The affect of parenting style on academic achievement in early years education

Abstract

Lack of parental involvement is one of the biggest challenges schools face. Due to lack of support or too much interference from the parent the academic learning process of the student is disturbed and delayed. This also puts a lot of stress on the teacher trying to support the student in achieving to the best of his or her abilities as well as managing the parents on the side. The purpose of this study was to investigate how 1) different parenting styles deliver different results and if that implies that there exists a more effective parenting style when it comes to school performance, 2) if we could make any correlations between school behaviour, motivation, results and how parents approach their children at home, and 3) to further explore how parenting style affects the academic performance of students in a local Hong Kong kindergarten. Therefore the aim was to explain the relationship between parenting styles, goal orientation and academic achievement in an Early Years Hong Kong school setting.

This study identified the parenting styles prevalent in the kindergarten and explored which of the four parenting styles from Baumrind (1971) and Chao (1994) are being used by the kindergarten parents. It continued by identifying the academic achievement prevalent amoung the students and correlating it with their parent’s parenting style. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was used throughout this study. A group of 60 Kindergarten students were monitored through observation for a period of 6 months in order to track their academic achievement. A survey was sent home and completed by the 60 parents of these students collecting information on parenting style and socio-economic information.

Finally both findings were correlated and significant similarities and connections were identified between both parenting style and academic achievement. The study found strong correlations between parenting styles and the performance of students in school especially concerning authoritative, authoritarian and training parenting styles. The results indicated students from authoritative parenting background scored significantly higher in academic achievement while students from authoritative and training background had low performance. There was no significant correlation found between goal orientation and parenting style or academic achievement.