Poster #82 - Parental Involvement and Children’s School Adjustment: Moderating Roles of Parent Autonomy Support and Child Affect

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Improving children’s academic motivation and school adjustment is an important educational goal, as these factors are related to children’s academic success (Grolnick & Ryan, 1989; Hill et al., 2009). Parent involvement in children’s schooling is one factor shown to enhance children’s motivation and adjustment (Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994); however, the roles of contextual and emotional factors in the effects of involvement has not been extensively studied. To consider context, we used a Self-Determination Theory framework (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2017), which suggests that autonomy supportive parenting helps build children’s motivational resources, including autonomous self-regulation and perceived competence (Grolnick & Ryan, 1989). Regarding emotional factors, research shows that children’s desire for involvement influences parents’ likelihood of getting involved (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1997); thus, children’s experience of involvement may also be important to their motivation and adjustment. The current study used an SDT framework to examine whether children’s affect toward parent involvement and perceptions of parent autonomy support moderate relations between parental involvement and children’s motivation and school adjustment. Three dimensions of involvement were considered: school (i.e., activities at children’s schools), cognitive/intellectual (i.e., engagement in cognitively stimulating activities outside of school), and personal (i.e., interest and communication regarding children’s schooling).

Participants were 213 children in 3rd through 5th grade and their mothers and teachers. Mothers completed questionnaires assessing their level of involvement (Epstein, 1990; Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994). Children completed questionnaires assessing their mothers’ involvement (Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994) and autonomy support (Wellborn & Grolnick, 1988), and their own affect toward parent involvement, perceived competence (Harter, 1985), and self-regulation (Relative Autonomy Index [RAI]; Ryan & Connell, 1989). Teachers reported on children’s acting out and shy-anxious behaviors (Hightower et al., 1986).

Regressions (controlling for maternal education and child gender) revealed main effects of all predictors on perceived competence, parental involvement and autonomy support on RAI, and parental autonomy support on acting-out (see Tables 1 and 2). Beyond this, there was an interaction between school involvement and child affect for perceived competence (t = -3.29, p = .001, β = -.25). Specifically, school involvement was positively associated with perceived competence when children had negative affect toward parent involvement, but not when children had more positive affect. Also, higher school involvement was associated with more shy-anxious behaviors when parents were perceived as less autonomy supportive, but fewer shy-anxious behaviors when parents were perceived as more autonomy supportive (t = -2.45, p = .015, β = -.20). Finally, there was an interaction between personal involvement and RAI (t = 3.36, p = .001, β = .27), such that personal involvement was positively associated with RAI when parents were perceived as more autonomy supportive, but not when parents were perceived as more controlling.

Findings suggest that children’s experience of parent involvement may make a difference to children’s school motivation and adjustment, beyond simply the level of involvement. Thus, schools need to not only facilitate greater parental involvement, but also attend to how parents are involved and emphasize the context and children’s emotional experience of school-related parent-child interactions.

Authors

• Rachel Lerner, Clark University
  Presenting Author

• Wendy Grolnick, Clark University
  Non-Presenting Author