Parents' daily involvement in children's math homework and activities during early elementary school

Recharging exhausted parents: How and when involvement in children's education increases working parents' flourishing at home and engagement at work

Parental involvement in children's education is highly valued and encouraged in many societies. While existing research has mainly focused on the positive effects parental involvement has for children, we argue that engaging in such quality parent-child interactions can also be a resource-gaining process for parents. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory and the work-home resources model, the current study aims to investigate how and when working parents' involvement in children's education enhances their well-being at home and engagement at work. Using a two-wave survey of 206 full-time employees with at least one school-aged child, our results indicate that for parents experiencing higher levels of parental burnout, involvement in their children's education enhances their flourishing experience at home and subsequently improves work engagement and creative process engagement at work. Overall, our study contributes to the well-being and work-family interface literature by highlighting the positive effect of parental involvement, an underexplored construct, on working parents' well-being both at home and in the workplace. This study also provides practical implications for burned-out working parents that they can benefit from involving themselves in their children's education to cope with and thrive from family demands.

Parental homework involvement and students' mathematics achievement: a meta-analysis

Introduction

Given the importance of parent involvement to students' academic achievement, researchers have used a variety of methods to investigate the relationship between the two, but few focus on the relationship between parental homework involvement and students' achievement in a specific subject by using meta-analysis. This meta-analysis investigated the relationship between parent homework involvement and students' mathematics achievement from two dimensions: supportive (SPI) and intrusive parent homework involvement (IPI), along with their moderators.

Methods

Accessed through Web of Science, Taylor and Francis Online, EBSCO, Springer Link, Elsevier, and ProQuest databases, a total of 20 empirical studies between 2005 to 2022, 41 independent effect sizes were included (N = 16,338). Effect size estimations were obtained by transforming Fisher's correlation coefficient. This study has conducted the heterogeneity tests of the magnitudes grouped according to different moderators, and investigated the publication bias that affects meta-analysis studies.

Results and discussion

The results showed an overall positive link between SPI and students' mathematics achievement (r = 0.076, 95% CI = [0.037, 0.114]) and a negative link between IPI and students' mathematics achievement (r = -0.153, 95% CI = [-0.226, -0.079]). For the link of SPI and students' mathematics achievement, the effect sizes were (a) strongest when SPI was measured by autonomy support, followed by content support and provision of structure respectively; (b) stronger when students' mathematics achievement indicated by non-standardized measurement than standardized measurement. For the link of IPI and students' mathematics achievement, the effect sizes varied across grade level, strongest in high school, followed by middle school and lowest in primary school. These findings provide important implications for how to improve parental homework involvement practice to increase students' mathematics achievement.

Reciprocal relationships between parental and scholastic homework assistance and students' academic functioning at elementary school

Homework assistance is provided both by parents and by institutions, for example, full-day schools. Previous research found evidence that the quality of homework assistance - measured by three dimensions derived from the self-determination theory, namely, responsiveness, structure, and control - is reciprocally related with students' academic functioning (i.e., achievement and homework behavior). However, findings on parental homework assistance have been consistent only for the secondary level, whereas elementary school students have been studied less and previous results obtained for this population are inconclusive. Moreover, research on homework assistance that is given at school is scarce. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate whether reciprocal associations between the quality of homework assistance and students' academic functioning in elementary school can be found (1) for parental homework assistance and (2) for scholastic homework assistance. We calculated cross-lagged panel models based on longitudinal data from 335 German fourth graders collected in autumn 2019 (September and October) and winter 2020 (February and March). The analyses for scholastic homework assistance were based on a subsample of 112 students. Whereas responsiveness and structure did not predict students' outcomes in the way we expected, control had unfavorable relationships in both homework settings. Moreover, parental control was reciprocally related with students' mean grades in three subjects. The positive forms of homework assistance (responsiveness and structure) were predicted by different indicators of academic functioning in the two homework settings.