Parental involvement and Chinese children’s cognitive and social-emotional school readiness: Differential effects across family socioeconomic status

Abstract

Children’s school readiness skills are strong predictors of their academic achievement in later schooling. This study examined the relationship between multiple types of parental involvement (i.e. home-based involvement, school-based involvement and home-school conferencing) and Chinese children’s cognitive and social-emotional school readiness as well as the moderating role of family socioeconomic status (SES) in these associations. A total of 311 parents (Mage = 35.50 years, SD = 3.60) and their five to six years old children (Mage = 5.53 years, SD = .50), from four kindergartens in Shanghai, China participated in this study. Results indicated that Chinese parental involvement had a stronger relationship with children’s cognitive readiness than social-emotional readiness. Home-based involvement was more related to children’s cognitive and social-emotional school readiness than school-based involvement and home-school conferencing. Family SES moderated the relationship between home-based involvement and home-school conferencing and children’s cognitive and social-emotional school readiness. Home-based involvement was more strongly related to low-SES children’s cognitive and social-emotional readiness and home-school conferencing was more strongly related to low-SES children’s cognitive readiness compared with their high-SES peers. Implications for research, practice and policy are discussed.