When: Monday, February 13, 2012 - 13:00 - 14:30
Where: Room 310, Neville Scarfe Building, UBC Vancouver
Speaker: S. Andrew Garbacz, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Munroe-Meyer Institute, Nebraska Medical Center
The purposes of this study were to examine the relations between children’s school year, parent education, and three dimensions of parent involvement; school-based involvement, home-based involvement, and home-school communication. Specifically, the following were investigated; (a) relations between child school year and dimensions of parent involvement, (b) relations between parent education and dimensions of parent involvement, and (c) the interaction of child school year and parent education in predicting dimensions of parent involvement. Participants were 403 primary caregivers of children attending their first through final years of elementary school on New Zealand’s South Island. A path model was used to detect direct and interaction effects. Findings suggest parent involvement changes as children progress through school, and that parents with more education tend to be more involved in their children’s schooling. No statistically significant interaction effects were found. Implications for the findings and future research directions are discussed.