Poster #82 - Rural Parents’ School Involvement: Influences of Race/Ethnicity and Dual-Language Education

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Extensive evidence documents the importance of parents’ school involvement to children’s academic success (e.g., Lee & Bowman, 2006). However, little research has examined rural families. Rural, in comparison to urban/suburban, parents may experience greater barriers to participation, including higher rates of deep poverty, greater distances, and rapid change in community composition (Lavalley, 2018). Because these challenges likely affect racial/ethnic groups differently, we investigated parent involvement among African American, European American, and Latinx families in a rural community in the Southeastern US. We also explored the impact of a dual-language program on involvement among Latinx families. We examined parents’ direct participation in the school setting, or formal involvement (LeFerve & Shaw, 2012) and their academic assistance at home, or informal involvement (Auerbach, 2007).

Participants were parents of children in grades 1-4 enrolled in a longitudinal study conducted in a low-wealth school system. The final sample consisted of parents of African American (N = 179), European American (N = 140), and Latinx (N = 176) children. The parents completed a questionnaire available in English and Spanish that addressed their formal and informal school involvement and background characteristics.

We conducted a series of 3 (education) x 3 (race/ethnicity) ANOVAs. Regarding formal involvement, there were no effects on visits to the schools (dichotomized as yes/no; M = .63; SD = .48). The number of conferences parents attended differed by caregiver education level (Figure 1), but not by race/ethnicity. Surprisingly, parents with less than a high school education attended more conferences than did parents with more education. Regarding informal involvement, there were no effects of education or race/ethnicity on reported amounts of parent-child reading. However, the racial/ethnic groups differed with regard to the time the parent helped with homework (Figure 2). Latinx parents reported less assistance than the African and European American parents, who did not differ from each other.

Additional analyses explored predictors of parent involvement unique to the Latinx sample. No associations emerged between measures of parent involvement and variables including percent of time the mother speaks English to the child and parent’s birth status (US vs. other). Although parent involvement did not differ between the Latinx students in dual-language and traditional classrooms, 18% of the responses from the traditional program parents identified language as a barrier, compared to no responses among the dual-language parents. Parents from both programs most often reported that they visited the school to attend special programs.

The results suggest differences between parent involvement in urban/suburban and rural settings. In this investigation, higher education did not predict greater parental involvement (cf. Lee & Brown, 2006), and European and African American parents participated at comparable levels. Although rates of formal involvement were low, parents were actively engaged in informal involvement, suggesting that they assign importance to their children’s academic progress. Additional research is needed to examine the ways that attitudes, norms and values interplay with parent involvement (see Jasis & Ordonez-Jasis, 2011), the cultural influence on parent role construction (Hoover-Dempsey, 2018) and how educators motivate involvement in diverse, rural communities.

Authors

• Dana Lyn Saad, Newtown Youth and Family Services
  Presenting Author

• Alena G Esposito, Clark University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Esther Kim, North Carolina State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lynne Baker-Ward, North Carolina State University
  Non-Presenting Author