Parental involvement is highly important for children's success at school. Research has shown that parental involvement leads to higher student achievement, better school attendance, and a reduction in dropout rates. However, what happens with those parents who do not speak English or have limited communication skills in this language? How can they become involved in their children's schooling when the children attend school in a language foreign to the parents? This study examines the experiences of three Mexican immigrant mothers and one father getting involved in their children's education in the United States. Helena was an active participant of a service-learning program hosted by a medium-sized Land Grand University. Sandra also attended the program but only for some time. Finally, the Hernandez parents, Mercedes and Jose Luis, were randomly selected in the community and did not participate in the service-learning program. This qualitative study relied mainly upon semi-structure interviews with the participants along with observations and field notes. The conclusions from this study provide insight as to how Mexican-immigrant parents with low-income develop an understanding of the school system in the United States. Analysis revealed two main strategies that parents use to communicate with the school: 1) using interpreters as affordance networks for communication, and 2) using their own knowledge of English to take actions and comply with school requirements. Data show that, contrary to common assumptions, parents do not prefer children as their first option for interpreting functions. In terms of learning about standard cultural practices of parental involvement parents accommodate to school demands by using various strategies and resources from their funds of knowledge. Parents learn about standard cultural practices of parental involvement and at the same time they support their children's education; in this process parents rely on their own cultural repertoires. Besides, parents seek places where they can develop community ties in order to learn about the how-tos of life in the United States. Finally, findings demonstrate that parents feel frustration and anxiety about their relationship with the schools, since they are facing with great resilience the every life challenges of living in a culture and language different from their own. The main findings of this study and discussing on the implications provided a discussion for policy changes in the context of the NCLB act, and suggestions for teacher preparation programs, and local school or service programs. / Ph. D.

Parental involvement has been at the forefront of many studies leading to the conclusion that increased parental involvement improves academic achievement. Despite findings suggesting the benefits of parental involvement, research reveals a lack of parental involvement among Spanish-speaking parents. The overarching objective of this qualitative case study was to explore how Spanish-speaking mothers make sense of the construct of parental involvement. This qualitative study was comprised of three cases: one Guatemalan mother and two Honduran mothers each with children attending elementary school. My methodology allowed me to explore and depict historical and sociocultural factors that influence how the mothers view their role in their children's education. I collected data through semi-structured interviews, informal observations, and extensive fieldnotes and I conducted on-going analysis on these data. Data provide evidence that the mothers in the study hold a different perspective of parental involvement from that of school personnel. Their views stem directly from their own historical and cultural knowledge, which differs from that of middle-class, White Americans. They are involved in their children's overall education in ways not acknowledged by educators. / Ph. D.

Researchers, policy makers, and educators have recently drawn attention to parental involvement as an important predictor of mathematics achievement among U.S. students. Despite evidence proclaiming parental involvement's positive effect on younger students' academic achievement, inconsistencies in sparse research on older students seem the norm. The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of parental involvement on older children as they progress from eighth to twelfth grade in a specific area of achievement, mathematics achievement. Data from a large nationally representative sample of students and their parents who participated in the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 base-year, first follow-up, and second follow-up were analyzed using latent structural equations analyses. The results suggest that parental involvement in students' academic lives is indeed a powerful influence on student mathematics achievement at eighth, tenth, and twelfth grade. Findings also suggest that conscious efforts to improve parent/child communication concerning school related matters and increased efforts to communicate parental aspirations for their child's future educational attainment can act as a useful tool to help increase mathematics achievement at the secondary school level. / Ph. D.

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The establishment of functional parental-involvement in preschools has become a larger and more complex area since the Swedish curriculum was revised in 2010. Parental involvement is important, not only as an incentive for the individual child’s development, but also regarding a democratic perspective of parent participation. The diversity of parents makes overall strategic governmental efforts to enable parental-involvement ineffective and each preschool must handle the heterogeneous parental group in their area. Parents who lack the knowledge of Swedish are more likely to be excluded from strategic parental-involvement efforts in preschools, which made us curious to inquire into efforts that aim to include non-Swedish-speaking parents. Through interviews with preschool teachers and managers we aimed to discover discourse orientated patterns in discussions regarding non-Swedish speaking-parents overall and look into which methods and aspects teachers found critical in constructing functional parental-involvement with this specific group. We executed a discourse-orientated analyze on our findings and relate it to methods mentioned by teachers to see how they impact each other. We found that teachers describe the group issued in ways of both similarities with the general group of parents and at the same time as distinctive characters with unique needs and therefor organized their parental-involvement efforts accordingly.

The purpose of this mixed-methods study is to identify major factors that directly affect parental involvement in 21st century schools. This study examined several elements of parental involvement. It calculated the idea of the changing family context and parental involvement, technology and parental involvement, the impact of Cultural Capital and parental involvement, the impact of the Academic Parent Teacher Teams program and parental involvement, and parents’ demographics and parental involvement. Data gathered to inform the research were derived from parent surveys and teachers and administrators interviews. The research examined the relationship between the parental involvement and parents’ perception of the school's accessibility, parents' perception of school's communication, parents’ perception of the school’s climate, parent’s perception of their role in student's learning, teachers’ perceptions of the role of technology, parents’ perceptions of the usefulness of the Academic Parent Teacher Teams (APTT) Program, teachers’ perceptions of the usefulness of the APTT Program, Cultural Capital, and parents’ demographics: level of education, occupation, socioeconomic level, parental structure, ethnicity, and marital status parental. The benefits of the research are to inform educators how to structure programs that will directly assist parents on how to help their children more effectively at home, to reeducate parents on how to unpack standards, and measure the successfulness of a program that helped to bridge the gap between family and school. The surveys and interviews were administered at the elementary school located in Atlanta. The researcher focused this work on studies examining the associations between family, home and school because these associations began emerging as efforts to assess the efficacy of governmental programs and other interventions. In the late 1990s, scholarly attention turned to “community control of schools, especially in the education of low-income children, special education students, and English language learners” (McKenna & Millen, 2013, p. 14). These researchers sought to recommend strategies that would promote parent, family, and community involvement. These areas and these children were considered as the ones that could benefit the most from parental involvement. The results from these studies seek to add more clarity on how educators today can enlighten schools on how to bridge the family and school gap in the 21st century.

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In a synthesis of research on parent autonomy support, meta-analytic results indicated that parental autonomy support was related to greater academic achievement, autonomous motivation, and psychological health. A meta-analysis of 20 studies correlating parent autonomy support and achievement-related outcomes revealed that parental autonomy support had a positive relationship with achievement outcomes. A meta-analysis of 8 samples from 6 studies correlating parent autonomy support and autonomous motivation revealed autonomy support had a stronger relation with motivation for school in general than motivation for non-school domains. A meta-analysis of 11 studies correlating parent autonomy support and well-being revealed that parental autonomy support had a stronger relation with non-school related self-esteem than in academic self-esteem. Implications for future research and practice are discussed. A suggested intervention program is also analyzed. / text

Korean middle school students have shown outstanding performance in various international assessments since a decade ago. The current study focused on parental variables and their relations to their children's achievement. In this study, the researcher sought to explore how parental variables such as parental involvement, attributions, education, and income influence performance of Korean youths. Completed questionnaires from 138 Korean parents whose children are middle school students were analyzed to answer the research questions. The analyses of data in this study confirmed that parents' educational level, private tutoring expenditure, satisfaction with private tutoring, parents' home and school based involvement, parents' perception of their children's GPA, parents' attribution of luck, effort, and strategy to their children's academic success were associated with children's achievement in Korean families. The results of this study indicated that not only parental involvement in home based and school based activities, but also private tutoring based activities, were positively associated with Korean middle school students' achievement. In particular, parents' involvement in private tutoring based activities was a strong factor to enhance children's achievement in core academic subjects (math, Korean, English). The findings of this study suggested that Korean parents' involvement includes the private tutoring system as well as home and school involvement, and this unique aspect of parental involvement is used as an important strategy to promote children's academic achievement by current Korean parents.

A call for parents to be involved in the education of their children is not a modern phenomenon at all. It is increasingly a call which invites parents to be involved in every sphere of their children‟s lives, including their health. Children of South Africa, like many other children in Africa, are engulfed with health issues. These problems range from drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, obesity, violence, suicide, alcohol, etc. Therefore, it is crucial to engage parents in an effort to promote the health of their children in school and together with schools. Various parental roles were established during the early part of the century when parents were obliged to raise their children according to the set standard. As time went by, schools clearly drew a line to distinguish their role from parents‟ roles. Later on a need for parental involvement in schools arose again and a call for parents to attend to their obligations was a necessity, although parents were seen as problems by teachers. This allowed a space for barriers to grow between parents and teachers to such an extent that there was no collaboration in addressing problems affecting children in schools. To investigate the issue of parental roles and health promotion in schools thoroughly, qualitative measures were applied. The analysis indicated that there is indeed a great need for parents to be involved in promoting the health of their children in schools. However, a lack of knowledge amongst parents and a lack of skills to work with parents amongst teachers hamper the possibility of preventing most of the health issues affecting many children of South Africa. Indeed parental participation in schools and health promoting schools can yield positive results not only for the children, but for the schools and parents as well. Therefore, the government must employ practical strategies to involve parents in promoting the health of children in schools. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011