The Associations Between Parenting Self-Efficacy and Parents’ Contributions to the Home-School Partnership Among Parents of Primary School Students: a Multilevel Meta-analysis

Abstract

High-quality partnerships between families and schools can bring enormous benefits to the development, learning, and wellbeing of children. Decades of research has identified parenting self-efficacy as a key factor influencing parents’ contributions toward effective home-school partnerships. However, the strength of this association has varied significantly across studies with the aggregated strength remaining unclear. This meta-analysis aimed to investigate the associations between parenting self-efficacy and various aspects of parents’ contribution to the home-school partnership, namely home-based involvement, school-based involvement, home-school communication and relationships, as well as parental expectations and aspirations among parents of primary school students. Moderator effects were also examined. Through systematically searching six databases and screening papers, we included 50 independent studies involving 185 effect sizes (N = 20,043 children). Results showed a small to medium correlation between parenting self-efficacy and the multidimensional construct of home-school partnership outcomes (r = .189). The associations were stronger for education-focused parenting self-efficacy (r = .183) than general parenting self-efficacy (r = .114) and were stronger still for home-based participation (r = .248) and parental expectations and aspirations (r = .248) than school-based participation (r = .124) and parent-teacher communication/relationship (r = .090). We detected limited moderating effects of child gender, parent gender, ethnicity, sample type (general or targeted), and socio-economic status and publication bias. Overall, this meta-analysis provides evidence to support the positive relationship between parenting self-efficacy and parents’ contributions to the strength of the home-school partnership. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.