| Chandra Muller
University of Texas
Parental involvement in the transition to college
FINAL REPORT: Most parents who are involved in their children's education aspire for them to attend college, and over the course of childhood and adolescence many engage in activities designed to achieve that goal. Policy attention about parental involvement typically encourages school-based involvement is directed toward activities of parents whose children are in elementary or middle school. Parental involvement and school-based activities characteristic of parents of younger children typically tapers off as children transition through high school. By high school, many involved parents may be focusing attention on the transition to higher education with their involvement less supported by educational institutions. This study examines parental involvement during high school and in the transition to college and early adulthood when challenges to involvement may be greatest and parents' long-term goals for their children closest to realization. Analysis of involvement during this stage of the life course requires a broad vision of activities both inside and outside of school along with recognition that adolescents' increasing independence from their parents is coupled with a need to stay engaged and supported by family. During this stage of adolescence, parents may need to diversify their approaches to involvement, relying on connections to community to facilitate adolescents' compliance with socially desirable behavior on the one hand, and knowledge of how to successfully negotiate the world of higher education on the other hand. This project investigates parents' involvement in the transition to college from several angles. First, in "Religious Involvement, Social Capital and Academic Achievement: Evidence from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988" (Muller and Ellison, Sociological Focus, 2001), we found that parents' involvement in their children's education can be augmented in the later high school years by religious involvement and activity in an organized religious community. This religious involvement is most closely associated with normative control and prosocial behavioral outcomes, such as curbing class cutting, but it is also associated with successful academic achievement, such as high school completion and success in higher level mathematics courses. Other articles currently under completion from this study indicate that teen's abilities to manage their sexual behavior is associated with college attendance, and that adolescents appear to develop these skills of successfully balancing their personal and professional lives from interactions with their involved parents. Finally, using High School and Beyond, we found that family structure is associated with successful transitions through college and particularly with successful and timely completion of mathematics and science classes. Future research will investigate the mechanisms through which these advantages accrue. Taken together, these results suggest that parental involvement in education is more multifaceted than many education policies recognize. Particularly during the high school years and beyond, the strategies that parents use to help their children succeed in school include a diverse set of activities ranging from outreach to community to help in negotiating choices and demands associated with college. Clearly, involved parents facilitate successful academic achievement, yet the policies to support this involvement require different approaches than those encouraged for younger children. The approaches must encourage activities that facilitate family connections to communities and knowledge about what is required to successfully transition to and through higher education.
Back to Funded Research Grants Page |