Introduction

Parent involvement has become a widespread movement across many countries worldwide (Centre for Educational Research and Innovation [CERI], 1997; Epstein, 2018; Hiatt-Michael 2005).  The key reasons for parents getting involved are wishing to improve their own child’s school performance, receiving parental education to support their child’s learning, finding out more about what happens in school, influencing the curriculum, offering help to school, and needing individual help and advice from school (CERI, 1997).  Moreover, parents are a key constituency when it comes to holding schools accountable for their child’s learning by putting pressure on schools to reach for high achievement, taking up leadership roles, and influencing schools and policies informally and formally (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2021).  Research evidence has shown that parent involvement is critical for improving student achievement (Castro et al., 2015; Danişman, 2017; Hill & Tyson, 2009; Jeynes, 2011, 2012; Patall et al., 2008; Wilder, 2014).  In addition to higher grade point averages and scores on standardized tests or rating scales, the benefits of parent involvement for students include enrollment in more challenging academic programs; more classes passed and credits earned; improved behavior at home and school; and better social skills and adaptation to school (Henderson & Mapp, 2002).

Although the positive effects of parent involvement could occur across different grade levels (Henderson & Berla, 1994; Henderson & Mapp, 2002), some research evidence indicated that parent involvement tends to decline as children get older (Eccles & Harold, 1993, 1996; Hanson et al., 2020; Stevenson & Baker, 1987).  Others argued the importance of developmentally appropriate parent involvement (Chao & Hill, 2009; Hill, 2015; Hill & Tyson, 2009; Wang et al., 2014).  However, compared to numerous studies of parent involvement at grades K-9, few studies have focused on parent involvement in high schools (deCastro & Catsambis, 2009; Hall & Quinn, 2014; Ross, 2016; Simon, 2001).  Research is needed on parent involvement in high school to extend and expand the connections between school and family built during the previous school years.  The purpose of this study is to explore how parents get involved in high school in Taiwan.

Conceptualizing the Study

The ecological systems theory of Bronfenbrenner (1979, 1994) describes the complex environments surrounding a child and the embedded structures which influence each other. The ecological environments consist of five systems, including the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, the macrosystem, and the chronosystem. Family and school are two of the microsystems in child development. Parent involvement which results in interactions and connections between the two microsystems belongs to one of the mesosystems. This particular mesosystem is reflected in a multitude of independent and interactive activities which are conducted with the child in mind (Downer & Myers, 2010). During the high school years, students’ increased cognitive capacities and a desire for autonomy and independence which affect their relationships with the parent microsystem, combined with the high school microsystem’s increased bureaucratic organization and departmentalization, change the ways parents involve in their education, the mesosystem.

Besides, parent involvement is influenced by the macrosystems such as cultural values, social structures, economic conditions, and political pressures (Hiatt-Michael, 2005). Under the influence of Confucianism, most parents have valued the academic support for their school-aged children at home in Asian countries; however, the breadth and depth of parent involvement have changed since the 1990s’ education reform (Pang et al., 2003). The political pressure and financial incentive might have raised the level of school expectations for parent involvement in Taiwan. And parents are empowered to protect the rights and interests of their children in schooling. Parent involvement is indeed reconceptualized in the context of Taiwan.

Research Approach A constructivist approach to grounded theory was used because of the lack of information regarding how parents involve in high school in Taiwan. Constructivist grounded theory adopts the inductive, comparative, emergent, and open-ended approach of the original method proposed by B. G. Glaser and A. Strauss, but highlights the flexibility of the method and resists mechanical applications of it (Charmaz, 2014). Participants Criterion sampling, one of the purposeful sampling methods, was used to recruit information-rich participants. The inclusion criterion was parents or primary caregivers of high school students in Taiwan. The participants in this study were 31 parents who consented to provide information about their experience of parent involvement in high school, including 21 mothers (68%) and 10 fathers (32%). Their ages ranged from 39 to 62. Twelve of the participants had master's and doctoral degrees or took some graduate courses (39%), 10 had bachelor's degrees (32%), and 9 had high school or community college diplomas (29%). Twenty-one of the participants’ family incomes were above the average household income (68%) and 10 were below the average (32%). Data Collection After approved from the university’s Institutional Review Board and obtaining the participants’ written informed consent, face-to-face and semi-structured interviews with each participant were conducted. Interviews were guided by eight open-ended questions related to how the participants interact with the high school their child attends. In addition, background information was obtained through a written questionnaire. Data Analysis Data analysis followed the coding guideline provided by Charmaz (2014). Initial line-by-line coding was conducted with constant comparative methods to make sense of the data. Focused coding used the most significant and frequent initial codes to sort and categorize large amounts of data. The possible relationships among those categories developed during focused coding were constructed to explain how parents of high school students involve in education. Memo writing was used to help clarify and refine the researcher’s interpretation of data. MAXQDA 2018 was used to assist data analysis.

The grounded theory of parent involvement in high school constructed by the study reveals that concerns over their child’s academic learning and the multiple conceptualizations of adolescent autonomy held by parents are the driving forces for parent involvement in high school. Parents’ involvement actions include affording after-school academic classes, offering useful information, attending class parent-teacher associations (PTA) meetings, becoming members of online parent groups of their child’s class, and interacting with their child. Two mechanisms behind the aforementioned five parent involvement actions are increasing resources for their child’s learning and staying on top of things about their child and their child’s school. The benefits of parent involvement for their child are improving academic performance and enhancing autonomy during high school years. Moreover, the process of parent involvement in high school is affected by child factors, family factors, school factors, and policy factors. The results of this study exemplify the construct of academic socialization which refers to the variety of parental beliefs and behaviors that influence their child’s school-related development (Taylor et al., 2004) and explain how academic socialization as one form of parent involvement has a strong influence on adolescents’ academic outcomes found in earlier studies (Hill & Tyson, 2009; Wang et al., 2014). Moreover, the parents of high school students have multiple conceptualizations of adolescent autonomy, such as having the right to make decisions on his/her own learning, being able to express his/her ideas adequately, being self-discipline and initiative in schoolwork, and even having high self-confidence or self-efficacy. According to the self-determination theory (SDT), parents' autonomy-supportive involvement can meet their child’s needs for relatedness and autonomy (Lerner et al., 2022). The study shows that the parents' interpretations of autonomy influence why and how they involve in their child’s education and result in the improvement of their child's autonomy.

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