L’implication parentale pour favoriser l’engagement lors de la transition primaire-secondaire : perceptions de parents et de leur adolescent à risque de décrochage scolaire

The aim of this study was to identify the types of parental involvement that favour engagement among students at risk of academic dropout (AD) during the primary-secondary transition (PST). To attain this general research goal, individual semi-structured interviews were carried out with adolescents and one of their parents, which contributed to the originality of this study. In fact, the interviews allowed the adolescents to express themselves—a seldom used approach in research—and allowed the researchers to document a variety of perceptions regarding adolescents’ engagement and the parental involvement that supports it. This study took the form of a qualitative, exploratory and descriptive investigation that adopted an interpretative perspective. Data were collected from 11 parents and 11 adolescents at risk of AD during the PST.   Results revealed that, even if adolescents’ engagement globally evolved in a positive way during their PST, their lack of interest in a discipline—a lack of affective engagement—negatively influenced their cognitive and behavioural engagement. Affective engagement could therefore be considered a precursor to cognitive and behavioural engagement and could influence these dimensions.   Moreover, adolescents rarely explicitly recognized the influence of their parents have on their engagement; inversely, all the parents shared the strong conviction that they play a fundamental role in their adolescents’ academic lives. The parents insisted on the importance of adapting their involvement, as often as necessary, to the characteristics and needs of their adolescent, which suggests that the process of parental involvement is dynamic and continuous. These results differ from the model proposed by Hoover-Dempsey, Whitaker and Ice (2010), because the latter presents a linear parental involvement process that does not take into account such adaptations.   The results of this study also highlight four types of parental involvement that favour engagement: academic support, academic socialization, parent-teacher communication and parental supervision. The participants identified academic support, however, as the most important type of involvement because it aimed to help with schoolwork as well as with the development of adolescents’ autonomy when making decisions. Academic socialization was associated with the development of adolescents’ feelings of competence and relatedness through communication of realistic and attainable parental expectations. Parent-teacher communication was associated with an increase in affective engagement since it positively influences the student-teacher relationship.   All things considered, some recommendations relevant to applied settings have been formulated such as offering training sessions concerning parental engagement and involvement, prevention of AD and PST to parents, teachers and adolescents or pursuing further action research with teacher-researchers concerning, for instance, parental involvement practises and interventions to increase engagement among students at risk of AD during PST.

Keyphrases: Parent, Adolescent, Parental involvement, Student engagement, Dropout prevention, School transition, Students at risk, Parent student relationship, Parents school relationship, Adolescent, Qualitative method