The Relationship Between Socio-Economic Status, Parental Educational Practices and Students’ Academic Achievements

Student: Sholk Irina

Educational Programme: Bachelor

Year of Graduation: 2014

Keywords: socio-economic status (SES), parental educational practices, school practices of parents, preschool parental practices, parental reading behavior, PIRLS, TIMSS children's academic achievements in reading, children's academic achievements in mathematics.The work represents a study on the exploration peculiarities of relations between family socioeconomic status, different parental educational practices and educational achievements of Russian fourth-grade students in reading and math. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between socio-economic status of families and educational achievements of children, and to assess how this relationship is mediated by different parental educational practices.The study is based on PIRLS 2011 (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) and TIMSS 2011 (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) data. Both PIRLS and TIMSS are monitoring studies, regularly administered by International Association for the Evaluation of educational achievement in more than 40 countries. These studies include 4th grade students’ tests on math and reading and questionnaires for them, their parents and teachers. As a result, these databases contain students' answers about the situation at home and school, test results and also the responses of teachers and parents about child development and their own role in education and training.Multilevel structural equation modeling was used because it allows, firstly, to take into account the hierarchical data structure, and, secondly, to evaluate the model with indirect effects.Conclusions:1) The relationship between SES and educational achievements of children is not mediated by parental educational practices, but occurs directly for both math and reading. At the same time the relationship of SES and different parental educational practices should be taken into account, as it is likely, these factors are interdependent.2) Such practice as parental reading behavior is significant for children’s achievements in reading, but not significant for achievements in mathematics.3) Such parental practice as discussing with children his school life has positive effect on children’s academic achievements, but checking homework by parents negatively effects on children’s educational achievements in math and reading. It should taken into account that the effect can have another direction: parents check children’s home work because their children have poor academic achievements.4) There weren’t found any differences in circumstances created by a variety of parenting practices among boys and girls.

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