Session Information
11 ONLINE 48 A, Quality of school education
Paper Session
MeetingID: 922 4713 8149 Code: qP9G6Z
Contribution
According to the large-scale assessments, the academic achievement of primary and secondary students in Malta is consistently below expectation and below the international and the European countries’ average. According to the Education and Training Monitor in Malta (European Commission, 2010), the proportion of 15 year-olds underachieving in 2019 in reading was 36.3%, in maths, 36.3%, and in science, 32.5%. Ten years later, in 2020, according to the same EC report, the proportions of underachieving student in Malta was almost the same.
Considering the consistently low academic achievement of students and the large body of evidence that demonstrate a significant impact of parental involvement in the education of their children (Raykov, Martinelli & Camilleri, 2021), this study aims to collect evidence about the impact of parental support on the achievement of students. It also explores factors that support and hinder active parental involvement in collaboration with the school. This study’s main objective is to inform policymakers, educators, and teacher-education students how to organise the teaching to maximise students’ potential and improve their academic hachement.
In addition to the studies that demonstrate the positive impact of parents’ collaboration with schools on students’ academic achievement (Castro, et al., 2015; Ma et al., 2016) and discipline (Freiberg, Huzinec & Templeton, 2009), research also indicates that parental support and control, regardless of the family sociodemographic characteristics and structure are significant predictors of adolescent drinking, delinquency, and other forms of problem behaviours (Barnes & Farrell, 1992; Fernández Alonso, et al., 2017; Kutsyuruba et al., 2015). This study also shows that several additional factors, including peer orientation, impact and interfere with parental influence on their children’s behaviour. Felson and Zielinski (1989) found that children with high self-esteem receive more positive emotional support, praise, affection from their parents than their counterparts with low self-esteem. This study does not provide the direction of the relationships between parental support. However, this study provides some additional evidence that the influence of both parents is equally important and that parental support is more important for girls than for boys.
Since students in many countries, including Malta, underperform according to the standards defined by the organisations involved in the design and organisation of large-scale international assessments, this study is focused on the exploration of the external factors that, according to many studies influence students’ academic performance (Alivernini & Lucidi, 2011; Ricard & Pelletier, 2016). It also focuses on the individual and school-related factors that determine student academic achievement. The particular focus of this study is on the exploration of parents’ involvement in collaboration with schools and the support they provide their children to improve their academic achievement.
Method
The proposed presentation is based on an ongoing study that analyses data from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and collects additional qualitative data from parents about their experiences and opinions about their collaboration with school and the factors that influence students’ academic achievement. The study also compares the national data with data from West European, Scandinavians, and Mediterranean countries to expand the understanding of the educational and social factors that determine parental involvement in their children’s education. The main objective of this study is to provide some new and reliable evidence for the organisation and support of the collaboration of parents with schools to improve students; progress and wellbeing. This mixed methods study applies the core descriptive, inferential and correlation techniques (Bryman, 2016) to analyse quantitative data and thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) for the study of transcripts of the interviews with parents and the integration of the collected data (Tashakkori, Johnson & Teddlie, 2020).
Expected Outcomes
The initial empirical findings related to the barriers that support and hinder parental involvement in education could be explained according to Bourdieu’s theory of the forms of capital (1986) and the conversions of the different types of economic capital into social and cultural capital that enables parents to involve in the various activities of their involvement in the education of their children and collaboration with the school. Integration of findings from the ongoing collection of qualitative data from parents and schools is expected to provide additional insights into the complexity of parental involvement in the education of their children.
References
Alivernini, F., & Lucidi, F. (2011). Relationship between social context, self-efficacy, motivation, academic achievement, and intention to drop out of high school: A longitudinal study. The journal of educational research, 104(4), 241-252. Barnes, G. M., & Farrell, M. P. (1992). Parental support and control as predictors of adolescent drinking, delinquency, and related problem behaviors. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 54(4), 763-776. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 241-258). Greenwood. Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2006) Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3 (2). pp. 77-101. Bryman, A. (2016). Social research methods. Oxford university press. Castro, M., Expósito-Casas, E., López-Martín, E., Lizasoain, L., Navarro-Asencio, E., & Gaviria, J. L. (2015). Parental involvement on student academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Educational research review, 14, 33-46. European Commission. (2010). Education and training monitor. European Commission. Felson, R. B., & Zielinski, M. A. (1989). Children’s self-esteem and parental support. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 51(3), 727-735. Fernández Alonso, R., Álvarez Díaz, M., Woitschach, P., Suárez Álvarez, J., & Cuesta Izquierdo, M. (2017). Parental involvement and academic performance: Less control and more communication. Psicothema. Psicothema, 29(4), 453-461. Freiberg, H. J. (1998). Measuring school climate: Let me count the ways. Educational Leadership, 56(1), 22–26. Kutsyuruba, B., Klinger, D. A., & Hussain, A. (2015). Relationships among school climate, school safety, and student achievement and wellbeing: a review of the literature. Review of Education, 3(2), 103-135. Ma, X., Shen, J., Krenn, H. Y., Hu, S., & Yuan, J. (2016). A meta-analysis of the relationship between learning outcomes and parental involvement during early childhood education and early elementary education. Educational Psychology Review, 28(4), 771-801. Martínez, I., & García, J. F. (2007). Impact of parenting styles on adolescents’ self-esteem and internalisation of values in Spain. The Spanish journal of psychology, 10(2), 338-348. Raykov, M., Martinelli, V., & Camilleri, L. J. (2021). Parents’ perception of school climate and their collaboration with schools. Paper presented at the ECER 2021, Available online. https://eera-ecer.de/ecer-programmes/conference/26/contribution/51122/ Ricard, N. C., & Pelletier, L. G. (2016). Dropping out of high school: The role of parent and teacher self-determination support, reciprocal friendships and academic motivation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 44, 32-40. Tashakkori, A., Johnson, R. B., & Teddlie, C. (2020). Foundations of mixed methods research: Integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches in the social and behavioral sciences. Sage.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.