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Child attitude to school as the mechanism of effect of parent practices on academic achievement
Aggression has been identified in our society as a pervasive social problem facing our schools. Comprehensive interventions with aggressive children are needed. Based on the assumption that achievement plays a causal role in aggression, these interventions should include a focus on achievement. It has been well established that parent involvement in school has a strong and positive effect on academic achievement. This pervasive effect, regardless of definition of parent involvement, leads to speculation that there are common mechanisms by which this effect occurs. One such mechanism is attitude to school. According to this reasoning, parent involvement affects child attitude to school directly and indirectly affects academic achievement. This study hypothesized that these relationships between parent involvement, achievement and child attitude to school would hold true concurrently, across time, in the context of an intervention targeting a sample of aggressive children. Using measures of parent practices and child attitude to school constructed specifically for the current study, and a standardized measure of teacher-reported achievement, 76 teacher-identified aggressive children in second, third, and fourth grade were examined. Results do not support the mediational hypotheses put forth in the study. Interestingly, child attitude to school was not statistically significantly related to parent practices or to academic achievement. Contrary to expectations, parent practices were negatively correlated with achievement. In addition, the study examined the utilization of achievement as a possible buffer for aggressive children. Reasons for findings and implications for future study are discussed.
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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 44-52).