The importance of parents for key outcomes among socio-economically disadvantaged students: Parents’ role in emergency remote education

Abstract

Parents play an important role in shaping behavioral and motivational outcomes in their child’s education, presumably even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic, where concomitant school closures forced students worldwide to learn remotely at home, affecting socio-economically disadvantaged students most negatively. However, it remains unclear how different parent-focused family process variables (demanding-structuring and responsive-motivational parental involvement, responsibility for learning) and structure variables (socio-economic status, immigrant background) relate to important learning-related student outcomes, namely extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and actual participation in learning activities, during emergency remote education. Using questionnaire data from N = 117 German secondary school students (Mage = 15.14, SD = 0.93; 49.6% female) with a low average socio-economic status, structural equation models revealed associations between higher parental involvement and responsibility and higher motivational and behavioral student outcomes. Furthermore, immigrant background related negatively to some parent process variables, and indirectly negatively to extrinsic motivation. These results highlight parents’ role in learning, particularly during emergency remote education.