Relationships between informative school outreach and parental involvement for elementary and middle school children

Parental involvement is essential for children’s education. Several studies have examined relationships between parental involvement and parents’ socioeconomic status. However, less attention has been placed on school influences on parental involvement, even though schools play an important role in children’s education and can affect the parents as well. This study addressed the following question: Is informative outreach associated with parental involvement? What types of informative school outreach are strongly associated with parental involvement in elementary and middle school? The present study examined a nationally representative sample of elementary and middle school children in Japan (3939 fourth grade students from 140 schools and 4132 eighth grade students from 133 schools) from the Trends International Mathematics and Science Study 2011. The findings revealed that different types of informative school outreach have different associations depending on the school level. For the sample of elementary school children, informing parents about school was positively associated with home-based parental involvement. However, for the middle school children, informing parents about their child’s learning progress was positively associated with parental involvement.