Abstract
Parental involvement is one of the determinants of students’ academic achievement. However, low parental involvement has been identified as one of the deterrence to improve the quality of education in Malaysia. This paper aimed to investigate this issue by examining the determinants of parental involvement at home among urban households with primary school-aged children. Using 744 self-reported data collected through a survey on households in Klang Valley, Malaysia, a score of home-based involvement was constructed. The estimation of the home-based involvement score against socio-economic characteristics of households suggested that families with younger and married parents involved favourably more in their children’s education as compared to older and single-parent households. On the other hand, households with both parents working involved less in their children’s education. However, at the same time, the involvement was found to be influenced positively by household income. As dual-earner families received larger income, this might offset the negative effect of dual-earner characteristic on involvement. The interaction between income and dual-earner variables revealed that the effect of income was cancelled out when both parents are working, and they were from higher-income group. In the case of the middle-income group however, the higher income due to dual earnings did not compensate the lower commitment devoted to their children’s education, which led to a negative total effect. These findings suggested a dilemma faced by the urban families, especially those of middle income. Keywords: parental involvement, dual-earner families, middle-income households, Malaysia
Highlights
Introduction and BackgroundEducation has long been recognised as an important source of economic growth
The large percentage of male-headed households was in line with the fact that they were mostly married parents, which made 93.3 percent of the total respondents
The home-based involvement score was regressed against the sociodemographic characteristics as specified in the estimation model
Summary
Introduction and BackgroundEducation has long been recognised as an important source of economic growth. As children spend most of their time at home and school, these institutions are deemed very influential on students’ performance. It is important for parents and teachers to cooperate to ensure that the children get the best education that will shape their future. Past studies have called the idea of interaction and cooperation between parents, children, and teachers in the children’s academic matters as parental involvement. Parental involvement in children’s education can take place at home and at school. School-based parental involvement may include parent-teacher interaction about children’s academic performance and parents’ involvement in school-related activities. Parental involvement at home includes their direct involvement in children’s learning activities such as reading and helping with homework, and indirect involvement through anticipating and planning the homework (Wingard & Forsberg, 2009)
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