Parental Involvement in Children's Education: Lessons from Three Immigrant Groups

Objective. This study explores immigrant group and individual differences within groups in parental reports of involvement in their children's education as a function of both sociodemographic and cultural variables. Design. Over 300 parents from three different immigrant groups - Portuguese, Dominican and Cambodian - were interviewed when their children were in either second or fifth grade. Results. Language comfort and immigrant group membership were the most frequent variables associated with group differences in the various aspects of parental involvement. Cambodian parents showed the lowest levels of parent involvement as expressed in measures of attitudes, contact with schools, home-based control over children's behavior, and provisions of material support for homework. Ethnographic data suggest that differing forms of group migration, the educational system's differing responses to the groups, and group differences in cultural values explain the above findings. Within the Portuguese and Cambodian groups, language comfort was also the variable most frequently associated with individual differences in the dimensions of parent's involvement. Finally, the different dimensions of parental involvement are highly correlated amongst each other within the Portuguese and Cambodian families, but not so for Dominicans. Conclusions. These findings suggest both similarities and differences in the processes of parental involvement in children's education across three quite different immigrant groups.