Parents' perception or children's perception? Parental involvement and student engagement in Chinese middle schools

Keqiao Liu; Yong Zhao; Miao Li; Wenjing Li; Yang Yang

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.977678

Parents' perception or children's perception? Parental involvement and student engagement in Chinese middle schools

Front Psychol. 2022 Nov 17:13:977678. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.977678. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Keqiao Liu¹, Yong Zhao², Miao Li³, Wenjing Li³, Yang Yang⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Public Finance and Public Administration, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang, China.
² Middle School Attached to Shandong University, Jinan, China.
³ Department of Sociology, School of Philosophy and Social Development, Shandong University, Jinan, China.
⁴ Center of Educational Technology, Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.

Abstract

It is widely held that parental involvement plays a key role in enhancing student engagement, but less is known about whether and how parents' and their children's perceptions of different types of parental involvement relate to dimensions of student engagement, especially in the Chinese context. By surveying 2,219 students and their parents from nine middle schools in eastern China, this study found that only children's perceptions of certain types of parental involvement (e.g., parent-child communication), rather than those of their parents, correlated with student engagement (i.e., behavioral engagement, emotional engagement, and cognitive engagement). Further, different types of parental involvement presented varied relationships with dimensions of student engagement. This study deepens our understanding of the dynamic interplay between parental involvement and student engagement in view of parents' and children's perceptions.

Keywords: China; children’s perception; middle school students; parental involvement; parents’ perception; student engagement.