Parent Involvement in Children's Mathematics Achievement
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Abstract
Children's academic achievement matters and can have a long-term impact throughout their life. Parents play an important role in the process of children's learning and development. Building on previous research concerning parental involvement, and focusing on children's mathematics achievement specifically, the present study aimed to examine the factor structure of a parent survey to explore possible ways of parents' involvement in their children's education. The second objective of the present study was to investigate the relations among the multiple dimensions of parental involvement and answer the question of how these aspects were related to children's mathematics achievement. The current study used secondary data from a previous survey-design research project. A convenient sample was recruited from an elementary school, including data from 139 parents and 121 children. Principal Component Analysis was conducted with direct oblimin method of rotation resulted in seven components. Five components were retained in the following Path Analysis. Results indicated that parental self-efficacy was positively predicted by parents' attitude about the school and teachers, through the mediator of parents’ perceptions about the teacher's contact with them. Moreover, parental self-efficacy was a positive predictor of their specific helping behaviors with children's math and science at home, parents' role construction beliefs, and children's math achievement. However, parents' assistance with science and math was negatively associated with children's math achievement. Future studies can further explore the underlying mechanisms of parents' homework assistance behaviors. Practically, these results could inform intervention programs at school to promote open and positive collaborations between school teachers and parents as a way to communicate strategic participation in children's education, boost parental self-efficacy, and enhance students' mathematics achievement.