Parent Educational Involvement and Student Achievement: Disentangling Parent Socialization and Child Evocative Effects Across Development

• Main Author: Cipriano, Christina
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Boston College 2011
• Subjects: Economic Risk; Parent Involvement; Student Achievement
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/1825

Thesis advisor: Eric Dearing === Longitudinal structural equation models of parent educational involvement (PEI) and student mathematics and literacy achievement were examined for 1364 students, followed from 54 months through 8th grade. Path analyses revealed evidence of bi directionality between PEI and achievement and moderation by economic risk. Specifically, two pathways of association were analyzed: parent socialization and child evocative effects. Parent socialization pathways confirmed the positive association of PEI with both math and literacy achievement -increased parent involvement was significantly associated with increased achievement across development. No evidence of child evocative pathways was found for the full sample. Additionally, economic risk was found to moderate pathways of parent socialization between PEI and achievement. Parent socialization pathways suggested involvement was most strongly and positively associated with high achievement for children with greatest levels of economic risk across childhood. These results underscore the argument that parent educational involvement should be an important goal of practice and policy aimed at closing the achievement gap between lower and higher income children. Indeed, PEI does matter more for some children than others. National policies and school procedures should be geared towards promoting PEI early among the low income parents of underperforming children, for these children not only have the most to gain from having their parents engaged in their education, but also have the most to lose. === Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. === Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. === Discipline: Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology.