Instruments for Academic Achievement of Students Essay (Critical Writing)

Germinal Literature

The existing scholarly literature contains numerous studies that establish the connection between parental involvement and the academic achievement of students. However, the findings of researchers are usually incompatible due to the different definitions of parental involvement and, as a result, the use of different metrics for evaluation. Next, the studies mostly come from developed countries, which limits the socioeconomic background of the sample.

Finally, most of the researchers focus on the urban setting or, more commonly, aggregate the data to produce the unified result, which does not allow for the identification of possible important differences. Most importantly, there is a considerable disparity among the findings of different authors. For instance, a study by Keith, Reimers, Fehrmann, Pottebaum, and Aubey (1986) evaluated the influence of several factors, including parental involvement, on the academic performance of students.

The study concluded that parental involvement had no direct effect on academic performance, although, importantly, a link was established between parental involvement and the amount of time the students dedicated to homework (Keith et al., 1986).

Since the latter was directly tied to academic performance in the same study, an indirect link could be implied between the two. Another early attempt to determine the impact of parental involvement evaluated the influence of various performance standards on the academic achievement of students from 20 public schools (Natriello & McDill, 1986). The study established a relationship between the parents’ standards and the time spent by students on homework. At the same time, a negative relation was identified between the former and the resulting performance (Natriello & McDill, 1986).

Since the establishment of performance standards can be considered a form of parental involvement, this result illustrates an obviously undesirable effect. These findings were later corroborated by the research of the effects of intervention for children at risk (Reynolds, 1994). Parental involvement was included in the list of factors that were expected to influence the outcome. While it was identified as one of the predictors of the duration of intervention and the children’s adjustment, no statistically significant correlation was observed between it and the student performance (Reynolds, 1994).

Nevertheless, it should be acknowledged that the absence of positive relation is characteristic for only a fraction of the literature on the matter. One of the earliest studies that provided the initial evidence of the positive effect of parental involvement included it as one of several family factors that were thought to influence student achievement. The researchers concluded on the convergence between the identified factors and the academic success (Christenson, Rounds, & Gorney, 1992).

However, the study did not provide a conclusive definition of parental involvement that could be applied to consecutive studies. A later analysis by Singh et al. (1995) disaggregated parental involvement into four distinct components, namely home structure, parental aspirations for children’s education, parental participation in school-related activities, and parent–child communication about school.

The effects differed for each of the components, with parental aspirations for children’s education being the most significant positive impact on academic achievement of children. Interestingly, both parental participation in school-related activities and parent–child communication about school produced no statistically significant effect on academic performance, and the home structure was proven to have a small negative impact on student success (Singh et al., 1995).

In addition, the observed effect was more prominent for the elementary school students, suggesting the importance of the age-specific context. These findings offered an insight into the relative weight of different aspect of parental involvement, which could be used to account for the differences in the future, and provided a useful framework for future studies.

Despite the location of the possible reason behind the discrepancies in findings, many factors were still left unaccounted for. Most prominently, the existing studies used different datasets for calculation of student achievement. In each case, the data were based on different metrics, including global indicators (e.g. school GPA and post-secondary attainment), test results from specific areas of study or other highly specialized indicators, and, in some cases, feedback from students on their levels of aspirations (Fan & Chen, 2001).

This further undermined the value of the consistency of results and restricted the possibility to measure the observed effect. In other words, in addition to the lack of agreement on the extent to which parental involvement influences academic achievement, no common ground could be reached on whether such influence existed. In order to address this issue, several meta-analyses were performed that were expected to account for the identified limitations and systematize the knowledge. One of the earliest studies that synthesized the quantitative results of previous researchers was the meta-analysis performed by Fan and Chen (2001).

The researchers focused on the empirical studies with clearly defined demographics of the sample, academic achievement measure type, area of academic performance, and dimensions of parental involvement used by the authors, and coded them to equalize the differences in weight of factors. The resulting measurements were analyzed for two factors. First, the features that had the most influence on the established relationship between parental involvement and student performance were located. Second, the effect of each dimension was calculated to avoid the possible bias of studies with multiple effects.

The results confirmed the discrepancies between the findings of different researchers, and indicated several areas responsible for the inconsistencies. Most notably, the feature of area of academic achievement was noticeably influencing the strength of the established relationship, with global achievement indicators leading to stronger linkage than the subject-specific metrics, such as the math grade (Fan & Chen, 2001). In addition, supervision as a parental involvement dimension had the weakest effect on academic performance while parents’ expectations and aspirations had the strongest relationship with the student achievements (Fan & Chen, 2001).

These results improved the understanding of the possible discrepancies and provided crucial information for future researchers on the matter. In addition, the overall results confirmed the existence of a practically meaningful moderate relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement, which was necessary for directing further inquiry.

Two feasible directions can be observed in the academic literature starting from this point. First, several meta-analyses were conducted to systematize the findings in the vein of study by Fan and Chen (2001). Second, more focused analyses were performed that attempted to narrow down the scope of parental involvement dimensions, academic achievement metrics, and demographics of the sample. The latter notably included the factor of urban and rural setting as one of the variables, although this type of study is scarcely represented and does not focus on comparing the two settings, providing an in-depth analysis of one of the settings instead.

Meta-Analyses

A study by Hill and Tyson (2009) used a similar framework to quantify the relationship between specific types of parental involvement and academic achievement of students in the middle school setting. According to the authors, the age range of middle school students is associated with the developmental and organizational changes that increase the importance of parental involvement (Hill & Tyson, 2009).

However, since the efficiency of different types of involvement varies, it was divided into several categories to determine their relative efficiency. The results indicated that the category which promoted awareness of the importance of academic performance, increased student engagement, clarified the expectations associated with student success, and provided the strategies that could be utilized by the student (e.g. academic socialization) displayed the strongest association with performance of students (Hill & Tyson, 2009).

On the other hand, the direct assistance with and control of the academic activities (e.g. homework assistance and checking) did not produce any statistically significant changes in student performance. Finally, the involvement that included school-based activities, such as attendance of school events and volunteering, resulted in moderate improvements in academic performance (Hill & Tyson, 2009). In addition, the aggregated results indicated a positive relationship between the parental involvement in the middle school and the overall academic performance of students (Hill & Tyson, 2009).

The similar results were obtained in the analysis conducted by Shute, Hansen, Underwood, and Razzouk (2011). The authors focused on the secondary school level (middle and high school), which was a noticeably broader scope than that of the previous study. The conclusions reached by the authors illustrated the importance of several dimensions of parental involvement, such as the communication between children and parents on the school-related topics and the presence of parents’ aspirations and expectations regarding the performance of their children (Shute et al., 2011).

Interestingly, the researchers were able to identify one additional dimension that was not isolated by the previous meta-analyses, namely the authoritative parenting style, in which the close and friendly family relationships are accompanied by the existence of structure and the clear guidelines that can be utilized whenever relevant (Shute et al., 2011). Interestingly, despite the evident relationship between the identified dimensions of parental involvement and the student performance, the researchers characterized the identified findings as modest (Shute et al., 2011). This conclusion cannot be definitively applied to the findings of other researchers due to the incompatibility between the metrics used in the source materials and the different approaches to coding of the indicators.

A meta-analysis by Castro et al. (2015) took a much broader scope by including the studies dealing with the primary, secondary, and kindergarten education. The findings of the authors were largely consistent with those reached by the previous researchers, with one notable exception. Specifically, one of the factors that were identified as strongly associated with academic achievement of students was the assistance with development of reading habits, which can be characterized as a direct assistance with studies (Castro et al., 2015).

In addition, the authors described the parental models that were shown to have the strongest relationship to academic achievement as “those focusing on general supervision of the children’s learning activities” (Castro et al., 2015, p. 2). As was detailed above, such dimension was considered the least influential by numerous researchers (Fan & Chen, 2001; Hill & Tyson, 2009; Shute et al., 2011). However, Castro et al. (2015) also brought up an important point that served as a possible source of bias in the studies on the matter, as the studies that do not show the statistically significant correlation tend to be overlooked by the academic publications and excluded from the subsequent meta-analyses.

Parental involvement is currently strongly associated with the overall improvement in academic success of the students, which may result in modification of curricula and school strategies without reaching meaningful results. Therefore, it is crucial to obtain as much data on ineffective results as possible in order to avoid irrational resource and time allocation.

On the whole, the meta-analyses indicate the existence of several trends that can be traced across the academic literature. With the exception of the study by Castro et al. (2015), the majority of the papers identify academic socialization, promotion of academic involvement, and communication of the benefits associated with school performance as the strongest influences on student success. This conclusion can be confirmed by the meta-synthesis performed by Wilder (2014).

The author synthesized the results of nine meta-analyses, which allowed to gain an overview of the overall effect of parental involvement. The direct assistance was the weakest contributor to achievement across all studies. The communication of parents’ expectations, on the other hand, displayed the strongest relationship in all reviewed papers (Wilder, 2014). In addition, the study provided two important insights.

First, the author found no significant influence of definition of parental involvement on the overall results of the research (Wilder, 2014). In other words, the aggregated results always showed a positive relationship. Second, no significant differences were found in the relationship between the parental involvement and academic achievement in different ethnic and/or age groups (Wilder, 2014). The latter is especially important since it can be used as a basis for the formulation of hypotheses by future researchers.

Focused Studies

Several studies were performed that aimed at narrowing the inquiry down to the specific dimensions and/or demographics. For example, the research by McNeal Jr (2014) attempted to account for the discrepancies observed in the existing results by introducing two distinct categories of parental involvement – the practices that established a link between the parents and their children and those that resulted in linking parents to adults in school environment (McNeal Jr, 2014).

The results confirmed that the parent-child category of involvement was associated with significantly greater improvements in academic performance, although in most cases the effect is secondary to the influence on the behavioral and attitudinal measures (McNeal Jr, 2014). The analysis also identified the possibility of long-term effects of the said involvement type on adolescents. These results identified the most feasible directions for policymakers and introduced a clear categorization that can be used to avoid the incorporation of less effective strategies in the school curriculum.

Specific Settings

Finally, some researchers focused on urban and non-urban settings in their studies. It should be mentioned that the former are far more frequent, most likely due to the better support for the academic effort and availability of resources and data in the segment. In addition, some of the results are unintuitive considering the information derived from the meta-analyses above. For example, a study by Sheldon (2003) measured the influence of partnerships between schools, families, and communities in a large urban area and the performance of students on the achievement tests.

The results described in the study suggest the increase in the amount of above-average results associated with the existence of partnership programs. Interestingly, the described programs fall into the category of parent-school involvement type, which is expected to produce less significant results (McNeal Jr, 2014).

Another study conducted in the urban setting was the research by Muhammad et al. (2013), which focused on students of Allama Iqbal Town, an urban area of Lahore city in Pakistan. The data was obtained by administering a questionnaire to the sample of 150 students. The results indicated a positive association between the parental involvement and the improvement of academic performance among the respondents.

While this was not specified by the researchers, the questionnaire did not focus on any of the parental involvement dimensions identified above and included the questions that measured frequency of parents’ interaction with school staff, amount of assistance with homework, monitoring attendance and performance of children, and participation in development of teaching strategies and methods. The questions obviously target a specific category of interaction with the school-related adults and, therefore, measure the effects that have been proven of less significance (McNeal Jr, 2014).

In addition, at least two questions deal with the direct assistance with homework, which was shown to have no direct relation to academic achievement (Hill & Tyson, 2009). Nevertheless, the researchers established an association between the measured parental involvement and the academic achievement of students (Muhammad et al., 2013). Despite the shift in focus, the results are consistent with the general trend identified by Wilder (2014).

Finally, a meta-analysis by Jeynes (2007) arrived at conclusions similar to those of Hill and Tyson (2009) after the introduction of urban setting as one of the criteria. Importantly, unlike the previous researchers, Jeynes (2007) separated academic achievement into four distinct groups, including the academic behaviors and attitudes, which are relatively uncommon in the literature. Importantly, the study included the influence of parent involvement programs, which was determined as positive (Jeynes, 2007).

While this result is consistent with the conclusion made by Sheldon (2003), its weight becomes far less prominent when compared to the score of overall involvement (.29 versus.46 of a standard deviation unit) (Jeynes, 2007, p. 100). In other words, the programs (as a part of parent-adult category) did result in improvement, but to a much smaller extent than the involvement of parent-child type.

Finally, the systematic review of literature conducted by Semke and Sheridan (2012) focused on the studies exploring the effect of parental involvement on academic achievement in the non-urban setting. The results were generally consistent with the findings pertinent to urban areas and those describing the situation with no relation to the setting, pointing to the existence of the positive relation between the two variables.

However, the researchers identified a range of weaknesses common to the non-urban setting. Specifically, many sources lacked the clarity of definitions, displayed little scientific rigor in methodological approach, and were descriptive in nature, which undermined the reliability of the results and compromised their cross-compatibility (Semke & Sheridan, 2012). As a result, the findings from the rural segment are only partially applicable to the rest of the data available on the topic.

The review of the literature provides us with the general understanding on the subject, including the relevant metrics, the expected differences among dimensions of parental involvement, and the consistency of results across the majority of the demographics. Furthermore, it substantiates the necessity for comparing the effects in urban and non-urban setting due to the existing difficulties on compatibility and applicability of data identified by previous researchers.

References

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Christenson, S. L., Rounds, T., & Gorney, D. (1992). Family factors and student achievement: An avenue to increase students’ success. School Psychology Quarterly, 7(3), 178-206.

Fan, X., & Chen, M. (2001). Parental involvement and students’ academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 13(1), 1-22.

Hill, N. E., & Tyson, D. F. (2009). Parental involvement in middle school: A meta-analytic assessment of the strategies that promote achievement. Developmental Psychology, 45(3), 740-763.

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Keith, T. Z., Reimers, T. M., Fehrmann, P. G., Pottebaum, S. M., & Aubey, L. W. (1986). Parental involvement, homework, and TV time: Direct and indirect effects on high school achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 78(5), 373-380.

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Muhammad, H., Rafiq, W., Fatima, T., Sohail, M. M., Saleem, M., & Khan, M. A. (2013). Parental involvement and academic achievement; A study on secondary school students of Lahore, Pakistan. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 3(8), 209-223.

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Reynolds, A. J. (1994). Effects of a preschool plus follow-on intervention for children at risk. Developmental Psychology, 30(6), 787-804.

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Shute, V. J., Hansen, E. G., Underwood, J. S., & Razzouk, R. (2011). A review of the relationship between parental involvement and secondary school students’ academic achievement. Education Research International, 2011, 1-10.

Singh, K., Bickley, P. G., Trivette, P., Keith, T. Z., Keith, P. B., & Anderson, E. (1995). The effects of four components of parental involvement on eighth-grade student achievement: Structural analysis of NELS-88 data. School Psychology Review, 24(2), 299-317.

Wilder, S. (2014). Effects of parental involvement on academic achievement: A meta-synthesis. Educational Review, 66(3), 377-397.