"Motivation of Parent Involvement in Secondary-Level Schooling
Rollande Deslandes
Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada
Richard Bertrand
Université Laval, Quebec, Canada
Abstract
Inspired by K. V. Hoover-Dempsey and H. M. Sandler’s (1995, 1997) model of the parent involvement process, the authors examined 4 psychological constructs of parent involvement: (a) relative
strength of parents’ role construction, (b) parents’ self-effi cacy for helping adolescents succeed in
school, (c) parents’ perceptions of teacher invitations to become involved, and (d) parents’ perceptions of students’ invitations to become involved. The authors obtained survey responses from 770
parents of adolescents in 5 Quebec secondary schools—354 parents of 7th graders, 231 parents of
8th graders, and 185 parents of 9th graders. Results emphasize that it is important that researchers
distinguish parent involvement at home and at school when examining the predictive power of the
4 psychological constructs. Findings also provide evidence of grade-level differences in the predictive
models of parent involvement at home and at school. Parents’ perceptions of students’ invitations
was the most powerful predictor of parent involvement at home models across the 3 grade levels.
Parents’ role construction made important contributions to the prediction of their involvement at
Grades 7 and 9; parents’ perceptions of teacher invitations were associated with parent involvement
at school across the 3 grade levels. Whether at home or at school, parents became involved if they
perceived that teachers and students expected or desired their involvement.
Key words: parent involvement, parent motivation, secondary schools
In past decades, a wealth of studies showed that parent involvement is essential in children’s
educational process and outcomes ( Henderson & Mapp, 2002 ). Parent involvement refers to parents’ roles in educating their children at home and in school ( Christenson & Sheridan, 2001 ).
Involvement can take different forms, including discussions about school, help with homework,
or volunteering at school. Parent involvement appears to have lasting benefi ts even through high
school. When parents are involved, secondary students tend to earn higher grades ( Deslandes,
Royer, Turcotte, & Bertrand, 1997 ; Dornbusch & Ritter, 1988 ; Lee, 1994 ; Steinberg, Lamborn,
Dornbusch, & Darling, 1992 ), show higher aspirations ( Trusty, 1996 ), and have fewer disciplinary
problems ( Deslandes & Royer, 1997 ; Eccles, Early, Frasier, Belansky, & McCarthy, 1997 ).
Even though the benefi ts associated with parent involvement at the secondary level seem to be
well understood, educators still know little about what factors lead parents to decide to become
involved in their adolescents’ schooling. In the present study, we explored how the psychological
constructs, as defi ned in Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler’s model (1995, 1997), infl uence the parent
involvement process at the secondary level, and more precisely, at the fi rst three grade levels in
Quebec secondary schools. We addressed the following research question: What are the relative
contributions of parents’ (a) role construction, (b) self-effi cacy, (c) perception of teacher invitations,
and (d) perception of adolescent invitations to predict parent involvement at home and at school in
Grades 7, 8, and 9? (Because the invitation for parents to become involved is presented by teachers
and students, we considered, as did Walker, Hoover-Dempsey, Reed, and Jones [2000], teacher invitations and student invitations as two difference constructs, thus leading to four psychological constructs related to parent involvement.) Previous research on the evolution of adolescents’ autonomy
and parent involvement in secondary schools led us to expect some differences across grade levels
in the predictive models of parent involvement at home and at school ( Deslandes, 2003 ).
Quantitative
Characteristics
in Marginal
Annotations
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Address correspondence to Rollande Deslandes, Education Department, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières,
C. P. 500, Trois-Rivières, Québec, Canada, G9A 5H7. (E-mail: <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_EMAIL_ADDRESS>)
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30 PART I An Introduction to Educational Research
Infl uences on Parent Involvement
Jordan, Orozco, and Averett (2001)identifi ed factors that infl uence levels and aspects of parent
involvement. Family (e.g., education level, family structure, family size, parent gender, work outside
the home) and child characteristics (e.g., age, gender, grade level, academic performance) are of
particular relevance in this study. Research has shown that undereducated parents and single parents are less involved in certain types of involvement activities. For instance, Deslandes, Potvin, and
Leclerc (1999)found that adolescents from traditional families and well-educated parents report
more affective support (parent encouragement and praise, help with homework, frequent discussions about school, and attendence at school performances or sports events) than do adolescents
from nontraditional families and less educated parents. Astone and McLanahan (1991)also indicated that adolescents who live with single parents or stepparents report that their homework is
monitored less than the homework of adolescents from traditional families. Deslandes and Cloutier
(2000) reported that mothers are more involved with homework than are fathers. Dauber and
Epstein (1989)argued that well-educated parents and those who do not work outside the home
(Eccles & Harold, 1996 ) are more likely to be involved at school. Eccles and Harold concluded that
parents with fewer children provide more help with homework than do parents with more children.
Child characteristics also may infl uence parent involvement. For example, Deslandes and Potvin
(1999) observed that mothers of adolescent boys communicated with teachers more often than did
mothers of adolescent girls. Parents tend to become more involved when their children experience
their fi rst learning or behavior diffi culties. According to Eccles and Harold (1996) , parents of highachieving children tend to participate more in school activities than do parents of low-achieving
children. Epstein (2001)showed that parent involvement decreases dramatically as children move
into secondary school. When Deslandes (2003)compared parent involvement in Grades 8, 9, and
10, he found a steady decline in parent involvement, but a steady increase in adolescent autonomy.
Parents’ Role Construction
Parents need to understand their roles because that understanding identifi es the activities that they
believe are necessary and part of their responsibilities as parents. In other words, parents are more
likely to become involved if they view their participation as a requirement of parenting. HooverDempsey, Jones, and Reed (1999) hypothesized three components of role construction, depending
on whether parents focused responsibility for children’s education on themselves as parents, on
the school, or on parent–school partnerships.
Parents’ Self-effi cacy for Helping Children Succeed in School
Parent self-effi cacy is rooted in Bandura’s (1997)self-effi cacy theory and suggests that parents are
more likely to be involved if they believe that they have the skills and knowledge to help their
children. In other words, parents become involved if they believe that their actions will improve
learning and academic performance ( Hoover-Dempsey, Bassler, & Brissie, 1992 ; Stevenson, Chen, &
Uttal, 1990 ). Prior research has indicated that parents believe that they will have more infl uence
over their children’s schooling when their children are in the elementary grades than they will
when their children are in the upper grades ( Freedman-Doan, Arbreton, Harold, & Eccles, 1993 ).
In general, the stronger their self-effi cacy, the more persistence parents exhibit in their involvement
(Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2001 ).
Parents’ Perceptions of Teacher Invitations
Research also has shown that teachers’ demands and opportunities for involvement, coupled
with an inviting school climate, are related signifi cantly to level of parent involvement ( Comer &
Haynes, 1991 ; Dauber & Epstein, 1993 ; Eccles & Harrold, 1996; Epstein, 1986 ). Parents tend to be
more involved if they perceive that teachers and students both want and expect their involvement
(Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2001 ).
Parents’ Perceptions of Student Invitations
Parents will become involved if they perceive that their young children or adolescents want them
to do so. Students’ invitations are either implicit or explicit and emerge as a function of their age,
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CHAPTER 1 The Process of Conducting Research Using Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches 31
their press for independence, and their performance level ( Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2001 ; Walker
et al., 2000). For instance, when young children or adolescents ask for help with homework, they
are expressing explicit invitations. On the other hand, if they express the desire to work alone,
parents might respond by reducing their involvement. If children bring a poor report card home,
they might be conveying implicit invitations. Seeking parental help does not necessarily mean that
young children or adolescents are having academic diffi culties. For example, Zimmerman and
Martinez-Pons (1986)found that high-achieving students wanted more parental assistance than did
low-achieving students.
Refl ecting on three of the four psychological constructs to involvement cited in the preceding paragraphs (i.e., parents’ role construction, self-effi cacy, and perceptions of teacher invitations), Reed, Jones, Walker, and Hoover-Dempsey (2000) found that parents’ role construction,
self-effi cacy for helping the child succeed in school, and perceptions of teacher invitations represent motivators of parents’ involvement in their children’s education at the elementary level. Role
construction was the fi rst predictor of parent involvement; perception of teachers’ invitations was
the second predictor. Parent self-effi cacy seemed less infl uential. The authors suggested that role
construction may be a mediator of effi cacy’s infl uence on involvement (Reed et al.).
In a study that compared 5th, 8th, and 11th graders’ self-reported invitations to parent involvement in homework, Walker and Hoover-Dempsey (2001) revealed decreased levels of parent
homework involvement across adolescence. Across the three age groups, students’ invitations for
parents’ homework involvement was steady, but the authors found that parents of younger students tend to help without being asked.
Investigations are needed to better understand what motivates parents to become involved in
their young children’s education and, more particularly, in their adolescents’ educational process. Researchers need to examine differences in parents’ motivation to become involved across
secondary-grade levels. To our knowledge, no study has yet examined the individual and combined contributions of Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler’s (1995, 1997) four psychological constructs
to predict parent involvement decisions across secondary-grade levels.
We targeted adolescents in the fi rst 3 years of secondary school in Quebec (equivalent to
Grades 7, 8, and 9 in the American school system). Prior work ( Deslandes, 2003 ) showed that parent involvement is signifi cantly lower, and adolescent autonomy level is signifi cantly higher, in the
fourth year of secondary school in Quebec (Grade 10 in the American school system) than in the
second and third years of secondary school.
To examine how the four psychological constructs infl uence parent-involvement decisions
across the three secondary grade levels, we posed the following research question: What are the
relative contributions of parents’ role construction, self-effi cacy, perceptions of teacher invitations,
and perceptions of adolescent invitations to predict parent involvement at home and at school in
Grades 7, 8, and 9?
Method
Participants
Participants were 770 parents of secondary-level students attending fi ve public schools located in
urban and rural areas in the Mauricie and Centre du Quebec and Monteregie regions. The regions
are representative of the general Quebec population. Forty-six percent (354) of the participants
were parents of Secondary I students (equivalent to Grade 7 students in the American school
system), 30% (231) were parents of Secondary II students (equivalent to Grade 8 students in the
American system), and 24% (185) were parents of Secondary III students (equivalent to Grade 9
students in the American system). Nearly 51% of the students were girls and 49% were boys. Fortyseven percent of the students were fi rst born in their family, 37% second born, 13% third born, and
3% fourth and fi fth born, respectively.
The demographics of the sample were as follows: Approximately 84% of the respondents were
mothers, and 13% were fathers. The other respondents were either stepmothers or stepfathers, or
others. Seventy percent of the participants were employed outside of the home. Seventy percent
lived in a traditional family, and 30% lived in a nontraditional one, which corresponds exactly to
what is being reported in the Quebec population in general ( Quebec Statistics Institute. 2001 ). The
majority of the families (37%) had two children, 25% had one child, 21% had three children, and
the remainder of the sample (17%) had four or more children. About 3% of the respondents had
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32 PART I An Introduction to Educational Research
less than a high school education, 65% had a high school diploma or a secondary-level trade formation, and 32% had a college or university education. Seventy-two percent of the participants had
a job outside the home environment. Table 1 presents the characteristics of the whole sample and
of the three subsamples. " what is this research about