Parent Academic Expectations Predict Children's Self Concept and Locus of Control

TITLE: Parent academic expectations predict children’s self-concept and locus of control

ABSTRACT BODY

Introduction: Parent involvement in children’s elementary education is associated with academic success. One component of parent involvement, parent expectations for their child’s academic performance, has demonstrated robust, predictive associations with children’s academic achievement throughout their schooling. As children approach adolescence, a key mechanism through which parent academic expectations may influence their academic success is via development of self-concept and locus of control. To date, however, the association of parent academic expectations with children’s self-concept and locus of control has not been well investigated. The present study examined these relations in nationally representative data set.

Methods: This study utilized data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study- Kindergarten Class of 1988-1999 (ECLS-K). Data for the present analyses were collected when children were in eighth grade. This data wave had 9,358 child assessments, and 8,809 parent interviews completed. Child self-concept and locus of control were measured via self-report on a 4-point scale (“strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”). The self-concept scale consisted of 7 items (e.g., “I certainly feel useless at times”), which were standardized and averaged (α = .79). The locus of control scale consisted of 6 items (“e.g. I don't have enough control over the direction of my life”) which were also standardized and averaged (α = .68). Parent educational expectations for their children were obtained through parent-report on a 7-point scale in which parents indicated how far they thought their child would go on in school, ranging from less than a high school diploma to a doctoral degree.

Results: Regression analyses were conducted using SPSS. All analyses controlled for child gender and family socioeconomic status and included sampling weight variables to ensure that results were nationally representative. In separate models, parent academic expectations significantly predicted child self-concept (β = .08, p < .001) and locus of control (β = .09, p < .001). To examine whether effects might be moderated by child gender or family SES, an additional set of analyses included interactions between these variables and parent academic expectations in predicting child self-concept and locus of control; however, moderated effects were not present.

Conclusions: The findings from this study suggest that prevention and intervention efforts targeting parent involvement, in particular parent academic expectations for their children, may exert effects through their influence on children’s beliefs about themselves, including their self-concept and perceived locus of control.