Middle school student and parent perceptions of parental involvement: unravelling the associations with school achievement and wellbeing

ABSTRACT

Parents play an important part in adolescents’ life and significantly contribute to youngsters’ academic success. However, parents’ and students’ perceptions regarding parental involvement may differ and how these perceptions are related to school achievement and wellbeing have been poorly researched. Therefore, self-report measures assessing students’ and parents’ perceptions of parental involvement were completed, using a sample of 5003 7th grade students and their parents. The results indicate parallels between parent and student perceptions. However, parents indicate a higher extent of parental involvement compared to students. According to students, parents focus on monitoring grades, whereas parents display the highest scores for interest in school and learning. Parental involvement seems to impact student achievement and wellbeing. Nevertheless, effects are small, and the effects of socio-demographic variables overrule these effects. These results give insight in different perceptions on parental involvement and underpin the importance of middle school students as active participants in learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Parental involvement
• middle school
• student perceptions
• parent perceptions
• achievement
• school wellbeing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work is part of the Strategic Basic research project ‘Teaching in the bed of Procrustes’ (project number: 110020) financed by the Flemish Agency for Innovation in Science and Technology (IWT).

Notes on contributors

Valérie Thomas

Valérie Thomas is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Educational Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research focuses on self-regulated learning, teacher education and parental involvement in education. Contact address: Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels; Telephone: [phone]; Email: [email protected]. ORCID: 0000-0002-1336-5274

Jaël Muls

Jaël Muls is apostdoctoral researcher at the Department of Educational Sciences at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research draws attention to the relationship between social media and education. More specifically, she explores the intersections between school related and personal social media use in secondary. Email: [email protected]

Free De Backer

Free De Backer is professor at the Department of Educational Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. She has been especially interested in questions relating to the facilitation of arts education within and out-of-school context; the relationship between arts education and self-regulated learning; and the dynamics of lifelong learning. Contact address: Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels; Telephone: [phone]; Email: [email protected]

Koen Lombaerts

Koen Lombaerts is head of the Department of Educational Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His teaching and research focus on change and innovation in education and lifelong learning with a specific interest in self-regulated learning environments. Contact address: Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels; Telephone: [phone]; Email: [email protected]. ORCID: 0000-0002-6073-0254