Educational success and the impact of parental involvement: the language barrier (Liza Doppler)11/18/2019 There is significant research that supports parental involvement and its positive impact on student success in school. Diverse families are at a disadvantage trying to give their children the best possible chance for knowledge attainment because they cannot actively participate in their children's learning if they do not speak the same language as the curriculum being taught. This is why I have chosen to research if there is statistical significance in the difference between the GPA mean of these students and students whose parents speak the same language as the schools. The education system should address this discrepancy to allow all students equal and equitable opportunity to learn and succeed. Educational attainment and student success are impacted by many factors. I believe that one of these factors is parental involvement in a child's schooling. My hypothesis is that the language a student's parents speak impacts the student's GPA. The independent variable of parental language affects the dependent variable of student GPA because language, whether similar or different to what is spoken in a student's school compared to what is spoken by a student's parents at home, impacts the role of parental involvement in the student's learning experience. Based on other studies' findings, parent involvement is positively correlated with student grades (Gonzalez et al., 2013). This leads me to believe that the parental language compatibility or discrepancy either allows or hinders parent involvement in the child's educational experience and affects their success. The null hypothesis is that parental language has no effect on a child's GPA. A study done by L. M. Gonzalez et al. states, "Research has shown positive associations between parental involvement and student grades," (2013). This study also acknowledged barriers that are associated with Latino families, such as language, stating schools may have "exclusionary practices such as monolingual communications or limited attempts at outreach to Spanish-speaking parents," (Gonzalez et al., 2013). My research focused on a purely Hispanic student sample with both students whose parents speak English and those whose parents speak Spanish. A similar study done by F. Doucet hypothesizes that "the highly ritualized nature of parent involvement practices creates a group identity among mainstream parents and schools that marginalizes diverse families," (2011). This author states that language, among other characteristics, "is an important trait that facilitates or obstructs access to the "insider" knowledge - or rules - necessary to successfully navigate the U.S. educational system," (Doucet, 2011). Doucet found that fathers were more involved than mothers of Haitian immigrant students due to the cultural family role, but more important to my research, the fathers' increased proficiency in the English language (2011). These studies both support that language, among other variables, is a barrier to diverse families, more specifically parents, and their involvement in their children's education; this language barrier can hinder student academic success by impeding parental involvement in a child's schooling. These prior studies' findings support the idea that there is a positive correlation between parent involvement in a student’s education and student’s academic success. The language barrier between a student’s education and the language his/her parents speak hinders parental involvement in their child’s education, making parents unable to actively participate in their child’s learning experience as much as parents who speak the same language as the school could, blocking them from helping their children or getting involved in school functions like PTA or PTO programs, volunteering to chaperone field trips, etc. By addressing this barrier and considering the implementation of alternative mechanisms to increase parent involvement for diverse families, the educational system could increase the likelihood of success of these diverse students already at a disadvantage due to the parental language barrier. The data I used to conduct my research was taken from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Scholarship 2000-2008 dataset on ICPSR (2019). This scholarship is awarded to high-achieving ethnic minority student in the United States pursuing higher education. This sample represents the first 10 years of students who received the scholarship and took this survey that contributed to the information found in the data. I manipulated the dataset to display only Hispanic students who were awarded the scholarship. I then filtered the data to show only the independent variable of "language of the students' parent(s)" and the dependent variable of "current GPA," out of the many variables available within the data (GMS, 2019). The number that represented parent language as English was 1 and the number that represented Spanish was 2 on the graph as well as in the image of group statistics. The GPAs of students were measured on a 4-point scale. After manipulating the data to test for a difference in GPA means between students with parents who speak Spanish compared to English out of the purely Hispanic student sample, the descriptive statistics showed a statistical significance of 95.3% (GMS, 2019). The difference between the GPA means of students whose parents speak English (GPA mean: 2.5528) and Spanish (GPA mean: 2.3426) allowed me to support the rejection of the null hypothesis and therefore support the hypothesis that parental language impacts student GPA (2019). Language is not the only factor contributing to parent involvement in students' schooling. Socioeconomic status, work schedule of parents, cultural norms, and other factors associated with diverse families can impact parent involvement as well. However, the results of my research help me to support the notion that language may play a role in parent involvement in a child's education and therefore may impact the academic success of students. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates Millennium Scholars (GMS) Survey Data Cohort 1, United States, 2000-2008. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2019-03-28. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34375.v2 Doucet, F. (2011). Parent Involvement as Ritualized Practice. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 42(4), 404-421. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/41410143 Gonzalez, L., Borders, L., Hines, E., Villalba, J., & Henderson, A. (2013). Parental Involvement in Children's Education: Considerations for School Counselors Working with Latino Immigrant Families. Professional School Counseling, 16(3), 185-193. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/profschocoun.16.3.185 English Language Learning (ELL) Student Achievement in Rural Regions |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |