Abstract
Parental involvement in school has been demonstrated to be a key factor for children’s academic outcomes. However, there is a lack of research in Chile, as well as in Latin American countries in general, leaving a gap in the literature about the generalization of findings outside developed and industrialized countries, where most of the research has been done. The present study aims to analyse the associations between parental involvement in school and children’s academic achievement. Cluster analysis results from a sample of 498 parents or guardians whose children attended second and third grades in 16 public elementary schools in Chile suggested the existence of three different profiles of parental involvement (high, medium, and low) considering different forms of parental involvement (at home, at school and through the invitations made by the children, the teachers, and the school). Results show that there are differences in children’s academic achievement between the parental involvement profiles, indicating children whose parents have a low involvement have lower academic achievement. Findings are in line with international research evidence, suggesting the need to focus on this variable too in Latin American contexts.
Highlights
On an international scale, parental involvement in school has long been heralded as an important and positive variable on children’s academic and socioemotional development
Hierarchical cluster analysis was used to identify parental involvement profiles based on the five subscales of parental involvement scale, applying the standardized Euclidian Distance method and using Ward’s algorithm
We examined the family involvement profiles by computing a one-way ANOVA on the standardized scores of the five parental involvement scales with the clusters serving as the factors
Summary
Parental involvement in school has long been heralded as an important and positive variable on children’s academic and socioemotional development. Parent-school partnership allows for the conceptualization of roles and relationships and the impact on the development of children in a broader way (Christenson and Reschly, 2010). From this approach, families and schools are the main actors in the construction of their roles and forms of involvement, generating new and varied actions to relate to each other according to the specific educational context. The main findings in the family-school field show a positive influence of this partnership, contributing to academic achievement and performance, among other positive consequences (Epstein and Sander, 2000; Hotz and Pantano, 2015; Sebastian et al, 2017)
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