Effect of Mother's Employment Status on Adolescents' Self Perceptions and Academic Performance

Existing research has not as yet demonstrated that mother's employment per se has consistent effects on adolescent perceptions and academic performance. Recent investigations have focused on the effect of mother's employment and occupational status on adolescents self assessments and school outcomes in intact families. In addition, the effect of father's occupational status on adolescent perceptions and achievements was assessed. A sample of 1675 year students (896 males and 779 females) served as subjects for this investigation.

The major results were that mother's employment outside the home was associated with low preference for science subjects among males while for females, mother's employment status was associated with high preference for mathematics subjects and a favourable attitude to doing well in school. In addition, the occupational status of mothers who did work was related to the amount of control male adolescents felt they had over events affecting their lives: boys with mothers employed in low‐status occupations tended to have more external control orientations than those with mothers employed in high‐status occupations. Also, males with mothers in low‐status occupations had lower preferences for mathematics subjects than males whose mothers were employed in high‐status occupations. However, no variables were entered into the predictive model of mother's occupational status for the female sample. Father's occupational status was also found to be associated with a number of adolescent's perceptions. Implications of these results for research into the effects of mother's employment status and mother's and father's occupational status for adolescent perceptions and performance were discussed.     

The science support scale: Its appropriateness with high school students

Implementing the idea that more emphasis should be placed on student achievement in the affective domain is contingent upon the concurrent development of suitable instruments for the assessment of prescribed criteria. One such instrument, the Schwirian Science Support Scale (Tri-S scale), was reported in a recent NSTA publication as a promising tool for measuring student science support. Recent research using the Tri-S scale with high school pupils showed that scores on this instrument did not increase after the students had taken a tenth grade introductory course in biology. Further analysis indicated students of teachers scoring “high” in science support did not produce higher scores on the Tri-S scale than students studying biology from teachers “low” in science support. Reliability estimates using high school student scores were well below previous estimates using scores from college undergraduates. Factor analysis of inter-item correlations indicated that student interpretation of item meaning did not correspond to the five subtest structure of the Tri-S scale. Findings from this study demonstrate that the Tri-S scale is not an appropriate instrument for measuring attitudinal changes of tenth grade high school students. This study is suggestive of the fact that went and future instruments that purport to measure achievement in noncognitive areas should be carefully analyzed before they are recommended for use with specific populations.     

The Role of Socioeconomic Status in SAT–Freshman Grade Relationships Across Gender and Racial Subgroups

Recent research has shown that admissions tests retain the vast majority of their predictive power after controlling for socioeconomic status (SES), and that SES provides only a slight increment over SAT and high school grades (high school grade point average [HSGPA]) in predicting academic performance. To address the possibility that these overall analyses obscure differences by race/ethnicity or gender, we examine the role of SES in the test‒grade relationship for men and women as well as for various racial/ethnic subgroups within the United States. For each subgroup, the test‒grade relationship is only slightly diminished when controlling for SES. Further, SES is a substantially less powerful predictor of academic performance than both SAT and HSGPA. Among the indicators of SES (i.e., father's education, mother's education, and parental income), father's education appears to be strongest predictor of freshman grades across subgroups, with the exception of the Asian subgroup. In general, SES appears to behave similarly across subgroups in the prediction of freshman grades with SAT scores and HSGPA.     

The Influence of Creationism and Scientism on Attitudes towards Christianity among Kenyan Secondary School Students

The attitude towards Christianity of 624 form six students in Kenya was measured using the Francis scale of attitude towards Christianity Form ASC4B. Indices were developed to measure the view that science attains to absolute truth, the perception of Christianity as necessarily involving creationism, and personal religious behaviour. Sex, academic achievement, study of religion in form six, study of a science subject in form six, parental educational level and parental church attendance were taken into account in the analysis of the data by path analysis. No significant relationship was found between attitude towards Christianity and perception of Christianity as necessarily involving creationism, but the view of science as attaining to absolute truth does have a negative influence on attitude towards Christianity. The significant influences of students’ sex, mother's educational level and father's church attendance on attitude towards Christianity are all mediated through religious behaviour.     

Intergenerational effects of war trauma among Palestinian families mediated via psychological maltreatment

We tested the hypothesis that intergenerational effects of parents’ war trauma on offspring's attachment and mental health are mediated by psychological maltreatment. Two hundred and forty children and their parents were sampled from a war-prone area, Gaza, Palestine. The parents reported the number and type of traumatic experiences of war they had had during their lifetime before the child's birth and during a current war when the child was 10–12 years old. The children reported their war traumas, experiences of psychological maltreatment, attachment security, and symptoms of posttraumatic stress (PTSS), depression, and aggression. The direct and indirect intergenerational effects of war trauma were tested in structural equation models. The hypotheses were confirmed for father's past war exposure, and disconfirmed for mother's war exposure. The father's past war trauma had a negative association with attachment security and positive association with the child's mental health problems mediated by increased psychological maltreatment. In contrast, the mother's past war trauma had a negative association with the child's depression via decreased psychological maltreatment. The mother's current war trauma had a negative association with the child's depression and aggression via decreased psychological maltreatment. Among fathers, past war exposure should be considered as a risk factor for psychological maltreatment of children and the associated attachment insecurity and mental health problems. Among mothers, war exposure as such could be given less clinical attention than PTSS in the prevention of psychological maltreatment of children.     

Advanced mathematics course-taking: A focus on gender equifinality

High school mathematics achievement predicts future success. Potentially different factors that lead to success for boys versus girls, termed equifinality, are not well understood. Such factors are needed to inform interventions to increase numbers of students taking advanced mathematics courses and going on into science and mathematics careers. With 16,373 diverse tenth grade participants of the 2002 Education Longitudinal Study, we used multi-group logistic regression modeling to investigate advanced mathematics course selection from a social cognitive perspective, testing relations separately by gender. Girls took advanced mathematics courses at significantly higher rates than males. Family background and cognitive factors were related to advanced mathematics coursetaking for both groups. Supporting the equifinality hypothesis, father's expectation, parent communication, and peer academic value were significant for girls yet mother's expectation and parent participation were significant for boys. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Parent-Child Similarity in Environmental Attitudes: A Pairwise Comparison

Are adolescents’ environmental attitudes similar to their parents’ attitudes? The main objective of this study is to examine what quantitative associations, if any, exist in parent-child environmental attitudes within the family. The survey data was collected assessing attitudes toward the environment and nature from 15-year-old students (n = 237) and their parents (n = 212) in Finland. A significant positive correlation emerged in environmental attitudes between mothers and fathers. Interestingly, the results revealed some indicative evidence that girls’ environmental attitudes could relate more to their father's than mother's attitudes. Girls were as positive in their environmental attitudes as their parents and in contrast boys were noticeably more negative than either their parents or girls of the same age. The parental level of education was not found to be significantly related to the level of environmental attitudes of their adolescent offspring. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

School Effects in Scottish Secondary Schools

The present paper examines whether there is significant variation in schooling outcomes between Scottish secondary schools, and if so, how much is associated with pupil intake, and how much is associated with the schools they attend. It also examines whether schools vary in their effectiveness for different types of pupils, and whether schools tend to be superior, or inferior, across three different outcome measures. The study employed a subsample of data from the 1977 Scottish School Leavers Survey on over 700 pupils from 15 schools in one administrative division. These data were linked to data on the verbal reasoning quotients of the pupils, derived from a test administered to them before they entered secondary school. For each of the 15 schools we estimated the expected scores on measures of English, arithmetic and overall attainment for pupils with below average, average, and above average ability, controlling for pupils’ verbal ability, gender, prestige of father's occupation, mother's education, and number of siblings. The study shows there was wide variation in schooling outcomes between secondary schools in the division, even after controlling for family background characteristics and pupil ability prior to entering secondary school. There were few schools that were particularly effective for low ability pupils, but not high ability pupils and vice versa. Schools tended to be effective, or ineffective, across all three outcome measures.     

Association between mothers' education and grade six children numeracy and literacy in Kenya

The objective of the paper is to re-examine the mother–child education achievement hypothesis, by re-examining the effect of mother's education, on math and literacy test scores of children in Kenya. Data come from the classroom Education Research Programme at the African Population and Health Research Centre which was collected between January and March 2012. Since pupils are nested within schools, we fitted a two-level random intercept model. Our findings show that mothers' and fathers' education has a positive and significant independent association with literacy and numeracy achievement. After interacting mothers' and fathers' education and controlling for school and pupil characteristics, we observed two significant findings: (1) mother's education remains statistically significant but is negatively associated with the pupil's score in both literacy and numeracy; and (2) the interaction of both parents' education is significant and positively associated with pupil scores in literacy and numeracy. This study underscores the importance of the complementarity between mothers' and fathers' education in order for children to acquire and learn literacy and numeracy in schools. In as much as mothers' education is important in the children's literacy and numeracy, the importance of fathers in children's literacy and numeracy cannot be ignored.     

Changes in parental involvement in secondary education: An exploration study using the longitudinal study of young people in England

Empirical research on parental involvement in children's education often makes the assumption that levels of involvement remain fixed over time. This paper highlights evidence from a longitudinal study that half of parents of young people in Year 9 reported becoming more or less involved in their child's school life over a two‐year period and explores the characteristics associated with mothers and fathers that change their levels of involvement. The young person's attitude to school, the mother's relationship with the school, attendance at parents’ evenings and the mother's ethnicity, qualifications and change in economic status had the strongest associations with a reported change in maternal involvement levels. Changes in paternal involvement were strongly associated with the father's ethnicity and the young person's behaviour.     

新时期大学生就业价值取向特点、原因分析及有向指导

大学生就业是关系到个人前途和社会发展稳定的大事。在全球化的背景下,人们的思想观念、价值取向、行为方式都受到很大影响,新时期大学生的就业价值取向同时也发生了极大的变化。从就业价值取向特点进行分析,从中对于产生的偏差进行原因分析,再结合社会政策、市场经济情况、企业单位用人要求以及新时期大学生自身的特点等各方面针对性指导,使大学生的择业价值取向与社会主导的价值观相统一,促进自身的发展。     

Academic achievement of girls in rural schools in Kenya

Abstract

This study examined the effect of two family factors (financial, social capital) and school factors on students’ achievement. One hundred eighty two, seventh-grade female students from nine schools in Muranga district, Kenya, were studied. The statistical procedures included logit regression, cross-tabulations, frequency counting and chi-square analyses. These procedures were used to look at the effects of variables on each other and their effects on students’ study habits and achievement. The researcher found that each of the two family factors (financial and social capital), and the school factors had an independent and significant effect on student achievement and study habits. The results indicated that a student's academic achievement is positively influenced by the education level of both parents. The researcher also found that the father's education had more positive influence to the study habits of the females.     

Birth and Adoptive Parent Antisocial Behavior and Parenting: A Study of Evocative Gene–Environment Correlation

Negative parenting is shaped by the genetically influenced characteristics of children (via evocative rGE) and by parental antisocial behavior; however, it is unclear how these factors jointly impact parenting. This study examined the effects of birth parent and adoptive parent antisocial behavior on negative parenting. Participants included 546 families within a prospective adoption study. Adoptive parent antisocial behavior emerged as a small but significant predictor of negative parenting at 18 months and of change in parenting from 18 to 27 months. Birth parent antisocial behavior predicted change in adoptive father's (but not mother's) parenting over time. These findings highlight the role of parent characteristics and suggest that evocative rGE effects on parenting may be small in magnitude in early childhood.     

Modeling achievement in mathematics: the role of learner and learning environment characteristics

This study examined a structural model of mathematics achievement among Druze 8th graders in Israel. The model integrates 2 psychosocial theories: goal theory and social learning theory. Variables in the model included gender, father's and mother's education, classroom mastery and performance goal orientation, mathematics self-efficacy and self-regulated learning, mastery and performance goals, and mathematics achievement. Data on learner and learning environment variables and achievement in mathematics were collected from 273 boys and girls. Results indicate appropriate fit of the model for the entire sample. Invariance analysis across gender indicated that only 2 of the 11 path coefficients, mother's education on mathematics achievement and classroom mastery goal orientation on self-regulation, were not invariant across gender. The same pattern of relationships accounted for different amounts of variance in mathematics achievement for boys and girls.     

Effects of social class and school conditions on educational enrollment and achievement of boys and girls in rural Viet Nam

This study examines the effects of parental SES, school quality, and community factors on children's enrollment and achievement in rural areas in Viet Nam, using logistic regression and ordered logistic regression. Multivariate analysis reveals significant differences in educational enrollment and outcomes by level of household expenditures and parental education, especially mother's education. Mother's status is more important in determining school enrollment than educational outcome. In contrast, father's education increases the probability of learning. Once school quality is taken into account, differentials between the majority Kinh and ethnic minorities are not significant. Girls still do not have equal access to education, since girls doing badly in school drop out, while their male counterparts remain in school. The presence of a school in poor village does not override the effects of family background on educational enrollment. Controlling for school quality actually increases gap in educational enrollment by household expenditures and village income. Although educational costs consume, on average, one quarter of household expenditures per capita, school fees do not determine school enrollment, because many of the poor already receive exemption from or reduction in these fees.     

Introverts,Extroverts, and Achievement in a Distance Learning Environment

Although difficulties that characterize distance learning (DL) clearly have differential effects on different learners, links between barrier research and individual differences remain relatively unexplored. This study examined the relationship between cognitive style, based on Jung's (1971) theory, and achievement levels among 77 university students in a videoconference-based learning environment. Clarifying this relationship enables educators to identify in advance students who may require additional instructional support in a DL context. Understanding student-related variables that affect learning also enables faculty to adapt instructions to meet the diverse needs of different students instead of adopting a “one-size-fits-all” approach to designing DL environments.     

Father-child and mother-child speech: A perspective on parental roles

An analysis of the existing research on parents' speech to young children suggests that the differences between mothers' and fathers' speech appear especially in the nature of their vocabulary and in certain functional and conversational aspects of their speech when addressing their children. The findings suggest that the father is a more demanding or challenging conversational partner for the young child than the mother, who tends to be more sensitive to the child's abilities and requires less of the child as a conversational partner. We interpret these differences as reflecting parental roles which are in part different and complementary. The mother's specific role is to provide a feeling of security by avoiding situations where the child's established acquisitions would be challenged, while still stimulating the child. The father's specific roles is to prompt the child to attain higher levels of success, even if it means momentarily destabilizing the child. Literature on children's communicative behaviors with each parent was also examined. The sparse amount of research in this field reveals that children may communicate differently with mothers and fathers. The conclusions of this literature review are discussed in terms of different perspectives open for future research.     

Influence of mothers' education on children's maths achievement in Kenya

Research shows that fathers' level of education predicts achievement of both boys and girls, with significantly greater effect for boys. Similarly, mothers' level of education predicts the achievement of girls but not boys. This study tests the mother–child education achievement hypothesis, by examining the effect of mothers' education on the maths test score of children, using data from 71 schools across 6 districts in Kenya. The findings of a multilevel random intercept model, based on a sample of 1907 learners reveal surprisingly negative effect of mothers' education on pupil's achievement, with an interaction effect of mother's and father's education being positive.     

Mother's age at arrival in the United States and early cognitive development

This paper focuses on the cognitive development of young children from diverse backgrounds with a particular focus on ethnic and nativity differences in home environments. Hypotheses are developed addressing the extent to which home environment and parenting practices mediate the relationship between mother's age at arrival and cognitive development in early childhood. Data from the first two waves of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth cohort are employed. Children whose mothers arrived in the United States at the youngest ages (0–7 years) have similar cognitive scores to children whose mothers are born in the United States once socioeconomic status and family background are considered. Multivariate analyses indicate parenting practices and home environment are associated with cognitive development and act as partial mediators between cognitive scores and mother's age at arrival. Overall, the results highlight the need to consider parental migration experiences and differences in the home environments of children of immigrants in the United States as sources of variation in outcomes for the second-generation.     

Parental Occupation and Academic Achievement of High School Students in India

Abstract

To study the relationship of parental occupation with academic achievement of the students, the Progressive Matrices Test was administered to 1359 randomly selected high-school students (age range 14-17 years) studying in 22 urban and six rural secondary schools in the Lucknow district. Data for parental occupation and marks in the high-school examination were also collected. It was observed that there was positive relationship between the level of parental occupation and mean high-school marks. Analysis of variance showed that the differences in the mean achievement scores of the students belonging to different occupational groups were statistically significant (F = 32.50 p<.01). Analysis of covariance showed that this relationship held good even when intelligence as measured by Progressive Matrices Test was held constant (F = 24.34 p<.01).