External support, such as that provided by parents, plays an important role in helping students in K-12 online education engage in their education and obtain academic success. The Academic Communities of Engagement (ACE) framework has been proposed as one way of conceptualizing the communities that support students, including the roles that parents and guardians play. Research studying parental support in online education could benefit from the structure offered from the ACE framework, but, due to the framework's novelty, it has not been widely applied in research. The first article in this thesis sought to use the ACE framework to synthesize past research on the roles parents take when they become involved in their students' online education. Results indicated that the framework has strong potential for understanding research on parental roles but that there are some roles discovered in the literature that do not fit cleanly in the framework. The second article further explored the ACE Framework's application in studying parental roles by interviewing parents in another context to understand their reported roles in supporting their students. Findings for this study further validated the usefulness of the ACE framework, but also exposed patterns in the roles not covered by the ACE framework. These patterns suggest looking at the ACE framework through a systems approach rather than an egocentric model.

Immigrant parents with young children face difficult dilemmas that stem from the challenges of navigating the different cultures of their home and of their adopting country (e.g., Hynie, 2018; Kim et al., 2001; Schwartz et al., 2010). Parents’ deliberations about how to raise their children are particularly challenging when their home and adopting cultures are very different (Fuentes-Balderrama et al., 2022; Lozano et al., 2022), as is the case for Chinese immigrants to the U.S. Chinese immigrants constitute the largest immigrant group in the U.S., and their parenting styles and strategies have tremendous consequences for the development of their children, the well-being of the parents and the children in their communities, the integration of the family in their new environment, and, consequently, the well-being of the larger American community.Research has often portrayed Chinese immigrant parents, and most often mothers, as negotiating a simple dichotomy of Western and Chinese parenting styles (e.g., Cheah et al., 2013; Ma, 2019; Wang et al., 2021). The literature commonly portrays these styles as discrepant on degrees of warmth, control, and discipline, with Chinese parenting viewed as cold, strict, and demanding compared with the warmer, relaxed, and lenient American way. More recent studies (Donald & Yi, 2008; Guo, 2013; Han & Chen, 2019; Liu et al., 2020) have begun to challenge this simple dichotomy and to highlight the diversity of their parenting beliefs and practices, uncovering nuanced approaches based on Chinese Confucianism and Guan, including their emphasis on learning and the establishment of high expectations, and their beliefs and practices related to children’s socio-emotional development, particularly related to parental expressions of warmth, socialization goals towards children, and beliefs about friendship and play. However, this research is in its infancy, and it lacks a theoretical framework to conceptualize the diversity of Chinese immigrant parenting approaches in the American context. In the multiple case study, therefore, I employed the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI; Kaplan & Garner, 2017) to conceptualize and investigate the parenting approaches and strategies of three Chinese immigrant mothers of children aged 3 to 5 in Philadelphia, PA. DSMRI allows for a nuanced understanding of individuals by considering their unique experiences, perspectives, and parenting practices. It also considers various components of role identity, such as purpose and goals, worldviews, self-perceptions, action possibility, and emotions. Besides, it explains parenting practices from a bottom-up perspective. The DSMRI framework further places significant emphasis on the relational and cultural context in which parenting occurs, recognizing the continuous construction of a mother’s role identity in relation to various family members and networks. I aimed to answer the following research questions: (1) Who are the Chinese immigrant mothers (e.g., educational background, socioeconomic status, life experiences in China, life experiences in the U.S., and life experiences as a mother)?; (2) What are the mothers’ experiences with parental involvement with their children?; (3) What are their parent role identities, including purpose and goals, self-perceptions, worldviews, and action possibilities as a mother?; (4) How can their role identities explain their decisions on parental involvement with their children?; (5) How do contextual factors (e.g., Chinese immigrant communities, school, and technology) in their environments influence their parent role identities? Three Chinese immigrant mothers of children aged 3 to 5 participated in this study. The data included life-story interviews, as well as home observations, and stimulated recall interviews centering on parental involvement with the children. The interviews were recorded, and I utilized ethnographic tools such as observation, thick descriptions, and detailed field notes to describe these mothers’ parental involvement with their children. As about data analysis, I analyzed the collected data using inductive coding techniques first to identify emerging themes. Then I delved into each theme, applying the DSMRI framework deductively to explain how parents’ role identity influenced their actions and behaviors. Finally, I interpreted and synthesized the findings, integrating the inductive themes and the DSMRI framework. The research revealed critical insights into the parenting experiences of Chinese immigrant mothers. First, it showcased the diverse backgrounds and life experiences of three Chinese immigrant mothers. Their differences encompassed childhood experiences, educational histories, socioeconomic backgrounds both in their families of origin and their own status, as well as experiences related to immigration and child-rearing (e.g., the number of children and involvement of other family members such as their husband or parents-in-laws) and the communities they were part of. Second, regarding their parental involvement, they all emphasized the following key aspects of their children’s upbringing, including language learning, reading, math education, talent development, and socio-emotional growth. Third, this study examined the mothers’ negotiation of tensions within their mother role identity, their teacher role identity within their mother role identity, and the incorporation of multiple role identities and their tensions. Specifically, the three mothers’ parent role identities helped them navigate parenting in a cross-cultural context, balancing between the Chinese and the U.S. educational and cultural systems. They integrated teacher role identity into their mother role identity, autonomously imparting essential values and skills. Moreover, these mothers negotiated multiple role identities, dealing with the complexities of balancing self, mother, and other familial role identities. Fourth, their mother role identities influenced their decisions on parental involvement in adapting and forming new role identity components, navigating tensions, setting priorities, allocating time, integrating family members, building relationships with schools, and integrating community resources. Finally, the U.S. cultural environment and other contextual factors like community and technology influenced their parent role identities. The study contribute to knowledge about the important phenomenon of Chinese immigrants’ parenting practices, and investigate the utility of a framework of identity, motivation, and action for parenting research that is grounded in dynamic complexity theory, transcending conceptions of static, discrete parenting styles for conceptualizing and instead investigating parenting as a diverse, complex, dynamic, and relational phenomenon among Chinese immigrant mothers in America. / Educational Psychology

Föräldrarollen, och upplevelserna av den, varierar alltid utifrån många olika faktorer. Under mitten av 1900-talet var den gällande familjenormen att mödrarna tog allt ansvar för hem och omsorg av barnen, medan fäderna stod för försörjningen. Fäderna gavs alltså bara en liten möjlighet att lära känna/knyta an till sina barn när de var små. Vilka effekter detta kan ha haft på relationen mellan fäderna och deras barn, då barnen blivit vuxna, är i stort sett ett outforskat område. Den här studien ämnar kunna belysa dessa. En kvalitativ studie genomfördes där ett antal äldre ensamstående fäder har intervjuats om deras upplevelser och erfarenheter av att vara småbarnsförälder under denna tid. Resultaten från intervjuerna, tillsammans med relevant teori, har gett oss insikt i och förståelse för hur deras situation såg ut då och hur de upplever deras dåvarande fadersroll samt deras nuvarande relationer med de nu vuxna barnen. De visade sig att alla de äldre fäderna som deltog i studien anser sig ha goda, och vad som ger intrycket av att vara kravlösa, relationer med sina nu vuxna barn. Detta trots deras vetskap om vissa försummelser av dem då de var små. Den dåvarande normen gällande familjeordning verkar inte ha haft någon negativ inverkan på just detta. / The parent role and the experiences of being a parent depends on many different factors. During the mid 20th century the standard family construction was that the mothers took on all responsibility regarding the household and caring for children while the fathers were in charge of the bread winning. The fathers were given very little opportunity to get to know/attach to their children when they were young. The effects this could have on the relationships between the fathers and their grownup children is a rather unexplored field. This study aims to elucidate this. A qualitative study was carried through where a number of elderly single fathers were interviewed concerning their experiences of being a parent to a small child during this era. The results from the interviews along with relevant theory have given us knowledge and understanding about their current situation, how they now experience the parent role they had then, as well as about the current relationships they have with their now adult children. It turned out that all the participating elderly fathers consider them selves to have good, and what gives the impression of being unconditioned, relationships with their adult children. Even though the fathers are well aware of the fact that they somehow did neglect their children when they were young. The standard family order that was the rule at the time does not seem to have had any negative effect on the relationships.