Third‐Grade Parent’s Involvement in Schools

Abstract

The significance of the problem of parental involvement in children’s education has to do with the proven positive effects of parental involvement in school on children’s wellbeing. However, no universal comprehensive idea of family involvement types and strategies has been developed so far, and the jury is still out on the efficiency of various family-school interactions in use today. This study is designed to shed light on the forms of parental involvement, which may differ depending on family, student and school characteristics. The study seeks to operationalize the concept of parental involvement, describe parental involvement based on the findings of a large-scale survey, evaluate the dependence of parental involvement on family, student and school characteristics, suggest models to predict the level of parental involvement half way through elementary school, and develop recommendations for schools. Parents of 1,447 students from Krasnoyarsk and Kazan middle schools involved in the iPIPS project were surveyed twice using the same questionnaire, first as their children became first-graders and then at the beginning of the third grade. The survey contained questions on family demographic characteristics, parents’ at-home and at-school involvement, and parental satisfaction with school communication. It was established that parental perception of school communication climate is a much more important predictor of third-grade parent involvement in school than family sociodemographic characteristics or the level of child development assessed at baseline. On the whole, the results obtained do not confirm the benefit of using universal strategies to encourage parental involvement.