Poster #90 - Parental Educational Involvement and Children’s Social and Behavioural Functioning

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Parental educational involvement supports children’s academic engagement and academic success (Castro et al., 2015). Parental educational involvement is a multidimensional construct that encompasses both home and school environments (Hill & Tyson, 2009); however, most research on parental involvement in children’s learning focuses on how such involvement relates to children’s scholastic or mental health outcomes (Castro et al., 2015; Wang & Sheikh-Khalil, 2014). The aim of this study is to assess how parental educational involvement at home and school relates to long-term social and behavioural functioning in early childhood. In particular, this study seeks to answer the following question: Does parental educational involvement predict children’s long-term social and behavioural functioning?

Method: Using a prospective, longitudinal design, this study examined the educational involvement of 188 parents (188 mothers; 188 fathers) across two time points (T1/T2) and children’s subsequent resilience, social skills, and problem behaviours (T3). Children were between the ages of 2-5 years (M = 3.85, SD = .62) at T1; 3-6 years (M = 4.92, SD = .73) at T2; and 4-7 years (M = 5.76, SD = .66) at T3. At time 1 (T1), and again one year later (T2), mothers and fathers completed the following questionnaires: PEIS (Tan & Goldberg, 2009), which measured involvement in children’s academic activities at home; PCAHIS (Rooparine et al., 2006), which measured school focused-discussions at home; and questions from the FACES study (O’Brien et al., 2002), which assessed involvement in children’s scholastic activities at school. The following year (T3), teachers rated children’s resilience, social skills, and problem behaviours using the Social Skills Rating System (SSIS; Gresham & Elliott, 2008). Four hierarchical linear regression analyses were conducted to examine whether parental educational involvement at T1 and T2 predicted children’s outcomes at T3. For each regression, T1 maternal and paternal predictors were entered at step one, followed by T2 maternal and paternal predictors at step two. For each model, maternal and paternal predictors were entered together, but as unique predictors to evaluate their respective contributions to children’s outcomes.

Results: The results of this study are preliminary, as T3 teacher data is currently being analyzed.
Parental home involvement T2 significantly predicted children’s resilience at T3 (F(16,171) = 1.713, p = .048, R2 = .138), with maternal involvement in children’s academic-related activities predicting greater resilience in children. Parental educational involvement at home and school did not predict children’s social skills (F(16,142) = 1.013, p = .447, R2 = .102) or problem behaviours (F(16,142) = .953, p = .512, R2 = .097).

Conclusion: Maternal educational involvement at home predicts greater resilience in children. This finding aligns with and extends previous research on the importance of parental educational involvement at home to promote children’s healthy development (Wang et al., 2013). Parental educational involvement at home and school did not predict children’s social skills or behaviour. These results also demonstrate that maternal educational involvement is a stronger predictor than paternal educational involvement of children’s resilience, which underscores the importance of including both mothers and fathers in parenting studies.

Authors

• Chelsea Durber, University of Alberta
  Presenting Author

• Meghan Walker, University of Alberta
  Non-Presenting Author

• Vincenza A Martinovich, University of Alberta
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cassandra Pirraglia, University of Alberta
  Non-Presenting Author

• Christina M. Rinaldi, University of Alberta
  Non-Presenting Author