Determinants of parental involvement in primary school: evidence from Chile

ABSTRACT

This article examines the impact of educational expectations, perceived self-efficacy, and the information transmitted by the school on parental involvement at home and at school. A survey was administered to a representative sample of 672 parents and guardians of students attending primary schools located in Santiago, Chile. The analyses conducted, based on OLS regression models with municipality-level fixed effects, reveal that parents’ educational expectations and perceived self-efficacy behave as relevant predictors of their degree of involvement at home and at school respectively, even attenuating the importance of socioeconomic status (SES). However, results stress the importance of the information provided by the school, especially due to its impact on parents’ involvement at home and on their participation in curricular school activities. Last, the article discusses the implications of these findings for initiatives aimed at increasing educational equality.

KEYWORDS:

• Parental involvement
• information
• parental expectations
• perceived self-efficacy
• educational inequality

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Mrs. Ana María Yévenes, Director of the Centre for Studies and Research in Family (CEIF), part for University Finis Terrae, and the Faculty of Psychology at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado for the support in the development of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development (CONICYT/FONDECYT/11150098), under the sponsorship of the Universidad Alberto Hurtado (2015-2016), and the Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (CONICYT/FONDAP/15130009), in the production of this article.