A Study of the Influence of Parental Involvement on English Achievements of Junior High School Students in Taipei County

• Main Authors: Wen-Ling Lien, 連文伶
• Other Authors: David Wei-Yang Dai
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/12895303043381746762

碩士 === 玄奘大學 === 外國語文學系碩士班 === 97 === Education is a series of various cooperative and collaborative processes. Researchers suggest that school teachers and parents should cooperate closely together to develop children’s habits of learning and to enhance their academic achievement (Epstein, 1987, 1992; Sandell, 2008). Statistics in 2005 from Ministry of Education reported that Taipei County was ranked first in the total number of elementary and junior high school dropouts. Among several factors of dropping out, lack of family education is one of the essential factors discontinuing students’ school learning, which in turn affected children’s opportunities for further education. Furthermore, junior high school dropouts were more than those of elementary school. In addition, statistics from Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (http://www.dgbas.gov.tw/mp.asp?mp=1) revealed that, in Taiwan, the percentage of women’s labor force had gradually increased from 2001 to 2007 either in single-parent or both-parent families, in which female labor force was almost up to 50% and male labor force was around 74% in 2007. Therefore, when parents are busy with their works, the extent to which they can participate in children’s educational processes will be my major concerns and discourse analyses in this thesis. Christenson (1992) mentioned that parental involvement (PI) could contain any activities that parents took part in the process of education, either at home or at school. It involved multidimensional constructs and did not have definite and consistent operational definitions (Fan, 2001). Amato and Fowler (2002) further summarized that PI mainly had two ways of measurement: on the one hand, PI refers to a general concept, composed of parents’ mental and behavioral involvement in children’s learning. On the other hand, PI was about parents’ parenting styles, such as authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and neglecting. In this thesis, according to Fan and Chen’s (2001) study, they analyzed twenty-five empirical researches on PI and indicated four frequently used indicators, including parental expectations, parent-child communication, parental supervision and school participation. Even though Georgiou’s (1997) study had six dimensions of PI, not all dimensions were used often in previous studies such as parenting through child control (ex. arrange children’s diet) and parenting through personality development (ex. foster children to develop hobbies). Likewise, Epstein’s (1992) theoretical framework, including six dimensions of PI: (1) Basic obligations of families: parents provided children with basic need, like food, clothing and shelter so as to guarantee their health and safety. (2) Basic obligations of schools: school should inform parents of school calendars, special events, school rules and children’s academic or behavioral performance at school so that parents had chances to take part in the process of children’s learning. (3) Involvement at school: parents were able to assist teachers with class-related activities or they acted as volunteers on campus. (4) Involvement in learning activities at home: parents helped children with homeworks and interpersonal skills. (5) Involvement in decision making, governance, and advocacy: parents joined in the PTA/PTO, and advisory councils. (6) Collaboration and exchange with community organizations: school cooperated with cultural and business organizations to make children and parents have access to community resources. However, the fifth and the sixth dimension of PI activities were not utilized by most parents in Taiwan. As a result, the researcher is on the basis of Fan and Chen’s four dimensions to design the PI questionnaire. Eventually, by means of statistical factor analysis, the four dimensions are confined to parental expectations, home supervision, school participation, and parental guides to homeworks. As regards students’ English achievements, the scores of English achievements are from two monthly exams, one final exam and three weekly performances. Among them, each student’s average scores will be computed as followings: 50% will be from the average scores of two monthly exams and one final exam, and the other 50% will be from the average scores of weekly performances. As to the calculation of socioeconomic status (SES), the level of occupation multiplied seven plus the level of education multiplied four is equal to the index of SES (Lin, 2000). Previous studies mainly focused on the PI in the elementary school, but researches focusing on the junior high school level were rather few (Keith et al., 1993; Lin, 1993; Peng & Wright, 1994; Singh et al., 1995; Falbo, Lein, & Amador, 2001; Amato & Fowler, 2002). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to scrutinize the influence of PI on junior high school eighth graders’ English achievements in Taipei County. This thesis adopts both questionnaire surveys and qualitative interviews. With regard to questionnaire surveys, 165 questionnaires are distributed and the valid ones are 161. As regards qualitative interviews, there are twelve students involved. The researcher hopes that through this study, junior high school English teachers will be able to have better understanding of the significance of PI on students’ English learning, which in turn enhances the interaction and partnerships between teachers and parents. My research findings are: (1) By means of one-way ANOVA, students from high and moderate levels PI families have better English achievements than those from low level PI families (p < .05). (2) Multiple regression analysis reveals that among the four dimensions of PI, two factors: parental expectations (β = .284, t = 3.751, p = .000) and school participation (β = .168, t = 2.214, p = .028), are statistically significant variables predicting students’ English achievements. However, the other two factors, parents’ home supervision and parental guides to homeworks, are not significant ones predicting students’ English achievements. In addition, among the four dimensions of PI, the factor, parental expectations, is the decisive one (β = .284) predicting the variance of students’ English achievements. (3) In terms of the relationships between SES and PI, Pearson correlation analysis shows that the factor, school participation, has significantly positive but rather low-level relationships with Father’s education (r = .192*, p = .015), with Mother’s education (r = .262*, p = .001), with Father’s occupation (r = .189*, p = .016), and with Father’s SES (r = .225*, p = .004). As regards the factor, parental guides to homeworks, it has significantly positive but rather low-level relationships with Mother’s education (r = .248*, p = .002), and with Mother’s SES (r = .209*, p = .008). However, the other two factors, neither parental expectations nor home supervision has significant relationships with Mother’s education (p > .05), with Father’s education (p > .05), with Mother’s occupation (p > .05), with Father’s occupation (p > .05), with Mother’s SES (p > .05), and with Father’s SES (p > .05) respectively. In general, parents’ SES and PI do not have strong correlations in this study. Please refer to Table 1. This thesis concludes that PI must influence students’ English achievements. The more the parents take part in children’s learning, the better English achievements the children will have. Among the four dimensions of PI in this thesis, parental expectations is the essential factor affecting students’ English achievements. The findings are consistent with previous studies (Peng & Wright, 1994; Singh et al., 1995; Fan & Chen, 2001; Jeynes, 2005; Georgiou & Tourva, 2007; Graves, 2008). In addition, as the results reveal, parental expectations and school participation are essential variables predicting students’ English achievements. It suggests that parents should not only have appropriate expectations toward children but also actively participate in school activities and interact with school teachers, which will have positive effects on students’ English learning. However, results from both quantitative and qualitative data imply the low level of school participation and parental guides to homeworks. Therefore, in terms of school participation, school teachers may need to create an atmosphere that makes parents feel they are welcomed so as to enhance parents’ school participation. In addition, as regards parental guides to homeworks, it may be necessary that school administrators provide teachers with training and strategies of how to get parents more involved in children’s homeworks so that parents will also have opportunities to learn how to participate in children’s learning efficiently and effectively (Bailey, 2006).