Abstract

VALDES CUERVO, Ángel Alberto; MARTIN PAVON, Mario José  and  SANCHEZ ESCOBEDO, Pedro Antonio. Involvement of Parents in Their Children's Academic Activities at Elementary Schools. REDIE [online]. 2009, vol.11, n.1, pp.1-17. ISSN 1607-4041.

This article describes the involvement degree of fathers and mothers of elementary school kids in the State of Yucatán, in their children's educational activities. Based on the judgment of experts and literature referrals, a Lickert type scale was designed with 36 items to evaluate maternal involvement and was applied to 106 parents of students at a public elementary school in the city of Mérida. The results show that the scale designed has an acceptable reliability coefficient (Cronbach's Alfa = .92) and that its subjacent structure, as a result of a factor analysis with varimax rotation, consists of three unit factors: 1) Communication with the school; 2) Communication with the children, and 3) Knowledge about the school. Generally, the results show that parent involvement in the education activities of the children is low or deficient, especially referring to the communication and knowledge about the school factors. Mothers pose a considerable higher level of involvement than fathers in the communication and knowledge about the school factors. The implications for the school brought out from the results as well as the research on fathers involvement in the educational process, is debated in light of the results.

Keywords : Elementary education; parent participation; parent school relationship; parent student relationship.