How does parental involvement matter for children's academic achievement during school closure in primary school?

Parental Involvement, Academic Self-Efficacy, and Depression on Academic Performance Among Chinese Students During COVID-19 Pandemic

Objective

This study was conducted to identify the factors (especially parental involvement, academic self-efficacy, and depression) associated with academic performance among Chinese K-12 students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

This cross-sectional study used data from the 2020 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). The CFPS was conducted from July to December 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. A multistage probability sample proportional to size was used for the survey. The final sample consisted of 1747 K-12 students. This study used the 14-item Chinese Parental Involvement and Support Scale, the Responsibility Scale, and the 8-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale to measure parental involvement, academic self-efficacy, and depression, respectively. An ordered probit regression and structural equation models were employed to analyze the factors associated with academic performance. A multiple imputation technique was applied to compute missing values in selected variables.

Results

We found that parental involvement and academic self-efficacy were positively associated with good academic performance. In contrast, depression was negatively associated with good academic performance. Moreover, academic stress, male, rural residency, middle school, family size, high income, online gaming daily, reading, and intelligence quotient were statistically significant predictors on academic performance.

Conclusion

The empirical findings suggested that parental involvement and academic self-efficacy were positively and significantly associated with good academic performance. However, depression was negatively and significantly associated with good academic performance. These results showed that policymakers and practitioners can help improve academic success and address educational inequalities among K-12 students by implementing a series of reforms.

Perceived parental involvement influences students' academic buoyancy and adaptability: the mediating roles of goal orientations

Academic buoyancy and adaptability (i.e., student capacities to deal with difficulties and challenges in daily school lives and to make appropriate cognitive, behavioral as well as affective adjustments in interacting with new, uncertain, and/or changing situations, circumstances, and conditions) can help learners regulate and protect themselves in the failure-prone learning environment. This study examined how students' perceptions of parental academic involvement and their goal orientations were related to their academic buoyancy and adaptability in mathematics learning. We recruited a sample of 1,164 Chinese junior high school students. Using structural equation modeling, the results indicated that after controlling for family socioeconomic status and gender, perceived parental involvement was positively related to the students' academic buoyancy and adaptability. Furthermore, parental involvement was significantly associated with students' mastery and performance-approach goal orientations, which further partially mediated the relationship between parental involvement and academic buoyancy and adaptability. However, the mediating role of a performance-avoidance goal orientation in this relationship was not significant. Findings highlight the important roles that parenting practices and individual achievement motivation play in the development of academic buoyancy and adaptability in the Chinese context. Future research directions and implications are discussed.

Effect of parental engagement on children's home-based continued learning during COVID-19-induced school closures: Evidence from Uganda

This study examines the effect of parental engagement on children's continued learning amid COVID-19-induced school closures in Uganda, where the government's distance learning program had limited coverage. The results show that children from households with more parental engagement are more likely to engage in learning activities at home when primary schools are closed. A significant effect of parental engagement is found in rural areas as well. Furthermore, we found that, in rural areas, the level of parental engagement is significantly more correlated with home-based learning among children from government schools than those from private schools.

The Effect of Educational Expectations on Children's Cognition and Depression

Cognitive and psychological conditions in childhood will have an important impact on adult life. There is relatively little literature on the impact of educational expectations on children's cognition and psychological health from the perspective of urban and rural differences. Based on the cohort data of the CFPS from 2012 and 2016, this study screened a total of 994 children aged 10-15 to study the effects of parents' educational expectations and children's educational expectations on children's cognition and depression. The results show that both parents' educational expectations and children's educational expectations have a positive impact on children's cognition. Parents' educational expectations and children's educational expectations have negative effects on children's depression. When parents' educational expectations are greater than their children's educational expectations, educational expectations have a negative impact on children's cognition and a positive impact on children's depression. In both urban and rural samples, parents' educational expectations and children's educational expectations have a positive impact on children's cognition and a negative impact on children's depression. However, the impact of educational expectations on children's cognition and depression was greater in rural areas than in urban areas. When parents' educational expectations are greater than their children's educational expectations, educational expectations in urban areas have no effect on children's cognition.