The Influence Of Family Socioeconomic Status And Parenting Style On The Trajectory Of Migrant Children's Academic Achievement And Development

Academic achievement of children and adolescents has always been one of the most important research fields in pedagogy and psychology.Extant research on children and adolescent academic achievements has mainly focused on cross-sectional studies.In those longitudinal studies,less attention has been paid to the heterogeneous developmental trajectories.In addition,research on migrant children's developmental trajectories of academic achievement is scarce.Based on the family pressure model and the family investment model,this study aimed to investigate developmental trajectories of academic achievement among migrant children and urban children,the influence of their family socioeconomic status(hereinafter referred to as family SES)and parenting style on the academic achievement development,and the mediating role of parenting styles in the relation between SES and the developmental trajectories in particular.The data of this study were from my supervisor,professor Chen Chen's research project of National Social Science Foundation on the Social development of migrant and urban children and its influencing factors(14BSH007).Nine hundred and seventy-four primary school children in grades 4 in Nanjing and Shanghai were recruited for the study,among which 716 were migrant children and 207 were urban children,with 51 having unknown household registration information.The time range of migrant children flowing into their city is 0.5-12.25 years.The results of the study showed that:(1)migrant and urban children's development of Chinese and mathematics subject performance was heterogeneous.In terms of Chinese subject,both migrant and urban children had two trajectories.The developmental trajectories of Chinese subject achievement of migrant children included the extremely low-rising group(2.27%)and moderately stable group(97.73%),while the developmental trajectories of Chinese subject achievement of urban children included the extremely low-decreasing group(3.40%)and medium-slowly increasing group(96.60%).In terms of mathematics subject achievement,there were also two classes of trajectories for the two groups of children.The developmental trajectories of mathematics subject achievement of migrant children included the extremely low-rising group(5.38%)and moderately stable group(94.62%),while the developmental trajectories of mathematics subject achievement of urban children included the extremely low-decreasing group(10.19%)and medium-slowly increasing group(89.81%).(2)SES significantly predicted the belonging of the trajectory subgroups of migrant children's mathematics subject performance.Taking the medium stable group as the reference group,the higher the family SES level was,the less likely the migrant children were to belong to the low-decreasing group.However,family SES could not significantly predict the belonging of the trajectory subgroups of migrant and urban children's Chinese subject achievement,nor could it significantly predict the belonging of the trajectory subgroups of urban children's mathematics subject performance.(3)Parenting styles could significantly predict the belonging of the trajectory subgroups of urban children's Chinese subject performance.Taking the moderate-slowly increasing group as the reference group,the higher the degree of authoritative parenting style was,the less likely the children were to belong to the extremely low-decreasing group.Parenting styles can also significantly predict the belonging of the trajectory subgroups of urban children's math subject performance.With the medium stable group as the reference group,the higher the degree of authoritative parenting style was,the less likely migrant children were to belong to the low-decreasing group.However,parenting styles could not significantly predict the belonging of the trajectory subgroups of migrant children's Chinese subject performance,nor could it significantly predict the identity belonging of the trajectory subgroups of urban children's mathematics subject performance.(4)Authoritative parenting styles significantly mediated the relationship between SES and the subgroup of urban children's developmental trajectory of Chinese subject achievement,increasing the probability of individuals belongingness to the moderate-slowly increasing group.However,parenting styles could not mediate the relationship between SES and the belongingness of the trajectory subgroups of migrant children's Chinese and math subject performance,nor could it significantly mediate the relationship between SES and identity belonging of the trajectory subgroups of urban children's math subject performance.At last,the dissertation analyzed the research results and summarized the contribution and shortcomings of this research.The implications for migrant and urban children's education were also elaborated.