The Salience of the Subtle Aspects of Parental Involvement and Encouraging that Involvement: Implications for School-Based Programs

By W. Jeynes. Teachers College Record, 2010

289 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background/Context For many years, educators, parents, and social scientists have conceptualized engaged parents as those who help their children with their homework, frequently attend school functions, and maintain household rules that dictate when their young engage in schoolwork and leisure. Recent meta-analyses on parental involvement confirm the salience of more subtle social variables, which Bandura and Walters asserted may be even more important than overt parental behavior in fostering positive student outcomes. These results indicate that factors such as parental expectations, the quality of parent–child communication, and parental style may be more highly related to student achievement than various more overt expressions of this involvement. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The purpose of the article is to examine what the body of research literature indicates about the role and utility of the subtle aspects of parental involvement. The article first establishes a theoretical framework, using Bandura and Walter's research. Then the article focuses on three issues regarding parental involvement: (1) the salience of subtle aspects of parental involvement; (2) subtle actions are also important to help schools more completely involve parents; and (3) to what extent is it possible to educate parents to become more involved? The article also addresses whether those aspects of parental involvement that are the most efficacious in everyday living are also the most vital in school-based parental involvement programs. Research Design The article is an analytical essay that summarizes the recent research on the influence of subtle aspects of parental involvement. It reaches conclusions based on investigations into family and school practices. Conclusion There are deliberate actions that teachers can take to enhance parental involvement. First, educate parents to comprehend, and then act on, the fact that it is probably some of the more subtle aspects of parental involvement, such as high expectations and communication, that are among the most important. Second, educate school leaders, teachers, and staff to understand that raising parental participation may be more a function of subtle but important demonstrations of love and respect than a matter of instructing parents to apply particular methods of helping children. Naturally, all these factors are important, but the spirit and the attitude of parental involvement may actually be more important than the pedagogy applied at home. As parents, educators, and other leaders apply these principles, it is likely that parental involvement in the early 21st century will be greater than it has been in recent memory. Ultimately, teachers, students, and parents will all benefit from this development.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7e6550a5951fb08263f1922cedcfed711c50ae09

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Citations in the corpus

A Meta-Analysis of the Efficacy of Different Types of Parental Involvement Programs for Urban Students (2012, background): “Indeed, the evidence for this conclusion is strong and consistent, especially when one includes more subtle components of parental involvement (Jeynes, 2005, 2007, 2010).”
From Parental Involvement to Children's Mathematical Performance: The Role of Mathematics Anxiety (2013, background): “’’ Subtle aspects of parental involvement include parental expectations, the quality of parent–child communication, and parental style (Jeynes, 2010), which is in general accord with our home support and expectations factor.”
Parental involvement on student academic achievement: A meta-analysis (2015, background): “…et al., 2011; Strayhorn, 2010; Trask-Tate & Cunningham, 2010), the effectiveness of programs specifically aimed at fomenting parental involvement (Jeynes, 2010; Mattingly, Prislin, McKenzie, Rodriguez, & Kayzar, 2002), possible ways to encourage it (LaRocque, Kleiman, & Darling, 2011; Padgett,…”
Parental Involvement Research: Moving to the Next Level (2011, background): “It is not the notion that a parent pushes expectations upon their children, such as, “You shall live up to these standards” (Jeynes, 2010a, 2010b; Lancaster, 2004).”
Parental involvement in education during middle school: Perspectives of ethnically diverse parents, teachers, and students (2018, background): “Similarly, Jeynes (2010) found that subtle ways that parents become involved including parenting style, parent–child communication, and expectations are more important than overt strategies such as school involvement, homework help, and establishing rules.”
A practical model for school leaders to encourage parental involvement and parental engagement (2018, background): “Consequently, they have not incorporated these truths and practices into their daily teaching routines and strategies (Jeynes 2010).”
A Meta-Analysis on the Factors That Best Reduce the Achievement Gap (2015, background): “…attempts to bridge this gap have been generally well meaning and have been more aggressive than any other educational effort over the a similar time frame, the result has been that the gap has only been made marginally lower than it was before (Jeynes, 2010; Dunham & Wilson, 2007; McKenzie, 2008).”
Meta-Analysis of Parental Involvement and Achievement in East Asian Countries (2020, background): “School-based involvement has, thus, become a central aspect of parental involvement, although more recent theories of parental involvement in the United States have started to emphasize home-based involvement (Jeynes, 2010, 2018; Mapp et al., 2008).”