Parents and their children's school lives--commentary on the special issue, 'Parents' role in children's school lives'.

Abstract

Although it is teachers who play the key role in supporting children’s learning and theiracademicdevelopmentatschool,parentstoocanbeinvolvedintheirchildren’sacademiclives in many different ways. As the vast majority of parents consider academicachievement and adjustment to be important for their children’s future, parents oftenmake an effort to support their children’s learning, such as helping them with theirhomework. Many kinds of parental involvement have been described in the literature,although not all of them have been shown to be effective in promoting children’sacademic development (Chen & Stevenson, 1989; Cooper, Lindsay, & Nye, 2000; Fan CLevinet al.,1997;Patall,Cooper,RPomerantz,Moorman,LSilinskas,Niemi,Lerkkanen,NSilinskaset al.,2012).Inthisspecial issue, a number of scholars present their empirical findings on various aspects ofparental involvement, such as parental self-efficacy (Junttila & Vauras), socio-emotionalsupportandinstructionalbehaviours(Pino-Pasternak),parentalpragmaticandsocio-emo-tional support (Zhu, Tse, Cheung & Oyserman), parental involvement in children’shomework (i.e., autonomy support, control, interference, and cognitive engagement),parental goals and perceptions of children’s academic efficacy (Gonida & Cortina), andparents’ emotional support (Bouffard, Cote & Vezeau).The articles in this special issue also focus on many cognitive and motivationaloutcomes among children, such as agency beliefs; achievement goals (mastery- vs.performance-oriented tendencies; Gonida & Cortina; Pino-Pasternak); school-relatedsocial competence (Junttila & Vauras); possible selves, strategies, and the subjectivelikelihood of attaining these possible selves (Zhu et al.); self-evaluation bias andperceptionoftheavailabilityofparentalemotionalsupport(Bouffardet al.);andacademicself-efficacy (Gonida & Cortina). Several articles also examine the extent to which thesecognitive and motivational factors mediate the impact of parental involvement onchildren’s academic functioning (Bouffard et al.) and achievement (Gonida & Cortina).Theoretical assumptionsSeveral theories can be applied to explain the findings presented in the articles in thisspecial issue. Without exception, all the authors assume that it is parents who influence