Longitudinal impact of parent-teacher relationship on middle school students' academic achievements in China

Wangqian Fu; Qianqian Pan; Ying Yuan; Guanyu Chen

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.872301

Longitudinal impact of parent-teacher relationship on middle school students' academic achievements in China

Front Psychol. 2022 Aug 23:13:872301. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.872301. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Wangqian Fu¹, Qianqian Pan², Ying Yuan³, Guanyu Chen⁴

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
² Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, Office of Education Research, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.
³ School of Journalism and Communication, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
⁴ Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology and Special Education, Faculty of Education, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Abstract

Objective: The study aims to discuss the longitudinal impact of the parent-teacher relationship on students' academic achievements in China.

Method: Based on the China Education Panel Survey, covering the data from 438 classes of 112 schools in 28 county-level administrative areas in China, we used the hierarchical linear model to analyze the data.

Results: We found that the parents' active communication with teachers, parents' participation in parent meetings, teachers' active contact, whether parents are afraid to communicate with teachers, and parents' willingness to participate in parent meetings have significant relationships with students' academic achievements. At the class level, the extent of teachers' stress from parents' requests and teachers' perception of respect from parents also affected students' academic achievements significantly in the Chinese context.

Conclusion: There was a longitudinal association between the parent-teacher relationship and students' academic achievements. The practical implication was discussed in the paper.

Keywords: academic achievements; hierarchical linear model; mainland China; middle school; parent-teacher relationship.