Third-grade parent 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 schools 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 largescale survey, evaluate the dependence of parental involvement on family, student and school characteristics, suggest models to predict the level of parental involvement in the third grade, and develop recommendations for schools. Parents of 1,447 students from Krasnoyarsk and Kazan secondary schools involved in the iPIPS project were surveyed twice, first at baseline and then at the beginning of the third grade. The survey contained questions on family demographic characteristics, parents' at-home and at-school academic 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 parental involvement in schools than family sociodemographic characteristics or the level of children's development assessed at baseline. On the whole, the results obtained do not confirm the benefit of using universal strategies to encourage parental involvement.