Enhancing effort and achievement: the importance of parent involvement and home-school partnerships

Schools, teachers and peers can be important facilitators with respect to the enhancement of motivation, effort and achievement, but research has also established that differences in the experiences children have at home are predictive of individual differences in motivation and cognitive competencies. In our study the importance of the home (especially parent involvement) for effort and achievement - next to family background (SES) and student characteristics like prior ability and achievement - was investigated, as well as, the existence of interactions between home/student and class environment characteristics with respect to achievement. A dataset of 4403 students, 266 classes and 57 secondary schools and multilevel and structural equation modeling were used to get an answer our research questions. The results indicate that parents' involvement has a unique positive effect on effort and achievement although it is (weakly) related to SES. Research on interactions revealed that all students are sensitive to their school context, but girls, students with highly involved parents and students with high prior achievement somewhat more. The results of the study suggest the importance of close lines of communication between home and schoo