School-based parental involvement: a comparative assessment of predictors of satisfaction in South-East Europe

Abstract

Exploring a unique region concerning educational reforms in the past 20 years, the present study empirically investigates the attitudes towards parental involvement in school life in a comparative perspective of south-eastern European (SEE) countries for the 2008/2009 school year. Based on a multiple regression model for nine different countries, the research examines the predictors of satisfaction with school–parent partnerships from the parents’ perspective in the SEE context. The 2009 Cross-National Survey of Parents provided detailed evidence of attitudes and practices in educational setups in the Balkans for a representative sample of parents with one or more children enrolled in primary or secondary education. The findings indicate that the most reliable explanatory variable for the parents’ satisfaction with ways of getting involved in school life is the attribution of school–parent roles, with effects knocking on to all the other factors, including the understanding of the need to participate and the feeling of being a stakeholder in the educational process.

Keywords:

• parental involvement
• South-East Europe
• reform
• satisfaction
• predictors

Acknowledgement

This research has been supported by the Open Society Institute – with contribution of the Education Support Program of Budapest (2010).

Notes

1. Basic assumptions: linear relationship, no influential outliers, mean independence, no specification error and no measurement error; no co-linearity for independent variables; normal distribution of errors and constant error variance.

2. Procedures of discriminant validity were employed.

3. Reliability scores come from Cronbach’s alpha measurements, with a value above 0.68.

4. In each of the cases introduced in the analysis, the ANOVA test was relevant, with the F-statistic (the ratio of the mean square for regression to the residual mean square) highly significant (p < 0.05). The standardized coefficients are presented here for a meaningful comparison of the extent to which each predictor contributes to the model. The variation is reported here based on the adjusted R ², in order to correct for the positive bias of the initial R ² estimate that might be sensitive to the sample size.

5. Following the recommendation of one of the anonymous reviewers, retrospective power analysis was conducted. Its results indicated that the sample sizes used in the study for the multiple regression analyses yielded sufficient power (between 0.93 and 0.99 for α = 0.01) to detect significant effects.