What are the Benefits of Parent Involvement in Education and what does the Current Research Reveal?

Each day of our lives we make deposits

in the memory banks of our children.
(Charles R. Swindoll)

It’s a tricky business working out exactly what level of involvement in your child’s education is ‘just right’. Too little and your child doesn’t flourish, too much and your child doesn’t develop independence and resilience. So what do we know about the involvement of parents in their children’s education?

According to Henderson and Berla (1994), “the most accurate predictor of a student’s achievement in school is not income or social status but the extent which that student’s family is able to:

1.       Create a home environment that encourages learning;

2.       Express high (but not unrealistic) expectations for their children’s achievement and future careers; and

3.       Become involved in their children’s education at school and in the community (p. 160).”

Similarly in more recent research carried out by Karen Smith Conway and Andrew Houtenville (2008), they found that parental involvement has a substantial, strong, positive effect on student achievement. The conclusions from a report, A New Wave of Evidence, which was a synthesis of research on parent involvement over a decade, found that, regardless of family income or background, students with involved parents are more likely to:

·         Earn higher results and test scores and enrol in higher level programs;

·         Be promoted, and ‘pass their subjects’;

·         Attend school regularly;

·         Have better social skills, show better behaviour and adapt well to school; and

·         Graduate and go onto postsecondary education.

Also Henderson and Berla (1994) found that when parents are involved that:

·         Children consistently complete their homework;

·         Children have better self-esteem, are more self-disciplined, and show higher aspirations and motivation toward school; and

·         Children from diverse cultural backgrounds tend to do better when parents and teachers work together to bridge the gap between the culture at home and the culture at school.

One of the most important areas of parental involvement is in the area of reading, where research shows that student achievement is directly linked to reading ability and parent involvement in reading to and with their children.

·         Did you know that listening comprehension comes before reading comprehension and that you must hear a word before you can say it or read and write it? According to Jim Trelease, author of New York Times bestseller, “The Read Aloud Handbook”, there’s a “word reservoir” in a child’s brain and one thing that parents can do, is to pour as many words into that brain so that it overflows into speech, then reading and writing.

·         Did you know that by age four, high-income children have heard 45 million words from their families and low-income children have heard just 13 million? That’s a 32 million word difference according to Hart and Risley’s “Meaningful Differences”.

·         Did you know that children learn an average of 4,000 to 12,000 new words each year as a result of book reading?

·         Did you know that children read on one level and listen on a higher level and it’s not until Year 8 that the reading level catches up to the listening level?

·         Did you know that children who grow up in homes where books are plentiful go further in school than those who don't and have the highest reading scores.

·         Did you know that research shows that those children who watch the most television, know the least. The average child spends 1460 hours a year watching television, DVDs and playing computer games, equal to watching “Gone With the Wind” 392 times a year.

Desforges’ research (2003) on parent involvement in their children’s education found that :

·         Children with higher scores on measures of achievement, competence, and intelligence had parents who held higher educational expectations and aspirations for them than did parents of children who did not score as high.

·         Parents of higher scoring children used more advanced levels and styles of thought and language in interactions with their children than parents of children who did not score as high. These advanced levels and styles of thought and language included the use of more advanced organising information, more detailed instruction, and more verbal variety.

·         In addition, the parents of higher scoring children provided more explanations and reasons when correcting their children’s behaviour or performance. Finally, they provided better problem solving strategies which the children adopted (pp 84-87).

According to Olsen and Fuller (2006) there are many benefits to parents too:

·         Parents increase their interaction and discussion with their children and are more responsive and sensitive to their children’s social, emotional, and intellectual developmental needs.

·         Parents are more confident in their parenting and decision-making skills.

·         As parents gain more knowledge of child development, there is more use of affection and positive reinforcement and less punishment on their children.

·         Parents’ perceptions of the school are improved and there are stronger ties and commitment to the school.

·         Parents are more aware of, and become more active regarding, policies that affect their children’s education when parents become more involved in the school.

So is there such a thing as “too much involvement” in your child’s education? The answer is not definitive but a “maybe” and “it depends”. Parents should avoid ‘fighting their children’s battles for them’. At some point, as children mature into young adults they need to acquire the very skills that they will need later in life to be successful in their own right, motivated, resilient, independent, and autonomous in their own thinking. When children are very young they require lots of support but as they grow they need to develop effective problem solving strategies for themselves. Parents should be there as a sounding board and to offer help if it’s needed but should avoid solving the problem for the child. By the time students reach Year 10 to Year 12 they should be developing greater independence and resilience, better preparing them for their tertiary education, future career and life ahead. Ultimately it’s the life ahead for which we are preparing our students.

Successive research has demonstrated that there is substantial and compelling evidence regarding the crucial role that parents play in the development of intelligence, achievement and competence in the education of their children. At Somerville House we encourage parent involvement at every stage of your child’s educational journey because we know it benefits each and every child, parent and school. The more that students, parents and the School work in concert, the more our students will flourish and thrive.

Finally as Hattie notes in his book,  “Visible Learning”, parents have major effects in terms of the encouragement and expectations that they transmit to their children….It is not so much the structure of the family but rather the beliefs and expectations of the adults in the home that contributes most to achievement( pp70-71).

Karon Graham

References:

1.       Becher, R.M. (1984). Parent Involvement: A Review of the Research and Principles of Successful Practice. ERIC. Accessed at:  http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED247032

2.       Desforges, C. and Abouchaar, A. (2003). The Impact of Parental Involvement, Parental Support and Family Education on Pupil Achievement and Adjustment: A Literature Review. Research Report No. 433. Queens Printer. London, England. (pp 84-87)

3.       Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London, England. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

4.    Henderson, A.T. and Berla,N. (eds) . (1994). A New Generation of Evidence.  Washington DC.  Committee for Citizens in Education. Harvard Education Press.

5.    Henderson, A.T. and Mapp, K.L. (2002). A New Wave of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family, and Community Connections on Student Achievement. Austin,Texas: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. Accessed at: http://www.nea.org/bare/print.html?content=/bare/17360.htm

6.       Olsen, G. and Fuller, M.L. (2006). The Benefits of Parent Involvement: What Research Has to Say, Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall. Accessed at:  http://www.education.com/print/benefits-parent-involvement-research/