Defining Elements of Family Involvement in School: An Intervention Proposal to Improve Academic Achievement
Author(s):
Mar Lorenzo Moledo (presenting / submitting) Miguel A. Santos Rego Agustin Godás Otero
Conference:
ECER 2014
Network:
14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research
Format:
Poster

Session Information

14 SES 06 A, Interactive Poster Session

Poster Session

Time:
2014-09-03
15:30-17:00
Room:
Poster Area E (in front of B001-B003)
Chair:
Joana Lúcio

Contribution

There is a strong consensus about family’s (parents’) influence on the academic achievement of their adolescent children (Jeynes, 2003, 2005; Steinberg, Lamborn, Dornbusch and Darling, 1992). The research studies that employ the meta-analysis technique provide us with the three most used strategies: academic socialization, which is the strategy most associated with academic achievement; school-based involvement, a little less associated with academic achievement and often called "family involvement"; and home-based involvement, which yields mixed results, that is, in some cases it seems consistently associated with academic achievement and in others the relationship is less consistent (Hill and Tyson, 2009; Jeynes, 2003, 2005).

The first of these strategies, the academic socialization, is the most effective in this vital period in which the results do not depend on the depth or quality of the relationships between families and teachers; what matters is the knowledge that parents have about how to cope with adolescent school context.

In this sense, we have designed a social and educational program, ECO-FA-SE, to improve the academic achievement of students in compulsory secondary education (CSE), covering the three key elements of the intervention: School-classroom, School-family and School-student. In its original version, the program consists of three projects (see Gambara and Vargas, 2007): Cooperative Learning during CSE (CL), Family Education during CSE (FE) and Service-Learning (SL) during CSE.

This study[1] is focused on the Family Education Project (FE) which includes two subprojects. On the one hand, an educational program aimed at collaborating with adolescent students’ families (Part I: Family and Education); and, on the other hand, a program of study habits and techniques aimed at students (Part II: Study skills with students). For the design of Part I we started from a previous research study (see Lorenzo, Godás, Priegue and Santos Rego, 2009) and the work carried out by Musitu and Cava (2001); the design of Part II was based on the programs conducted by Jiménez Ortega, Jiménez de la Calle and Alonso Obispo (1995), and Suarez Yáñez (2001).

Our first objective is to analyze the families’ behavior when they are involved in the education of their children before and after participating in the implementation of a Family Education program. Second, once the aspects that had affected the program were registered, our purpose is to find out what sort of relationship these aspects have with the rest of the components of family involvement. This analysis will be carried out both under the condition of "before" and "after" the program implementation.

Third, and given that families were selected from seven different schools, we need to know whether the variables and situations in which the program is proven to be effective follow the same pattern in each school. If not, we should explain for each of them the specific circumstances regarding the development of the program implementation. Finally, we will present the results obtained with the students when considering the same variables in order to compare both types of information (this takes on special importance, since the two perspectives are rarely included in the same study).

[1] This work is supported by a research project financed through a competitive call by Xunta de Galicia “Design and Evaluation of a program for improvement of immigrant students’ academic achievement” (10SEC214042PR).

Method

Method Participants and procedure Before the implementation of the program, a total of 85 families participated in the study; they were selected through seven schools where their children were enrolled and simultaneously were involved in other modules of the program. All institutions involved are public, secondary-education schools and participated voluntarily once the program was presented in each of them. These 85 families had the objectives and guidelines of the program explained to them and were given the first questionnaire on their usual practices regarding participation or involvement in their children's education. On the other hand, a total of 350 students answered the same questions as their parents before and after participating in the intervention. Three months after the implementation of the program, the questionnaires about participation and involvement practices were provided again and a meeting session was held with the families of each school (group interview) to openly evaluate their experience with the program. Measuring instrument We developed a scale of family involvement in school activities starting from the meta-analytic study conducted by Hill and Tyson (2009) which consisted of 18 multi-choice items with the following alternatives: 1) not at all, 2) a little, 3) some and 4) much. The aim is to register the level of action and most common practices within families when they are involved in their children's education. Generally, the reliability indexes could be considered satisfactory. We should point out, though, that the item "I forbid him/her to go out with friends when he/she does something I do not like" had to be discarded from the analysis given its total independence with regard to the entire scale and its association with each of the items, as it contaminated the resulting reliability index.

Expected Outcomes

In the present situation of this research, a number of findings have already emerged: first, and despite the short period of time between the pre-test and post-test measurements, we recorded significant changes between the two periods. Second, out of all the variables we considered and presented in the format set forth below, only number 1 and 18 accounted for high levels of variance explained by the linear regression analysis performed with the Stepwise method. With these results we expect to find differences between the actions of the different family actors involved in the intervention as they are perceived by students, as well as the actions carried out in different schools.

References

Gambara, H. & Vargas Trujillo, E. (2007). Evaluación de programas de intervención psicosocial. In A. Blanco & J. Rodríguez Marín (coords.), Intervención psicosocial (pp. 407-456). Madrid: Pearson/Prentice Hall. Hill, E.H. & Tyson, D.F. (2009). Parental involvement in middle school: a meta-analytic assessment of the strategies that promote achievement. Developmental Psychology, 45(3), 740-763. Jeynes, W.H. (2003). A meta-analysis. The effects of parental involvement on minority children’s academic achievement. Urban Education, 35(2), 202-218. Jeynes, W.H. (2005). A meta-analysis of the relation of parental involvement to urban elementary school student academic achievement. Urban Education, 40(3), 237-269. Jiménez Ortega, J., Jiménez de la Calle, I. & Alonso Obispo, J. (1995). ¡No más fracaso escolar! Enseñe a estudiar a sus hijos. Guía de padres/profesores. Madrid: Visor. Lorenzo, M.; Godás, A; Priegue, D. & Santos Rego, M.A. (2009). Familias inmigrantes en Galicia. La dimensión socioeducativa de la integración. Madrid: Ministerio de Educación. Musitu, G. & Cava, Mª J. (2001). La familia y la educación. Barcelona: Octaedro. Steinberg, L.; Lamborn, S.D.; Dornbusch, S.M. & Darling, N. (1992). Impact of parenting practices on adolescent achievement: authoritative parenting, school involvement, and encouragement to succeed. Child Development, 63, 1266-1281. Suárez Yáñez, A. (coord.) (2001). Cómo estudiar con eficacia en la universidad. Santiago de Compostela: Servizo de Publicacións e Intercambio Científico de la USC.

Author Information

Mar Lorenzo Moledo (presenting / submitting)
University of Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela
Miguel A. Santos Rego
University of Santiago de Compostela
Departamento de Teoría da Educación, Historia da Educación e Pedagoxía Social
Santiago de Compostela
Agustin Godás Otero
University of Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela

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