A STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TYPE OF PARENT INVOLVEMENT AND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT ENGAGEMENT, ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT, ATTENDANCE, AND ATTITUDE TOWARD SCHOOL

by Mombourquette, Carmen Philip

Parents are being encouraged to be actively involved in the educational lives of their children, including the lives of their adolescent high school students. Governments in both Canada and the United States are even mandating parent involvement as a means to achieve increased student performance. Type of parent involvement in the lives of adolescent high school students and its relationship to student performance factors of student engagement, academic achievement, attendance, and attitude toward school was studied so as to provide high school administrators with the knowledge set necessary to offer advice to the parent community.

This study found that there was a relationship between some of Epstein's (2001) parent involvement types and the student performance factors of engagement, academic achievement, and attitude toward school. However, virtually no important relationship existed between the parent involvement types and student attendance. Type 3 Volunteering at school had the greatest negative correlation to student engagement, academic achievement, and attitude toward school. While Type 4 Learning at Home and Type 5 Decision Making had the strongest positive correlations to student engagement, academic achievement, and attitude toward school.

This study showed that the greatest relationship between parent involvement types and the student performance factors came from the influence that parents exert on adolescent children at home. Expectations, as well as care and concern, form a two-pronged approach that parents can use to impact the relationship between involvement type and student performance. This study was not intended or designed to show cause and effect. However, the relationship between parents' expectations, care and concern with the student performance factors of engagement, academic achievement, and attitude toward school is solid enough to be suggestive of predictability. Parents should continue to express their expectations and care and concern for their adolescent children once they enter high school. The results are also indicative that active parent volunteering within high school does not necessarily produce important correlations to student performance and as such high school administrators should be careful about assuming that encouraging this type of involvement will produce the student gains they hope to achieve.