A Tentative Study Of The Impacts Of Parental Involvement On Junior School Students' English Achievements

Although pedagogical research indicates that family socioeconomic status plays a major role in determining students' academic achievement,few of them have further explored another important mechanism in the reproduction of class and social inequalities,namely parental involvement.This paper shifts focus on the impacts of parental involvement on students' English achievement in particular.Two dimensions of parental involvement are considered in the present study.One is the conceptual dimension measured by family background and environment and the other is the practical dimension indicated by parental supervision and interaction between home and schools.Based on quantitative data from a survey conducted in H junior school in Nanjing,Jiangsu,together with qualitative evidence collected by semi-structured interviews,it is found that:(1)Children from two-biological-parent families and children from alternative families are significantly different regarding their English achievements,and it is sad that children from single-father family have the poorest performance.(2)Factors such as parental educational expectation,inter-generational relationship,and time that mothers spent on TV are significantly related to children's English achievement.Higher parental expectation predicts higher English test scores for children.Inter generation relationship is positively related to children's English test scores.On the other hand,if mothers(but not fathers)spend more time on watching TV at home,their children perform worse at school.(3)Home-school interaction also has a significant effect on kids' English scores.Therefore,tentative solutions are proposed,based on the empirical findings of the current study,in order to make full use of positive factors in family and to help parents create a congenial learning atmosphere for their children.