| William Yun Lan
Texas Tech University
A model of parenting style and students' academic performance
FINAL REPORT:
Parents and families are expected to play an important role in the nation's effort to improve school education. However, they are not obtaining much help from research to parenting and family. A majority of parenting research has focused on the impact of family structure variables, such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and family composition, on children's psychological and educational development, and most of these variables are out of parents' control. Even research involving parenting processes has focuses on a broad perspective of parenting style and failed to specify parenting practices or behaviors that parents can implement in home. The present study is designed to fill out the gap of our knowledge about the parenting. A model depicting the relationship between parenting style and students' academic performance, with parenting practice and students' achievement-related psychological and educational attributes as mediating variable, is to be examined with the base-year data of the NELS:88. The model will be tested with Structural Equation Modeling to establish a causal relationshiop among the variables of parenting style, parenting practice, students' achievement-related attributes, and academic performance. Findings of the study will enrich our understanding of the ecology of a learning community and help parents, educators, and policy makers to work together in creating an educative family environment for students.
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