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The Relationship Between Parental Academic Background And Primary School Pupils’ Academic Performance
[A CASE STUDY OF SAKI-WEST.]
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Rosenblatt (1990) spoke about the importance of taking time for children and playing with them. He quoted Neitzsche when he said that there is nothing so serious as a child at play. The decision parents make to either thrust themselves into their children’s worlds of amusement or allow them to be unsupervised will make a profound impact on the children’s life. The most vulnerable and dangerous time for children is between 3:00 PM and 8:00 PM. This period is known as “Crime Timeâ€.
Many people would love to think their children would never be involved in something like a violent crime. They may not be the perpetrators but they very well could be the victims. Victims outnumber perpetrators 10 to 1 (Alter, 1998).
Walberg, Bole & Waxman (1980) declare the importance for families to share interests in hobbies, activities and games. Reading material should be abundant and discussed on regular intervals. The study states that cultural activities and parental involvement show a significant relationship to academic achievement. Some cultural activities include going to the museum, zoo or public library. It does not take money to be enthralled by culture. School Success Strategies Watkins (1997) theorized that parents’ involvement has made an impact on a child’s learning and motivation. The study looked at various types of involvement including home instruction, volunteering in the classroom and participation in school governance. His comments on achievement goal theory were particularly interesting.
Achievement goal theory looks at how children view the reasons for learning and the purpose of education. A child having a mastery goal orientation focuses on learning more than performing, and a child having a performance goal orientation is concerned more with the evaluation they receive than acquisition of skills. Students with a mastery goal seem to have more persistence and a higher intrinsic motivation.
On the other hand, performance goal students appear to have greater difficulty with deep information processing. There were separate scales used in this study for mastery orientation and performance orientation. Some questions asked about encouraging hard work, talking about what’s going on in school and reading with children. Many authors (Harris & Gibbon, 1996;
Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001; Jameson, 1997; Wallis & Cole, 1998) discuss factors in a home environment that provide children with educational tools needed to achieve academic success. Jameson (1997) specifies the importance of a quiet time and place for homework. There was also a discussion on the negative impact of television, but the positive impact of praise. Harris & Gibbon (1996) state communication is a vital component for school success. Parents who prepare their children talk about setbacks, possible stressors and coping skills. Wallis (1998) wrote a parent’s guide on the importance of encouraging, praising and involvement.
Hofferth & Sandberg (2001) did a study on how American children spend their time. The authors were careful not to try and determine causality, but rather examine some activities significantly associated with achievement. This article has shown that the amount of time spent at home eating, sleeping and reading is linked to children’s achievement and behavior. (p. 11) Other activities thought to affect academic success were: household work, household conversations, group leisure activities, and family meals.
Individual differences in children’s achievement were studied by Baharudin & Luster (1998) relative to differences in the home environment. They found the quality of the children’s home environment to be positively related with achievement. Children with higher test scores came from more supportive homes. The parents of preschool children were asked about conveying positive feelings, answering child’s questions, taking trips to the museum, eating meals as a family, requiring the child to keep play area clean, conversing with the child, and encouraging the child to develop and sustain hobbies.
The literature suggests home environment factors affect school achievement, and home environment factors may be influenced if the family culture follows the current trend. The essence of a ‘traditional American family’ has deteriorated with the stress in many of today’s families because of poverty, single parenting styles and working mothers. Stress in the home deteriorates the environment and these stressors affect school achievement. Hopefully, this study will help to examine home environment factors that may impact children’s academic achievement.
2.3 The Influence of Family Involvement on Students’ Academic Performance
In today’s fast-paced society, families are finding it more difficult to stay connected with their children’s education (Epstein, 2001). Increasingly, in the modern family, both parents work outside of the home (Benson, 2002). In the report “Every Child Learns, Every Child Succeeds,†Alberta’s Commission on learning (2003) found that Often the family is led by a single parent with little or no help from extended family Members.
Furthermore, the extended family has become significantly less extended as Mobility has increased. Parents are becoming isolated from their children and finding it difficult to keep a careful watch on what needs to be done to help them succeed in school.
Many families are not even led by a parent, but by a grandparent, guardian, or some other adult (Benson, 2002). In what is sometimes called a traditional family environment, parents, usually including a stay-at-home mother, were able to monitor the school work of their children carefully and in turn to ensure to a much greater degree than in today’s nontraditional family that student performance remained high in factors such as engagement, academic achievement, attendance and attitude toward school (Deslandes & Bertrand, 2005).
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]ABSTRACT IS COMING SOON ... Continue reading---
CHAPTER ONE - [ Total Page(s): 2 ]CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the Study So many reasons have been advanced for the poor performance of pupils in schools prominent, among them is the role of the teachers and Parents seem to depend only on teachers with the belief to change or transform their children to academic experts overnight and anything that falls below this expectation makes the teachers conduct unacceptable. Few people care to think of other factors resp ... Continue reading---
CHAPTER THREE - [ Total Page(s): 2 ]CHAPTER THREE3.0 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY3.0 IntroductionThis chapter deals with all the activities involved in the collection of all necessary data and information required for the research project. The chapter is set out to describe in full the following:The research designThe source of dataThe characteristics of the population of studyThe sample and sampling techniquesThe method of data collection3.1 Research Design Research design is a detailed plan outlin ... Continue reading---
CHAPTER FOUR - [ Total Page(s): 12 ]Key: SA- Strongly Agree, A- Agree, D- Disagree, SD- Strongly Disagree Pupils Response on Parent’s Attitude to Education SA A D SD ... Continue reading---
CHAPTER FIVE - [ Total Page(s): 1 ] CHAPTER FIVE5.0 SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION5.1 IntroductionThis chapter discusses summary of the findings, conclusions, recommendations, and suggestions for further research following research objectives.5.2 Summary of the findingsThe purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of parental academic background on pupil’s academic performance in primary schools in SWLG, Saki. Data were collected using the questionnaires as the main res ... Continue reading---
REFRENCES - [ Total Page(s): 4 ]REFERENCESAdewale, A. M. (2002). Implication of parasitic infections on school performance among school-age children. Ilorin Journal of science education. Vol.2 Pp.78-81.Alberta Education & Patricia Makenzie . (2003) .Alberta’s commission on learning.Alldred, P., & Edwards, R.. (2000). A Tlogy of parental involvement in education Centering on children and young people: Negotiating familiarization, Institutionalization and individualization. British Journal of Sociology of ... Continue reading---
