Research demonstrates that parental involvement in children's learning is positively related to student achievement (Cotton & Wikelund, 2001). For example, children’s cognitive development and educational careers are influenced by characteristics of the family as well as the theorized “Home Learning Environment” (HLE) (Melhuish et al., 2008). Especially earlier childhood literacy and numeracy activities are precursors of later reading ability (Shanahan & Lonigan, 2010) and early math skills (Huntsinger et al., 2000). The quality of the HLE is related to the availability of educational resources, such as books, and the nature of parenting activities, such as reading to the child, playing with numbers or counting  (Melhuish et al., 2008). Research shows that the socio-economic and cultural capital of a student’s home substantially influences the way parents support their children (Bodovski, 2010). One theoretical framework, which is often used to explain the influence of cultural capital such as parental education on achievement, is Bourdieu’s conceptualization of three forms of capital (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977): this theory posits that social classes preserve a strong cultural identity, and that social origins have a strong influence on students’ cultural resources and future trajectory.

In an initial study Hoeft et al. (2014) find, based on the unique dataset of the TIMSS/PIRLS 2011 combined for 17 European countries, a relationship between different parental types of engagement in their children’s early learning activities at home before primary school and the parent's cultural capital. Hoeft et al. (2014) show that parents with an academic educational degree tend to be more active in early activities than parents with lower educational degrees, but that parents with academic degrees do not show a different intensity or focus of engagement to those with upper secondary degrees (Ibid.).

With regard to the importance of the HLE throughout primary school many studies report on a positive relationship between the parental involvement at home and student achievement in primary school (Epstein et al., 2002). To understand this relationship research shows, that it is important to distinguish different forms of the parental involvement. Epstein et al. (2002) distinguishes ‘Support at Home’ and ‘Activities in the School’ of the child and further advances differ six areas of parental involvement: Parenting, communicating, volunteering, student learning, school decision-making and advocacy and collaborating with community (Ibid.). However, the extent that parental involvement is related with the socioeconomic status and the cultural capital of parents is also measured (Feuerstein, 2000): Parents with a higher socioeconomic status have a higher involvement for the children’s education compared to parents with a lower socioeconomic status.

This paper focuses on home parental involvement in student learning. It is hypothesized that there are different forms of home parental involvement for student learning in primary school. The theoretically derived forms of involvement for student learning (based on the work of Sui-Chi & Willms, 1996; Feuerstein, 2000 and Epstein et al., 2002) are: “Proofing Homework”, “Home Communication” and “Learning Support”. It is also hypothesized that there are different types of parents with distinguished forms of involvement. Based on the dataset of TIMSS/PIRLS 2011 combined (Martin & Mullis, 2013) we clarify whether parents differ in forms of the involvement and whether engaged parents prefer some forms of involvement over others.

The research questions are:

1. Comparing parents according to their home involvement in student learning, what types of parental involvement can be found?
2. Are there patterns across the forms of home involvement in student learning, and if so, then:
   1. How does their occurrence differ across European countries?
   2. Do they differ in terms of their cultural capital?

1. Are the most involved parents in early student learning at home before primary school involved in student learning with the same intensity during primary school?

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