Parental involvement in their children's education Zlatka Cugmas, Nataša Kepe-Globevnik and Jovita Pogorevc Merčnik in Tina Štemberger
Summary: Parental involvement is defined as the degree to which parents are dedicated to their parental roles and accelerate their children’s optimal development (Maccoby and Martin in Grolnick and Slowiaczek 1994). Grolnick and Slowiaczek distinguish between parental involvement in general and in the educational field. In the educational field they make the difference between behavioral, personal and cognitive involvement. In the research carried out among 121 pupils of the last class of primary-school or the first class of secondary-school, we applied The questionnaire about parental involvement in their children’s education – for children (VSI-O) and The questionnaire about parental involvement in their children’s education – for parents (VSI-S) and investigated the relationships between child’s gender, level of education (primary-school or secondary-school), type of secondary-school, parental education and parental involvement in their children’s education. We researched the correlations between parental involvement in their children’s education and child’s school grades in the past school year and their expected final level of education. Analyses are based on descriptive statistics, the χ2- test and ANOVA. The results show that parental involvement in their children’s education is more intensive for their daughters than for their sons and for their primary-school children than for their secondary-school children; that parental involvement is more intensive among more educated than among less educated parents and that the correlations between parental involvement and their children’s school success and educational aspirations are significant.