How parent involvement affects students' academic performance and behavior in elementary school
Introduction
Parental support is vital for students' academic performance and behavior. Parents should be actively involved in the education of their children and provide them with advice and guidance, motivation, and positive mindset to shape their behaviors and increase their academic performance. The biggest concern in the elementary schools today is that many parents do not pay attention to their children's education. In other words, parents do not adequately meet the need of their children as they deny them better communication and lack of support. Recent research and studies have examined the problem and offered a suitable solution that parent involvement in children's education increases academic achievement, and enhances positive behaviors. Therefore, parents should increase their interests and support and become more engaged. As children feel more supportive, they will gain motivation, improve learning mindset, they will enjoy school and increase attendance, and improve attitude and behavior.
Describe a Problem in Your Field of Professional Practice
The biggest problem that exists in the teaching profession is a lack of parental involvement. As an educator, I have realized that parents have a negative perception of the education of their children. They are not involved in advising the children's learning and this leads to negative results in that children are unable to adjust to the school environment (Lara & Saracostti, 2019). Students reduce the interest in studying and hence poor performance. Lack of parent involvement does not only affect the student's performance but also lower self-esteem as a result of poor parental support. Low self-esteem makes them develop social anxiety, depression, and irrational behavior. It is important to address this problem to benefit both the teacher, the parents, and the children. Note that parents' involvement would lead to better school attendance, better self-esteem, a lack of violent behavior, and academic success. Additionally, the teacher will increase morale as a result of home-school communication. The teacher will understand the students personally and provide a personalized teaching experience. However, if the problem is not addressed, students will continue to struggle on their own. They will be unable to focus on the studies hence fail academically and socially. Therefore, it is important to address this problem and provide research-based solutions to help students improve in education as well as in social life.
Analyzing Two Research Reports
Analysis of Article One
According to Lara & Saracostti (2019), a positive association between a child and a parent improves the child's self-esteem, school retention and attendance, positive school attachment, and academic performance. The researchers focused on the different forms of parental involvement and finds that parents can become engaged in different ways such as communicating with their children and teachers, offering resources to support the learning, and involving themselves in school activities.
The researchers used 498 parents aged 20 and 89 years, and whose children were second and third graders. The data was collected from the official school records. The data was based on parental involvement in-home support, attendance of the parent-teacher meeting, child's requests of help from parents, and teacher’s request of parental help. Parental involvement was analyzed using the hierarchical cluster analysis (Lara & Saracostti, 2019). The findings showed differences in the clustering variables. The first cluster represented 144 parents, the second 228 presents, and the third 126 parents. The parental involvement scales were measured as high, medium, and low (Lara & Saracostti, 2019). High and medium scales were associated with high academic achievement and this indicates that parent promotes academic achievement. The study is qualitative in nature and this is a strength in that if offers detailed description of the complex issue. However, in the future, it is important to go beyond the family-school relations and specifically focus on parent-child relation and its effect on academic achievements. Note that it is difficult to analyses the qualitative study and thus future studies should use a mixed-method approach to improve evaluation.
Analysis of Article Two
According to Duan et al., (2018), parental involvement in three aspects namely parents' involvement at home, parent involvement in school activities, and parents’ positive expectations about the child's learning contributes to academic achievement and positive behaviors. Parental involvement is not only the factor that promotes academic performance but socioeconomic status has a significant effect. For example, parents with SES have low parent involvement compared to parents with high SES (Duan et al., 2018). The latter can provide educational resources and better living than parents with low SES. The literature suggests that parents with low SES should invest heavily in their children. In other words, parents should provide support to disadvantaged children. Note that children who come from high socioeconomic backgrounds have better living conditions and therefore parental involvement does not matter. Contrary, children who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds need parental involvement.
Researchers adopted data from the National Survey Research Center. The data had 19,487 students whose parental involvement was measured in terms of home-based involvement, and academic socialization. Data was analyzed through the standardization process, pairwise comparisons, descriptive statistics, correlational analysis, and hierarchical regression (Duan et al. 2018). The findings show that parental involvement in the form of academic socialization improved students' performance. Also, social-economic status affects academic achievement. This indicates that children with low socioeconomic status need parental support to improve school behaviors and academic success. The current study suggests that intervention programs should promote parental involvement in low-SES families (Duan et al. 2018). This will enable the parts to increase interest in their children's learning and hence improve their school performance. The study had strengths in that it comes with new findings or reasonable results concerning the home-based involvement in different cultural environments. However, the study has limitations in that it focuses on parental- junior school student involvement. In future studies, it is important to consider adolescents of all ages and analyses the school-based involvement.
Examining Transferability of Research Findings to Your Professional Practice
The research findings of the two articles offer meaningful and creative solutions to the problem described above. The participants in the research reports and the participants in my professional practice share some similarities in that they both need parental involvement in their education and social life so that they can success socially and academically (Duan et al., 2018). However, they differ in that participants in my current professional practice have disengaging parents. In other words, their parents do not show the willingness to participate in their learning hence contribute to their academic failure. In contrast, participants in the research report reports academic improvement as a result of a strong relationship with their parents (Lara & Saracostti, 2019). The research reports provide a research-based solution that parents who support their children to complete homework, parents who interact with teachers, and parents who participate in school activities contribute to high levels of academic achievement. The solutions offered can be applied to the current problem by following these key principles. Parent-child discussion-parents should discuss school-related topics with their children. Parent monitoring- parents should monitor the child's behavior to identify non-desirable behaviors and promote desirable behaviors.
Conclusion
The findings in the above research reports are clear that parent involvement contributes to students' academic achievement. Home-based involvement has a greater effect in that parents improve a child's attitudes and shapes behaviors. Other parental involved such as school-based involvement and academic socialization enhances students' self-efficient and increases school engagement. However, it is important to follow the key principles to solve the problem. In other words, there are different parent involvement strategies and it is important to consider the strategies that have cumulative effects on the students. Schools should also come up with programs to foster parental involvement in a child's learning. There should be strong parent-school linkages and parent-child communication to improve academic performance as well as the behaviors of the students.
References
Lara, L., & Saracostti, M. (2019). Effect of Parental Involvement on Children’s Academic
Achievement in Chile. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 1464.
Duan, W., Guan, Y., & Bu, H. (2018). The effect of parental involvement and socioeconomic
Status on junior school students’ academic achievement and school behavior in
China. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 952.
