APA Research Paper

Parental Involvement in Middle School Achievements

Introduction

Early teenage years are often characterized by striking changes in the context of school, developmental processes, and family relationships. Due to these changes, academic performance of students often declines, but the long term implications for academic performance increases at the same time. In fostering achievement across secondary or middle school levels, children's parents, family members, the relations of family school, and involvement of parents in the education process can be very helpful in enhancing academic performance of middle school children by providing them all round support. Although a sizable body of literature that did emerge over the last two decades which focused on the involvement of parents in during middle school education of their children, until recently researchers had not systematically examined this body of research for determining what types of parental involvement can put more strong and effective impact on the achievement of children. In a recent study, researchers did a Meta analysis on the research that exists on the involvement of parents in the middle school achievement of their students in order to find out what types of involvements of parents are more strongly related to the achievement of children (Driessen et al., 2005).

More than 50 studies had positively associated involvement of parents with the achievement of middle school children. It was to be noted that these studies had exempted parental help with the homework of their children from the criteria as it's something almost every parent do. They judged parent involvement and its effectiveness on some other criterion which majority of parents do not do in a way they are supposed to do it. Those studies had found that parental involvement that reflects academic socialization put the strongest positive impact on the achievement of children. On the basis of the known characteristics of the tasks of adolescence and the stage of development, strategies that reflect academic socialization had shown more consistency with the stage of development in early adolescence (Adams & Berzonsky, 2003).

Middle school children enter into the school in their adolescence and go through physical and psychological changes on multiple levels. Years in the middle school corresponds to the key changes in the development of early teenage boys and girls. At that age, they are also going through the cognitive and biological development, social development, developments that make them renegotiate their relationships with their own family, extended family and community in which they reside. One of the most crucial developments that contribute most in defining their success was their relationship with the parents. Moreover, the time children spent in middle school reflects a crucial change in them as compared to the time they spent in elementary school. Middle schools had more larger and bureaucratic system in which students come across with more peers, teachers and curricular choices. If we analyze children pre middle school and middle school academic performance, these development and changes in the lives of children negatively affect student's academic performance and eventually caused it to ...