Effects of Family Educational Cultures on Student Success at School: Directions for Leadership

Abstract

Jeynes writing and research is widely regarded as among the most robust sources of evidence about the effects of parental influence on student success at school, how schools can assist parents to provide more productive educational cultures in the home and what those in school leadership roles can contribute to these outcomes. Most of Jeynes research has used meta-analytic review techniques and this chapter will reflect those techniques. The chapter will build on Jeynes’ previous research including, for example, one of his previous meta-analysis of 52 studies assessing the influence of parental involvement on the educational outcomes of urban secondary school children. Analyses examined the overall impact of parental involvement, as well as specific components of parental involvement. Four different measures of educational outcomes were used – an overall measure of all components of academic achievement combined, grades, standardized tests, and other measures that generally included teacher rating scales and indices of academic attitudes and behaviors. The differing effects of parental involvement by race and socioeconomic status were also examined. Results indicated that the influence of parental involvement, overall, is significant for secondary school children. Parental involvement as a whole had significant effects on all of the academic variables in the study (.5 to.55 of a standard deviation unit). The chapter for this book will include evidence about school leader practices which assist parents to support the success of their children at school.