The Effect of Parent School Involvement and Parent Perceptions about School on Children’s Perceived Academic Competence and Behavioral Engagement: A Mediational Model

Behavioral engagement at school has been cited as an avenue for improving low academic performance and decreasing boredom and disaffection among students and dropout rate. What we don’t know is how dimensions of parent involvement and students’ perceived academic competence contribute to behavioral engagement at school. Specifically, the present study contributed to the limited research on the mechanisms responsible for the influences of the aforementioned variables on students’ academic related outcomes. Participants consisted of a sample of 637 elementary students from a larger sample of 784 academically at-risk and ethnically and linguistically diverse first grade students recruited from three school districts (i.e., two rural and one urban) for a longitudinal study focused on the impact of grade retention on academic achievement. Participants’ behavioral engagement, parent school-based involvement, and parents’ perceptions about the school were rated by their teachers and parents. Three separate Structural Equation Model (SEM) analyses were conducted, one for each dimension of parent involvement. Results suggest that perceived academic competence does not mediate the relationship between these dimensions of parent involvement and behavioral engagement. However, there were expected within-wave associations between study variables, further supporting concurrent relationships between dimensions of parent involvement, academic competence, and behavioral engagement. Findings have implications for researching more indirect forms of parent involvement and their impact on children’s academic competence and behavioral engagement