Students' homework motivation and behavior - and their parents' knowledge of it

Recent research suggests that conscientious homework behavior is associated with higher achievement gains. Homework behavior, in turn, appears to be heavily influenced by motivational predictors (e. g., high self-concept, belief in being able to solve homework problems, perceived utility of homework problems). To date, the role which parents (should) play in this process is not well understood. The present study examined the parental knowledge of their children's homework motivation and behavior. To this end, 418 eighth graders were asked to report on their homework motivation and behavior. With parallel items, their parents were asked to describe their perception of the students' homework motivation and behavior. Overall, mean level analyses showed high correspondence between student and parent ratings for the motivational variables, less so for the reported homework behavior. Correlational analyses for the same set of variables, however, indicated only low to moderate levels of correspondence between the students and their parents. Supplementary analyses comparing parents' perceptions of their child with the inferred self-concept of their child showed no significant differences.