The Impact of Parent/Family Involvement on Student Outcomes
Parents play a primary role in their child’s developing stages of life, particularly education. Even if they do not realize it, parents play a significant part in whether their child succeeds academically or not. The involvement of parents in the learning of their children is associated with a positive outcome. As predictors of students’ outcomes, parents should strive to ensure that children are engaged in schooling. Students who support their parents are motivated to complete their assignments on time, develop a lifelong yearning for learning, and boost confidence and aptitude.
Furthermore, parents’ engagement in the learning of their children facilitates long-term teacher-parent relationships, which ultimately leads to the desired learning outcome. Besides, teachers have the opportunity to witness a profound change in the classroom’s activities. Increasing the engagement of parents is one way through which a positive learning environment can be created for every learner. Parents who are engaged in their children’s learning often feel highly valued and welcome. It also allows teachers to learn more about students’ lives and schooling experiences to enhance the outcome of learning in the long run. Parental engagement also offers teachers the opportunity to identify students who require more and immediate attention and resources to increase their competence level.
Moreover, the relationship between parents and teachers provides the opportunity to conceptualize roles and responsibilities, which significantly impact children’s learning outcomes. Since schools and families are the main actors in learners’ educational outcomes, parents should be encouraged to provide the needed support to improve the learning outcome of their children. Parents’ involvement in the learning activities of their parents can also help reduce negative behaviors among learners and promote positive social development. When parents assist students with their assignments, it not only contributes to the learners’ preparedness, but also their ability to articulate and relate prior knowledge with new ones. Such a level of concern allows for improved social outcomes. Therefore, parents’ involvement t in the learning process of their children is the central tenet of the instructional model that occurs in many forms. Some of how parents can be involved in students’ learning process to ensure improved outcomes include classroom volunteering, attending students’ activities at school, working with learners at home to handle difficult tasks, and evaluation of learners’ progress.
The video, Parental Involvement, and The Impact on Child Education by Aaron Alvarado is a vivid demonstration on how parents can significantly impact on their children performance in school, whereby the parents who are more involved in their children education welfare tend to do well compared to those of less involved ones. Now the video unveils with Wilkin, a student enters into the class very late and find the learning in progress (0:54). The student interrupts the teaching, and the teacher is compelled to pause to allow him to settle down. When the teacher requests Wilkin for the homework test for assessment, he finds that the student failed to finish the homework (0:43). The teacher is surprised and enquires why the student did not finish the homework. Wilkin responds by saying he did the whole test alone, and when the teacher asks where his mother was, he responds by saying that she was busy the whole day (0:47). The learning session continues until the end of school hours. The teacher is ready to release the results of the homework test. Aileen, Wilkin’s classmate, and comes to school very early scores ten out of ten while Walkin scores one out ten (1:43). Wilkin is disappointed, but the teacher assures him he will see what to do.
When Aileen is at home, her mother helps her do her homework, and the student is seen very excited about it. After the mother finishes helping Aileen with her test, she further logs in into the school website to see whether there is any school activity that she needs to be involved (2:23). The parent can find that there are scheduled conference she is supposed to attend. When Aileen’s parent meets with the teacher in his office, the parent seeks to know her child’s progress. The teacher comments that Aileen is a good student who tops in her class (3:12). After Aileen and her parent leave, the teacher waits for the Wilkin’s parent in vain. When a teacher decides to call to see whether the parent is coming, he finds that the parent is unavailable then decides to send an email (4:11). At the end of the video, Aileen becomes the most outstanding student of the month. Still, Wilkin is just improving, of which nobody is sure because her parents have never been replying to the teacher’s emails nor attending the school conference to know the progress of their child. The difference in both students’ performance is very clear, which is significantly influenced by how frequently their parents are involved in their children’s education (7:12). Parent involvement is the foundation of student success.
Generally, this video has demonstrated that the parents are the primary teachers for their children. Parents volunteering in their children’s education offer them an exceptional opportunity to influence students before attending school effectively. Student punctuality in school depends on parent involvement in a child’s education (0:13). By tackling the early learning problems head-on at home, parents become better prepared to get involved with the child’s schooling after heading off to the school (0:50). According to Gonida & Cortina (376), on a global scale, parental involvement in a child’s education has extensively been indicated as a vital and positive variable on a child’s socioemotional and academic development. In fact, from ecological context, shared positive interactions between both important socializing spheres, that is, families/parents and schools, contribute very tremendously to the children’s cognitive and socioemotional development (3:02). The empirical results have further demonstrated a positive linkage between family/parental involvement in a child’s academic achievement, improving their self-esteem and academic performance, together with school attendance and retention.
Family/parent involvement in child’s education has also been portrayed to be connected with optimistic school attachment on children’s part as well as certain school climates since Aileen seems more vigilant when in class more than Wilkin due to their differences on how both of their parents are involved in school matters. Aileen is more active in class than her classmate and even performs better than him (4:23). The approach might cause the difference both parents have chosen to be involved in school education with all other factors held constant such as attending school conferences and getting in touch with the teachers. Research has evidenced that school programs focused on improving parental participation in education have constructive impacts on students, families, and even school communities (Lara, & Saracostti 1464). The moment the parents get directly involved in school, the attendance is expected to get higher since the parents volunteering in schools convey the position of education to their children. Such a simple activity helps keep the children in the classroom, particularly in early school years, during the moment, regular attendance should be critical to student success. Conferring to Syeda (73), school-parent partnership permits conceptualization of relationships and roles as well as the influence on the children’s development in a wider way. From this procedure, schools and families are the key actors in building their roles and involvement forms, generating various and new actions to relay to each other conferring to the particular educational context. The first findings in the school-family field demonstrate a positive impact of such partnership, donating to the academic performance and achievement, amongst other constructive consequences (Syeda 74).
The parent’s involvement and knowledge of their children’s revisions are always better equipped in teaching the children the study habits types needed to succeed throughout their early schooling years (7:43). The parent should further purpose to check the child’s homework on a nightly basis to ensure assignment tests are completed in time and correctly. This position is because whenever such a process fails to move as planned, the parents must contact the teacher the soonest as possible to determine the support a child might require or what is needed to maintain the learning curve and grades (1:47). Although research investigating students who were in grades 4-6 and found an absence of a significant association between student’s academic performance and life satisfaction, this is inconsistent results (Wilder 378). The video has shown a positive association between academic performance and subjective children’s well-being (2:23). When a parent is involved in a child’s school education, they develop a positive relationship with their child’s teacher. Even though a parent may fail to understand a particular area of a child’s education, the parent understands the child better. Such knowledge is vital in creating curriculum and programs that would directly address the student’s needs (5:32). When parents assume some of the critical responsibilities in their children’s schools, teachers become more supported while feeling more appreciated (5:21). This aspect will produce teachers who tend to be more satisfied with their careers and more diligent in supporting the student to perform better (7:32).
Ultimately, according to the video, parental involvement in child education activities is an important element toward successful early school days. Whether the parents decide to serve on the school committees or frequently meet with the student’s teachers, parental influence is widely realized. A child with an actively involved parent has a better academic achievement and performance and more successful and happier, with the more industrious teacher always around. Considering diverse scales of the parental involvement both at home and at school together with the honoring the invitations made by the teachers or the school the video exposed that there are differences in the academic performance and achievement between different parents participation profiles, whereby highly involved parents have children with best academic performance and achievement compared to lowly or rather no involved parents in their children education. Therefore, since the notch of parental involvement in children’s education is a critical element in academic performance and achievements, especially in the early school years, the parent is supposed to be actively involved. Policy enactment and effective implementation to ensure all parents are actively involved in the early stages of their children’s education are very important to every student’s future lives.
Works Cited
Gonida, Eleftheria N., and Kai S. Cortina. “Parental Involvement in Homework: Relations with Parent and Student Achievement‐Related Motivational Beliefs and Achievement.” British Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 84, no.3, 2014, pp. 376-396. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/bjep.12039.
Lara, Laura, and Mahia Saracostti. “Effect of Parental Involvement on Children’s Academic Achievement in Chile.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol.10, 2019, pp.1464. EBSCOhost, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01464.
Parental Involvement and The Impact on Child Education. Retrieved from; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFvCV12uOIk.
Syeda, Rakhshanda Kaukab. “The Impact of Parent/Family Involvement on Student’ Learning Outcomes.” International Journal of Research – Granthaalayah, vol.4, no. 10, 2016, pp. 72-81. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.164925
Wilder, Sandra. “Effects of Parental Involvement on Academic Achievement: A Meta-Synthesis.” Educational Review, vol.66, no.3, 2014, pp. 377-397. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/00131911.2013.780009.