Assessing Estonian mothers’ involvement in their children’s education and trust in teachers

Abstract

Questionnaires assessing mothers’ involvement in children’s education and their trust in teachers were developed for the usage in Estonian kindergartens and elementary schools. The scales were adapted based on the questionnaires by Fantuzzo and colleagues (parental involvement) and Adams and Christenson (trust). Mothers of 454 kindergarten children, 197 first‐ and second‐grade children, and 94 fourth‐ to sixth‐grade children participated in the study. Four subscales of involvement were differentiated: school‐based involvement, home–school conferencing, home‐based academic and home‐based general involvement. Trust was a unitary construct. The psychometric properties of the scales were good. Differences according to kindergarten and school levels were concordant with earlier studies – mothers of younger children generally reported higher involvement and trust than mothers of older children.

Keywords:

• parental involvement
• trust
• child’s education

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research (SF0180025s08), Estonian Science Foundation (Grant 7388 to the first and third authors) and the European Social Fund Innove (Measure 1.1, Project Code 1.0101- 0301). We would like to thank Kerstin Kööp, Maris Hinn and Eve Jurask for helping to gather data.