How Does Parent Involvement in the Education of Elementary Students Affect their Academic Achievement?

Laurie A. Roberts

6540 GoodHope Rd.Naylor, GA 31641

An Annotated Bibliography Submitted to:Dr. D. A. Battle of Georgia Southern University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements forEDUF 7130 NET

Thursday, April 26, 2008Statesboro, Georgia

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How Does Parent Involvement in the Education of Elementary Students Affect their Academic Achievement?

This past year, our school implemented a parental involvement program. At first, I was not

very open to the idea, because our school is an inner city school where the students do not receive

much parental support because they come from low socioeconomic backgrounds. No gains in

students’ success were reported in the beginning, but a few weeks into the program, the results

were amazing. The students’ grades and attitudes improved, because they were getting support for

the first time in their lives. The committee did a great job of choosing fun activities that both the

parent and student would enjoy. I quickly began to see that there was definitely a correlation

between the two. These articles examine and report the effectiveness that parental involvement has

on the student’s overall academic success.

I choose to use Galileo, Google Scholar, Academic Search complete, EBSCO, etc. I found

that the EBSCO host was the easiest to use. I chose these articles based on their relatedness to the

topic and to my school system, so that I would be able to go back and report my findings. I read

each one carefully to make sure that it reported and gave research about the effects of parent

involvement on a student’s success. I did choose some articles that related to parental involvement

with students that come from low socioeconomic status.

Fan, X., & Chen, M. (2001). Parental involvement and students' academic achievement:

A meta-analysis [Electronic version]. Educational Psychology Review, 13, 1-22

This article was very educating. The authors of this article claimed that through their research that

the links to parent involvement and students’ success are inconsistent. They completed a meta-

analysis to see if they were connected and still reported that the two are not directly connected.

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The authors stated that in order for a student success, that there has to be a global indicator present.

The authors also stated that parental involvement in school does not effectively affect students’

success.

Fang, W. & Qi, S. (2006). Longitudinal Effects of Parenting on Children's Academic Achievement

in African American Families. The Journal of Negro Education, 75(3), 415-429.  Retrieved

June 18, 2008, from Research Library database. (Document ID: 1190707321).

This was very informing. The authors stated that the reason for this article was that many teachers

were turning to parents to get to the bottom of problems because they are the children’s first

teachers. The authors also took into perspective the environment in which the children were raised

in. The authors felt that parental involvement had a positive influence on the children. They

stated that a major part of a child’s academic achievement was the expectations that the parents

held of the student. They too found some negative effects of parental involvement on students’

academic achievement.

Hill, N.E. & Taylor, L.C. (2004). Parental school involvement and children’s academic

achievement [Electronic version}. Current Directions in psychological science, 13, 161-

164

This article was about how first of all, most of the programs that are used to involve parents in

school and to promote academic achievement are based on collaboration between the schools and

the families. They also stated that the achievement and parental involvement vary across the board

because they take into consideration the environment in which children are brought up in as being

a big influence. The authors listed reasons for the effectiveness of parental involvement on

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students’ achievement. They listed school and family characteristics that also made a difference in

the achievement of students. The authors stated ways that we could implement these programs

into our schools.

Jeynes, W.H. (2005). Effects of Parental Involvement and Family Structure on the Academic

Achievement of Adolescents. Marriage & Family Review, 37(3), 99- 116. 

Retrieved June 18, 2008, from Research Library database. (Document ID: 885958871).

This article was a lot like the first one. The author stated that parental involvement was important

but didn’t matter if the family structure was not there. The more involved that the parent was

overall in the whole scheme of school, the better the student achieved. It was not just the single

factor of parental involvement, but the underlying issues as well. This article also took gender,

race, and socioeconomic status into account when considering these issues. Although the author

felt that parental involvement was important, it was also evident that without family structure,

there could be no parental involvement, therefore making it void.

Lee, J.S & Bowen, N.K. (2006). Parent Involvement, Cultural Capital, and the Achievement Gap

Among Elementary School Children. American Educational Research

Journal, 43(2), 193-204,206,209-218.  Retrieved June 18, 2008, from ABI/INFORM

Global database. (Document ID: 1133866861).

This author wrote about a study that was completed and involved five different types of parent

involvement. Like the other articles, this article took the children’s family structure, economic

status, and race into consideration. This article stated that any kind of involvement that was school

related would result in a gain in the achievement of the student. They used the five different types

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of involvement to measure student achievement and the effectiveness of the parental involvement.

They did find that the scores of students that did not live in poverty were much higher than those

students that did live in poverty. It was mentioned that this was due to their means of being able to

be involved. The scores were also much higher for students that had higher- educated parents.

The author stated that many times the lack of parental support is a great disadvantage to the student

and that it appears to the teacher that the parent does not care. It was then confirmed that since

parental involvement does have such a great impact on students, there should be more programs

implemented into the schools that make this the center of there focus.

Lee, S.M., Kushner, J., Cho, S.H. (2007). Effects of Parent's Gender, Child's Gender, and

Parental Involvement on the Academic Achievement of Adolescents in Single Parent

Families. Sex Roles, 56(3-4), 149-157.  Retrieved June 18, 2008, from Research

Library database. (Document ID: 1217546871)

This article was very interesting and presented some neat findings. It was based on the gender of

the parent and child and single parent homes. The first thing that was mentioned in this article was

that family structure was an important aspect of student’s achievement. There was some

controversy on the achievement level of students that were brought up in single-father homes and

those brought up in single- mother homes. The article stated that this was due to the fact that a

mother is in charge of the social development and the father is in charge of the cognitive

development. It stated that parental involvement resulted in positive results when referring to the

child’s achievement. The results in the end were that there was no difference in the achievement

levels of students who live with single mothers or fathers. There was also no evidence that the

achievement levels were higher of students who lived with both parents.

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Simone, T.O., Jomills H. B. II, Dawkins, M.P.  (2006). Bringing Parents Back In: African

American Parental Involvement, Extracurricular Participation, and Educational Policy. The

Journal of Negro Education, 75(3), 401-414.  Retrieved June 18, 2008, from Research

Library database. (Document ID: 1190707311).

This article started off the same way. It was showing how even just attending school based sports

can result in a gain in academic achievement, and in return help us to get our schools back on

track. A main concern of the author was that our schools are so much more behind some other

countries. This author still mentioned the fact that race, gender, and socioeconomic status all

effect parental involvement. Socio- psychological factors also affect the amount of parental

support that a parent gives. The article talked about the importance of school- based sports and

that they should not be done away with. The author made a good point that schools could use

these activities as a way of bridging the gap and increase parental involvement. They are a way of

giving the children and parents something in common and something to talk about. I chose this

article because this could also be related to elementary students and their sports, whether it is

through the school or a recreational league. What a great way to bring these two together!

Thurston, D. (2005). Leveling the Home Advantage: Assessing the Effectiveness of Parental

Involvement in Elementary School. Sociology of Education, 78(3), 233-249.  Retrieved

June 18, 2008, from Research Library database. (Document ID: 876503521).

This article starts off by talking about how much of an effort that the U.S.A. has made in the past

few years to increase the amount of parental involvement in the schools. It then went into how so

many of the articles contained contradictory evidence or no evidence at all about the positive gains

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that resulted in the involvement of parents. This article made really good point about the reason

for the effectiveness of parental involvement. It stated that the parents formed relationships with

people at the school, parents, and the child. It also stated that the parents had more access to

insider information, in other words, they were aware of what was happening at their child’s school.

Trotman, M. F. (2001). Involving the African American parent: Recommendations to increase

the level of parent involvement within African American families. The Journal of Negro

Education, 70, 275-285.

This article was about ways to increase the amount of parental involvement among African

American children, which ties right in to the other articles about gender, race, ethnicity, and

socioeconomic status. The author talked about the involvement being a partnership with all of the

people that are involved in the students’ life. This article talked about the reasons that many

African American parents are not involved in their child’s academics. Many of the reasons were

the same in all of the articles above. It stated the effects that the parental involvement had on the

child in many ways and not just academically, but behaviorally and socially. The author included

information about ways that the parental involvement could be increased and ways that the schools

could help the parents overcome all of the barriers.

Reflection on Research

I really enjoyed participating in this research project and I learned a great deal from

it. This research backed up my thought that parental involvement is very effective in

elementary students’ academic achievement. Not only does it improve their achievement,

but it also improves their behavior and social skills. As with the program at school, there

was a great concern in the beginning about how effective and how much parental

involvement and academic gain would be received by students from low- socioeconomic

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background. However, there were many great suggestions for ways to improve this also. I

really thought that the points made in these articles were very extensive and had been

carefully thought through. There were many great suggestions that could be taken into the

educational world and implemented into programs that were aimed at increasing parental

involvement. I really thought that the reasons that were presented for the parental

involvement having so much gain on students success, were right on target. The parent

becomes so much more aware of the students school environment, and therefore

unconsciously becomes more involved with the student. This goes along with the article

about getting parents involved through sports. They are not realizing that they are

becoming more involved, but the extracurricular activity is slowing reeling them in. This

really helped to sum up so many questions that I had about parental involvement. I think

that many schools would see an overall gain in academic success if they would work hard

to implement successful programs that aid in parental involvement. It should be the goal of

the schools, administrators, and educators, to do everything in their power to ensure student

academic success.

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