Thesis advisor: Eric Dearing / Family educational involvement is consistently and positively associated with child achievement, but little work has closely examined the involvement practices of families of color, particularly immigrant families. Utilizing data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Kindergarten Cohort 1998-99 (ECLS-K), this study used Hierarchical Linear Modeling to analyze trajectories of parent-reported barriers to involvement and rates of parent involvement from kindergarten through grade five for children of Whites, Blacks, U.S.-born Latinos, U.S.-born Asians, Latino immigrants, and Asian immigrants. Additionally, it examined between and within-family associations between family involvement and children's mathematics and reading achievement across elementary school. Analyses focused on similarities and differences in these trajectories across racial, ethnic, and immigrant groups. Results demonstrated that parent-reported barriers to involvement at school were generally highest at kindergarten and diminished over time, but immigrant parents consistently reported the highest levels of barriers. Although immigrant parents had significantly lower levels of school-based involvement than non-immigrants, their educational expectations for their children were significantly higher than that of white parents. Moreover, while school-based involvement tended to peak at grade 3 and decrease between grades 3 and 5 for most groups, parents' educational expectations remained relatively stable. Importantly, school-based involvement positively predicted both math and reading achievement across all groups. However, there was a significant moderating effect of race, ethnicity, and immigrant status for educational expectations. Parents' educational expectations were significantly less predictive of achievement for children of Blacks, Latinos, and Latino immigrants compared to Whites. In addition, there was some evidence that school characteristics mediated this interaction. Specifically, mediated moderation was evident for parents' educational expectations such that these expectations were less strongly associated with mathematics achievement of children of U.S.-born Latinos compared to Whites, in part because these Latino children attended schools with greater concentrations of poverty. Implications for families, schools, and policy are discussed in light of the changing demographics of the United States. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology.

Thesis advisor: Eric Dearing / Family educational involvement has been identified as a particularly beneficial practice for the achievement and behavioral outcomes of all students, including ethnic-minority students from families who have low levels of income, education, and English language proficiency. However, despite the associated benefits and education policymakers' emphasis on increasing family-school partnerships, not all families are involved and the explanation for differing involvement patterns has not been fully explored. In general, immigrant families engage in fewer educational involvement activities in comparison to their native-born counterparts. Although they want their children to excel in school, many face socio-cultural barriers to educational involvement. Moreover, most schools are not equipped to meet their non-academic needs. On the other hand, immigrant families tend to have close family and community ties, which have been linked to family and child well-being. As a result, social capital may be an asset of immigrant families that can be leveraged to promote their educational involvement. With a selective focus on immigrant children and families from the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (N = 189), this dissertation relied on path analyses to garner empirical support for a theoretically-based model linking social capital with family perceptions and attributions, home- and school-based family educational involvement, and student outcomes (i.e., achievement, behavior problems, positive behavior). Results demonstrated that social support was positively associated with immigrant families' self-efficacy and perceptions of opportunities for involvement. In turn, families with higher levels of self-efficacy engaged in more home-based involvement activities. Children in immigrant families with a role construction around education in alignment with the dominant culture of the U.S. demonstrated better child achievement but worse behavior outcomes than children from immigrant families with a role construction unaligned with dominant U.S. culture. Lastly, in contrast to extant literature, immigrant families' school-based educational involvement was not associated with any family perceptions or attributes or child outcomes. Implications of both significant and null findings are discussed for developmental science, practice, and policy. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology.