Parent Involvement, Approaches to Learning, and Student Achievement: Examining Longitudinal Mediation

Although there is evidence to suggest that parent involvement (PI) in children's education positively impacts their academic success, the mechanisms of this effect are less well studied. One potential mechanism is a set of student-level motivational and behavioral factors labeled approaches to learning (ATL). The purpose of the current study was to utilize rigorous longitudinal methodology to evaluate whether ATL mediate the relationship between PI and student academic achievement. Using a large sample drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), three sets of analyses were conducted focusing on three different types of PI (home-based involvement, school-based involvement, and home-school communication). Longitudinal mediation analyses indicated that only school-based involvement and home-school communication predicted student reading achievement and that this relationship was only mediated by ATL for school-based involvement. These findings contribute to the literature base on PI and represent a methodological advance to addressing these important mediational questions.