Relationships between Perceived Parenting Behaviors and Academic Achievement among High School Students in International Baccalaureate (IB) Programs: A Comparison of Asian American and White Students

Parenting style as a predictor of students' academic achievement is gaining increased interest by parents, educators, and psychologists. Current literature suggests that a combination of three parenting dimensions (i.e., responsiveness, supervision, and autonomy granting) is relevant to characterizing one's parenting style into four types (i.e., authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and neglectful), and each dimension of parenting behavior has a different effect on students' academic performance. Based on the different cultural backgrounds and the methods parents use to educate their children at home, some literature suggests that the school performance of some Asian American students could benefit from different parenting behaviors as compared to White students. Very little prior research has attended to links between parenting and achievement among high-achieving students who pursue college-level curricula during high school years, such as students enrolled in International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes. This study examined: (a) the relationships between parenting behaviors and students' achievement (i.e., semester GPA and mean score on end-of-course exams) among a combined sample of ethnically diverse IB students and then within two ethnic groups of interests (i.e., White and Asian American), (b) the differences in mean levels of students' achievement between the two aforementioned ethnic groups, and (c) differences in mean levels of parenting dimensions between two ethnic groups with regards to three parenting behaviors (i.e., responsiveness, demandingness, and autonomy granting). An archival dataset that includes data from 245 Asian American IB students and 533 White IB students was analyzed. The findings from the current study suggested that Asian American IB students earned significant higher GPAs than White IB students, while there was not a difference in performance on end-of-course exams between two groups. Second, White and Asian American IB students perceived different average levels of parenting behaviors. Specifically, White IB students reported perceiving higher levels of parental responsiveness and autonomy granting, while Asian American IB students perceiving higher level of demandingness. Additionally, responsiveness and autonomy granting both had positive relations with semester GPA within the entire sample of IB students as well as within the White IB students, while autonomy granting positively related to end-of-course exam scores within the entire IB students. All three parenting behaviors were associated with academic outcomes in a similar manner across White and Asian American IB subgroups. Specifically, responsiveness was the only significant and unique predictor of semester GPA for IB students. For end-of-course exam performance, demandingness was a negative predictor while autonomy granting was a unique positive predictor for IB students.