| Eunai Park
University of California, Santa Barbara
The relationship among parental involvement, adolescents' aspirations and adolescents' academic achievement
FINAL REPORT:
This study investigates the effects of parenting practices on high school students' academic achievement. Cross-ethnic comparisons are made with a special emphasis on Korean-American families. A conceptual framework of how parenting practices influence students' achievement is developed. Relationships between parenting practices and student attitude and behavior are examined to explain the process by which parenting practices affect academic achievement. To ensure not only generalizability but also depth of understanding, both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used. A nationally representative sample of four ethnic groups - Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites - was used to examine the statistical plausibility of the conceptual framework. Structural Equation Modeling was used as the analytic technique because it was most suitable for disentangling complex relationships between large sets of variables. A purposeful sample of four high- and four low-achieving Korean-American students and their parents were interviewed to investigate family interactions, attitudes, and values in detail. The cross-family patterns of the families of the high- and low-achieving students were found. A major finding is that the processes by which parenting practices affect grades vary among ethnic groups, although the effects themselves are minimal compared to those of previous achievement. Among White, Asian and Hispanic families, authoritative parenting appeared to contribute to their children's high achievement even more than parental involvement behaviors; the behaviors tended to be motivated from the parents' wishes to improve academic achievement. Parental home involvement has a positive indirect effect on academic achievement among White, Black, and Asian families. The mediating variables were students' aspirations and enrollment in advanced programs. Among ethnic minority groups parental home involvement has a negative direct effect on academic achievement. The results suggest that unless parental involvement at home induces students' positive characteristics, it in and of itself does not necessarily support adolescents' academic achievement. Qualitative data from Korean American families provide a plausible explanation for this phenomenon. The data suggests that whereas Korean American parents of high-achieving students engage in serious discussions regarding academic matters and provide appropriate support, the major parental involvement behaviors among the parents of low-achieving students tend to be frequent nagging. Nagging and punishment do not usually create positive differences in attitude and behavior. Parental school involvement also has indirect and direct effects on achievement. The direct effect was found among Blacks and Hispanics only. It appeared that parental school involvement has some positive effects not only on high school students' aspirations and cowrse enrollment but also on other factors that are not included in the theoretical framework. The qualitative data show that the level of Korean American parents' school involvement is relatively low, regardless oftheir children's academic achievement. It appears that there were several reasons for the low level of involvement - self-consciousness regarding lack of English fluency, fear of approaching school authority, and cultural baggage (chimabaram) transferred from Korea.
A major contribution of this study to the existing literature is that it explains the process by which parenting practices affect high school students' academic achievement. The results suggest that parenting practices affect high school students' aspirations, course enrollment, and disciplinary problems.Another contribution is that it shows that although parenting practices affect high school students' academic achievement, they do not overrule the effects of previous achievement. Also, by using both quantitative and qualitative research methods, this study explains both inter-ethnic group and intra-ethnic group (Korean Americans) differences in terms of parenting practices and their children's achievement.
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