Parental Influences in Academic Performance of School Going Students

Abstract

Home environment has been conceptualized as the quality of human interactions from the point of view of the child. It includes those aspects, which foster growth and development such as family trust and confidence, sharing of ideas, parents support, parental approval, parental encouragement, care, affection and approval and support of siblings. Children living in rural or urban areas are exposed to different environments. Generally children from low socioeconomic status attend government schools while, children of well to do families attend private or public schools. These two types of schools have another major difference: difference in medium of instruction .In addition, home learning environment, school learning environment and academic achievement may be influenced by various socio-economic factors like age, gender, family size, parents, education and occupation and also by the socio economic status of the family .. Thus academic achievement is dependent on school learning environment as well as home learning environment. The present study is on attempt to investigate the parental influence in academic performance of students. The focus will be describing the key variables included in the study, i.e., parental influence and its impact on academic performance.Academic performance includes three processes: the ability to study and remember facts, being able to study effectively and see how facts fit together and form larger patterns of knowledge and being able to think for oneself in relation to facts and thirdly being able to communicate knowledge verbally or on paper. Thus Journal of Education (1981) posited that performance might be seen as an index of the candidates' ability and motivation. Defining academic performance as excellence, Tuckman (1975) stated that, performance is used to label the observable manifestation of knowledge, skills, concepts, understanding and ideas. Performance is application of a learning product that at the end of the process provide mastery. The acquisition of particular grades on examinations indicate the student's ability, mastery of content and skills in applying learned knowledge to particular situations. A student's success generally judged by examination performance. Success in examination is a crucial indicator that a student has benefited from a course of study (Wiseman, 1961). Researchers believe that authentic academic performance should involve on examination of the total person, in the other words; the examination should cover the individual's ability and skills in applying practical knowledge.Parental influences has been identified as an important factor affecting student's achievement (Miller, 1980; Dryfoos, 1990) The child rearing attitudes or parental behavior may be viewed in terms of many different dimensions such as, acceptance, affection, control, warmth, permissiveness, restrictiveness and demanding behaviour. Typically warmth and control are thought to be the most important ways in which parents influence the development of their offspring or children (Maccoby & Martin, 1986). After Conducting extensive research (Rohner; 1986; Rohner & Rohner, 1981) reported major parenting dimensions in different human societies. These dimensions are parental control (permissiveness-strictness) and parental warmth (acceptance-rejection)For the past 20 years Baumrind conducted a series of researches to identify parental behavior and its association with children's behavior. She obtained two major dimensions which included demanding behaviour and responsiveness, which are pertinent in understanding parenting styles. Demandingness, is defined as the amount of degree of control the parents attempt to exert over the child. Parental responsiveness defined as the frequency of parental interactions. It also refers to being sensitive to children's has needs, warmly supportive of their efforts and broadly interested in what they are thinking, feeling and doing.Parenthood is neither simple nor a very complicated process and is based on the perception and the discharge of responsibilities in this phase of parent's lives. …