
relations is a major force that influences overall development and a child’s outcomes, such as

academic achievement. Parent involvement in children’s education has become an important

factor for building these parent-child relationships and improving children’s path to educational

success.

Parental involvement can be defined as parents’ participation in children’s schooling by

providing resources to children within a given domain, more specifically in the academic domain

of children’s lives. Various types of measures can be applied when looking at the term parental

involvement such as parents’ educational aspirations for their children, helping with homework,

encouraging good study habits, parents' participation in school activities, teaching appropriate

behavior for academic success, and communication between home and school.

Therefore, parental involvement is frequently broken down into two categories that focus

on the locale of parenting styles: school-based involvement and home-based involvement.

School-based involvement represents practices of the parent that encompass participation and

contact with schools. These practices may include attending school meetings, talking with

teachers, attending school events, and volunteering at the school. The most common forms of

parental school-based involvement are parents attending school meetings, such as PTA meetings,

and parent-teacher conferences. Parents may also become involved with schools at a higher level,

which can include becoming a member of the school board and attending school board meetings.

This type of involvement is considered a higher level because parents place themselves within

positions of governance that can enable them to have more influence in decision making

processes at the school.

 Most teachers concluded that when parents spent time at school they then made a greater

effort to help their children learn at home. When parents are involved with schools and teachers

they may gain a better understanding of what their children are learning in school and what is

expected of their children. Parents can observe how their teachers instruct their children and, in

turn, may be more knowledgeable and feel more confident of how to teach their children at home

in order to further enhance the children’ s education. Along with learning techniques of how to

educate their children at home, parents may become aware of their children’s abilities and

strengths which can aid parents with how to properly assist them at a level that it is conducive to

their abilities.

Home-based involvement represents the practices of parents that are school related but

take place outside of the classroom, which are most commonly in the home. Parental

involvement at home can be particularly helpful for parents who are unable to participate in

school-based involvement, but can engage in other beneficial practices with their children at

home. These types of practices can include creating a safe environment for learning, helping with

homework, discussing grades, helping the child study, and discussing academic endeavors and

issues such as the importance of school, daily activities, and student progress. Out of these

various types of home-based involvement, the most common type of involvement examined is

parents assisting their children with homework.

Significance of the Study

The primary concern of this conducted study is to know and understand the impact of

parental involvement on students' school performance. This study will be great of advantage to

the following:

To the Teachers. They will identify that through parental involvement by engaging with

the different school activities, they always update parents about what is happening in their

children's attitude, access their children's grades and attendance records.

To the Parents. The findings could serve as an eye-opener for them to realize their

significant roles as parents as well as a deeper understanding about parental involvement to give

full support for their child's education and personal development.

To the Community. They will become aware of the special role they play in collaborating

with the school officials.

To the Researchers. They realize the importance of having parents that involve

themselves in studying of their children.

To the Future Researchers. This study provides information and they can use it as

reference to their own study.

Scope and Delimitation

Many barriers that prevent parents from becoming involved in their children's learning. In

this section, the general barriers for parental involvement that directly relate to parents support in
their children's learning are explained. Parents' lack of confidence, beliefs, skills, knowledge and

communication are the main barriers. Despite the effect of these factors which contribute to the

barriers of parental involvement, many parents want to be more involved in their child's learning

and many parents are also faced with many difficulties due to not knowing how to involve

themselves in their child's education.

The most important barriers for them are low level of income, limited time, transportation,

low level of education, using a different language from the school and lack of confidence. These

barriers influence their involvement in their child's learning both at home and at school. Parents'

level of education may directly affect their involvement because these parents think that they do

not have enough skills and knowledge to help their children.

Many parents do not know how to help their children due to not having sufficient

confidence and knowledge. According to Pharoah and Rowe (2013), poorer families can face

numerous barriers to help their child's learning and this has a negative effect on their

involvement. If parents' beliefs about their role in their child's education are only to make certain

that their children go to school by taking responsibility for it, and not participating directly with

what they learn or how they learn, this may affect their engagement in their child's learning. The

other crucial beliefs of parents are beliefs about their abilities in helping their child's learning.

Many factors can affect these beliefs such as previous negative experiences with their

child's learning or their own learning, language, their confidence and level of education. Parents'

lack of confidence in their children's learning is mainly caused by the use of different teaching

methods from their own days and the lack of understanding of their children's current school

subjects. Parents’ lack of confidence is higher when their children go to secondary or high school
because the academic subjects become more difficult than primary schools. Parents' inadequate

knowledge and limited understanding may cause them to feel helpless in their child's learning.
 CHAPTER 2

The Research Questions

Literature Review

Parents who are involved usually see the importance pf homework, and they facilitate

their children's homework by supervising and helping as needed. Parenting styles determine if a

parent is open being involved in his or her child's education.

Four parenting styles (Epstein, 2012; Nelson et al., 2012) first is the authoritarian style

where parents set rules and consequences without responding or consulting to the children.

Overly involved or being labeled helicopter parents, hover around their children and control

most of the student's daily life. Second permissive parents, who set few rules and there are few

consequences for breaking any set rules. The third type of parenting style is the neglectful parent.

These parents are unresponsive to their children's needs. These three types of parenting styles are

associated with low academic achievement. The fourth type of parental involvement is the

authoritative style. This style of parenting is responsive to the children's needs. These parents

teach their children to have open communication and to be independent. Students with this type

of parent have higher academic achievement than the others. These parents are also usually

actively engaged in school functions.

The more these parents became involved, the more competent and empowered they felt,

as well as motivated to work with their students. In return, the students of the involved parents

also felt more competent, empowered, and motivated because the children received one on one

tutoring and attention (Siddiqui, 2012).

 Many parents are heavily involved with their children academically during the

elementary school years, but as the student's educational level increases, the level of parental

involvement changes. Involvement ceases at the high school level (Skaliotis, 2012)

Theoretical Framework

Smith and Hoy (2013) stated that parents who are involved in their children's education

must have greater academic success. However, there are countless parents who are not involved,

not always by choice. Many parents feel intimidated by school personnel, or are unsure about

how to become involved in their children's education. One idea submitted was to build better

parent-teacher relationship by focusing on caring and trusting relationship between students and

teachers.

Many parents feel that teachers do not really care about students and some parents just do

not trust teachers. A few uninvolved parents may feel intimidated by school personnel because

the school personnel usually have more education than the parents do and because parents

remember their school years as being unpleasant. Some parents face barriers with language and

culture, and they may not understand that they are the most important element in their children's

education. Schools should promote friendliness and trust by reaching out to parents, especially

minority parents who have had an unpleasant educational experience.

Most of all, it is essential that schools explain to parents the importance of parental

involvement to the education of children. Parents need to understand that education is a

partnership and a collaborative endeavor. Parents are their children's biggest advocates and

should be so at parent- teacher conferences and with student resources. They can teach educators
about children's hobbies, interests, recognitions, and other information that is useful in getting to

know students. A teacher may not know about issues distressing students, hence an involved

parent can bring this to the teacher's like courses, problems at home, feeling isolated, or that

other students may be picking on or bullying children. Most parents usually know when their

students are experiencing difficulties or when something is just not right with their children.

Statement of the Hypotheses

Ho1: There will be no statistically significant relationship between parents’ type of involvement

activities and their children's performance.

Ho2: There will be no statistically significant relationship between parent perception regarding

responsibilities toward parent involvement and their children's performance.

Ho3: There will be no statistically significant relationship between parent perceptions regarding

their abilities to help students with school-related work and their children's performance.
Research Paradigm

Factors affecting the difficulties Effects of the dufficulties encountered

encountered by parents in involving on students' school performance in
themselves in studying of their terms of:
children in terms of:
 Personal Attitude and Behavior
 Teacher Factors  Performance
 Student Factors  Student's Interest
 Financial Factors  Examination
 Laboratory Factors  Comprehension
 Knowledge Acqusition 

IMPLEMENTATION

Figure 1. Hypothesized relationship and differences among variable

Figure 1 presents the two variables, namely: dependent variable and independent

variable that will be used in the study. The independent variable are consist of the factors

affecting the difficulties encountered by parents in involving themselves in studying of their

children in terms of teacher factors, student factors, financial factors, laboratory factors and

knowledge acquisition. On the other side, the dependent variable includes the effects of the

difficulties encountered on students' school performance in terms of personal attitude and

behavior, performance, student's interest, examination and comprehension. The one-headed

arrow that connects tge independent variable and dependent variable indicates the hypothesized

relationship between them.