Influence of Parent’s Education on Parental Academic Involvement

Parental involvement in children‘s education is a key issue of several pieces of research. Students with high social capital, positive and warmth home environment, and appropriate involvement of parents get more success in their academic career as well as in social life (Miedel& Reynolds, 1999; Hill & Craft, 2003; Jaynes, 2007; Jaiswal & Choudhuri, 2017). Parental involvement is a social need and plays a crucial force in children‘s learning, academic performance, and development. In present scenario without the positive cooperation of parent and school, it is not possible for any adolescents to fulfill the standards set for the achievement in demanding society. Parental involvement concerns the wide range of issues such as monitoring the children‘s activities and development, help in homework, parent-child discussion, parental expectation for their children‘s education, parenting style, and parental school participation activities. In all these types of parental involvement activities, parents provide social, emotional, motivational, and financial support to ensure children‘s maximum academic performance. Investigations show that the level of parental involvement and its impact on students' academic success tend to vary according to the school level. Parents of early school aged children are likely to be more involved in school activity rather than the parents of older children (Epstein & Dauber, 1991; Stevenson & Baker, 1987). Similarly, the relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement is strongest for elementary school children and decline from elementary level to upper school level (Singh et al., 1995; Fan & Chen, 2001). At the same time, some researchers have reported no effects of parental involvement on students‘ performance at high school level (Pezdek et al., 2002; Keith, 1991). However, other researchers concluded that parental involvement remains important for children's success throughout secondary education (Keith et al., 1993; Stevenson & Baker, 1987; Sui-Chu &Willms, 1996). An adolescent is an important phase of students‘ life when rapid changes occur in social, physical, and psychological needs of students. In this period students need more attention, affection, and protection from their parents. As adolescent boys and girls grow they experience additional responsibilities at home as well as in school. The family is the basic unit and the parents are the primary agents who prepare the children for future responsibilities. Parental involvement and support are the key factors which make environmental conditions favorable to the proper development of their children. Intellectually and academically enrich environment play an important role in students‘ success. Students, who live with well-educated parents, have an advantage to be successful. Educated parents better understand their role and responsibilities in their children education, therefore;

efficacious in helping their children and feel uncomfortable in interacting with teachers and participating in school programs and activities (Zhan, 2005; Yamamoto, 2007; Yamamoto & Holloway, 2010). Educated parents belief that they are enough capable in helping their children‘s education, and keep high educational expectations concerning their children‘s success, therefore, in turn, they tend to be more involved in their children‘s educational attainment (Bandura et al., 1996; Yamamoto & Holloway, 2010). In a study, Shumow et al. (2004) reported that parental education is positively associated with parents‘ involvement in high school. In all these contexts, the present study was designed to examine the influence of mothers‘ and fathers‘ educational status on their level of academic involvement in their children‘s education. In the Indian context mothers and fathers play different role in their boys‘ and girls‘ education; therefore this study would be helpful to understand the role of parental education at secondary school level. In this account, the investigator has generated three research objectives as below: 1. To examine the influence of mothers‘ educational status on secondary students‘ perception of parental academic involvement. 2. To examine the influence of fathers‘ educational status on secondary students‘ perception of parental academic involvement. 3. To examined the gender effect on secondary students‘ perception of parental academic involvement with respect to their parents‘ educational status.

The present study is quantitative in nature and descriptive survey method was applied to accomplish the objective of the study. Significance of the statistical tests is tested at 0.05 level of significance.

PARTICIPANTS

The participants consisted of 615 secondary students which were drawn from 15 secondary schools (12 Private school & 3 Government School) affiliated with CBSE Board, session 2016-17, of Varanasi city, Uttar Pradesh, India. Only class X students were selected as participants of the study. Participants were 317 male and 297 female students, aged 14 to 17 years. The sample was obtained through multi stage random sampling. The schools were considered as a cluster and randomly selected from all the CBSE board affiliated secondary schools of Varanasi city. In each selected school, there were several sections of class X the study.

Parental academic involvement was measured by students self-reported Perception of Parental Academic Involvement Scale (PPAIS) developed by investigator himself. PPAISis consisted of 9 items. The response for each items was given on 5 point Likert type and the value ranged from 5 (strongly Agree) to 1 (strongly disagree) as per the positive and negative items. The Cronbach‘s alpha estimate of reliability for the scale is 0.70 which is good and acceptable in social science research situation.

Status of mothers‘ and fathers‘ education was considered separately in the present study. Status of parental education was measured by using students‘ self-reported demographic sheet in which status of education was divided in four categories such as Primary, Secondary, Graduate and Post Graduate.

In this section, data were analyzed according to the objectives of the study. To find out the influence of main effect (Parents education and students ‗gender) and interaction effect on parental academic involvement, General Linear Model (Univariate analysis of variance) was appliedby using IBMSPSS 20.0. As a requirement for Two-way ANOVA preliminary assumptions such as no significant outliers, normality, and homogeneity of variances were also checked.

The descriptive statistics of the study about mothers‘ and fathers‘ education level and their level of Parental Academic Involvement (PAI) are highlighted in table no 1. The study sample mean, and standard deviations for each group are also revealed.

Fathers‘ Education Status and their level of Parental Academic Involvement

In order to analyze the influence of mothers‘ education and students‘ gender on level of parental academic involvement, two-way ANOVA was conducted. Table 2 Statistical Significance of the two-way ANOVA with respect To Mothers‘ Education and Gender

Table 3 Estimated Marginal Means of Parental Academic Involvement with respect to Mothers‘ Education

Table no 2 shows a significant main effect of mothers‘ education (F= 4.599, p< .05) on the level of parental academic involvement, while students‘ gender had no significant main effect (F= 2.162, p> .05) on the level of parental academic involvement. Furthermore, table 2 also shows that there was not a significant interaction effect of mothers‘ education and students‘ gender on parental academic involvement (F= .262, p> .05). Since mothers‘ education had the significant main effect on parental academic involvement, therefore, the multiple comparisons of parental academic involvement with respect to mothers‘ educational status. Table 4 Tukey Post- Hoc Test Showing the Multiple Comparisons among different Groups It can be seen from the table no 4 that there was a significance difference (p< .05) between parental academic involvement of secondary educated mothers and graduated mother. Graduated mothers‘ children were perceived significantly more parental academic involvement than that of secondary educated mothers‘ children. Furthermore, it is also noticeable that primary and secondary educated mothers‘ children were perceived less parental academic involvement (but not significantly) than that of graduated and post graduated mothers‘ children.

In order to analyze the influence of fathers‘ education and students‘ gender on level of parental academic involvement, two-way ANOVA was conducted. Table 5 Statistical Significance of the two-way ANOVA with respect to Fathers‘ Education and Gender

gender had no significant main effect (F= 1.707 p> .05) on the level of parental academic involvement. Furthermore, table 5 also shows that there was not a significant interaction effect of fathers‘ education and students‘ gender on parental academic involvement (F= 2.386, p> .05).

The plots of the mean score of Parental Academic Involvement for each combination of groups of Mothers ‗and Fathers‘ Education and Students‘ Genderis plotted in a line graph, as shown below:

The purpose of the present study was to examine the influence of parents‘ educational status on parental academic involvement. The finding of the study revealed that educated parents tend to academically more involved in their children‘s education than that of less educated parents. The finding of the current study positive impact on the level of parental involvement. Parents‘ education helps them to be more efficient educator and more able to facilitate their children educational activities. The well-educated parents are more likely to know about what their children are being taught at school and thus able to monitor their progress at home and to provide appropriate stimulation when their children are needed (Alexander et al., 1994). On the other hand, less educated parents do not feel comfortable enough to communicate and participate in their children‘s educational activities, a sense of alienation, experience a lower sense of efficacy in helping their children, feel difficulty in communication with teachers, and less likely to participate in school programs. (Simon, 2001; Garcia Coll et al., 2002; Shumow et al., 2004). The finding of the study also reveals that mothers‘ education had a significant effect on parental academic involvement. Although, educated fathers‘ students perceived more parental academic involvement but fathers‘ education was not found to be a significant impact on parental academic involvement. This finding is in accordance with the study of Grolnik and Slowiaczek (1994), reported that mothers were more likely to be involved in the educational activities of children than were fathers. Generally, mother shares more time with their children at home and has close bonds with their children. This study did not find any gender effect with respect to mothers‘ education as well as with fathers‘ education. Overall, the results of the present study that parental education (specifically mothers‘ education) play an important role in their level and quality of involvement in their children academic development. Educated parents monitor their children educational activities at home, try to provide cognitive enrich the environment, help in homework and preparation of examination, and participate in school activities and program.

The present study has some theoretical and methodological limitations that should consider before any attempts to generalize the findings. This study only concerned with the perspective of urban area secondary students of CBSE board schools. This could lead to a self-report bias in the study. On the other hand, data from other school boards or other socio demographical conditions can yield different results. The result may not be reliable if generalized beyond similar situation and similar socio-demographic context. The research design of the study was descriptive survey, not used experiment research design, therefore; we cannot establish the cause and effect relationship between study variables. Furthermore, it is suggested that in

could be included to overcome the drawback of self-reported instruments. Moreover, in order to get an in-depth understanding of the role of parental education in parental involvement, mixed method (qualitative and quantitative approach can be used.

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Research Scholar, Faculty of Education, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India