Examining the Relationship Between Parental Involvement and Student Motivation

Parent involvement has a sound research base attesting to the many potential benefits it can offer in education. However, student motivation as an academic outcome of parental involvement has only recently been investigated. The purpose of this article is to show how parent involvement is related to students motivation. Studies of students from the elementary school to high school show a beneficial relationship between parental involvement and the following motivational constructs: school engagement, intrinsic/extrinsic motivation, perceived competence, perceived control, self-regulation, mastery goal orientation, and motivation to read. From the synthesis of the parent involvement and motivation literature, we offer potential explanations for their relationship. Directions for areas of continued research are also presented.     

How Good Are Our Schools

ABSTRACT

Research suggests a positive relationship between schools’ efforts to engage parents and parents’ involvement in their child's education. The authors investigated school socioeconomic status, school size, grade level, and student–teacher ratio as predictors of schools’ efforts to engage parents of students receiving special education services. The dependent variable was the Schools’ Efforts to Partner with Parents’ Scale, which has been validated for states’ use in their federal accountability systems. Mean school-level scores were calculated for 265 schools in a large southeastern state. Results indicated that student–teacher ratio was the strongest predictor of parents’ perceived school engagement efforts. Implications are drawn for ways in which all schools, including those with high student–teacher ratios, can improve their collaboration with parents of students receiving special education services.     

The Danish Bereavement Response in 2015—Historic Development and Evaluation of Success

In the 1980s, Norwegian researchers pioneered efforts towards developing school support for bereaved children. Eighteen years later, a Danish approach was created based on these foundations. This article explores the Danish school bereavement response plans (b-plans) and investigates their ability to support both teachers and bereaved children. Today, the system has one of the highest implementation rates in the world and the majority of teachers feel equipped to deal with bereavement in school. Nevertheless, adopting a standardised approach potentially leads to the neglect of individual needs. Moreover, concerns exist over whether existing b-plans are current. This article concludes that b-plans have succeeded in becoming the primary tool used by teachers, a feat that systems in other countries often fail to achieve. However, the system seldom includes the perspectives of the students it was designed to help. This is the challenge that the next generation of b-plans must remedy.     

孝道——一种自然主义的解释

从进化心理学的角度看,儒家的孝道让人很费解。孝道要求个人将资源优先分给父母,而非子女。我们试图为儒家文化中孝道思想体系的兴起和成功,提供一种自然主义的解释。我们假设,孝道思想意在通过使父母从子女身上获取更多资源而让父母受益,父母这样获取的资源比亲子冲突理论所预测的要多。文章对孝道运用历史上有影响的早期儒家著作,表明孝道板具可塑性,而且孝道还衍生出关于生育习性和择偶的特殊义务。然后,文章分析了进化心理学最近一些实验的结论,证实了以下假设,即在子女的择偶问题上,子女和父母的偏好具有与亲子冲突理论相一致的不对称性。在此基础上,笔者把这些结果和几种跨文化数据进行对比,结果显示,与世界其他地区相比,在东亚受儒家文明影响的文化中,子女在最重要的人生选择上——如何寻求配偶,与谁结婚——更频繁地顺从于父母。对这种现象最好的解释,是诉诸孔孟之道下的儒家孝道思想体系及其在中国文化中的有效传播。文章意在中国思想史研究领域开启跨学科方法之先河,以求更好地理解儒学思想在中国历史上的成功。