Family involvement with middle-grades homework: Effects of differential prompting

Abstract

A middle-grades homework intervention was investigated to determine if variations in prompting families to be involved with mathematics homework would influence their level of involvement. The extent to which family involvement was a predictor of student achievement in mathematics was also examined, as were the relationships among family involvement, student achievement, and parent education level. Families in the 2 prompted groups were significantly more involved with mathematics homework than were families in the no-prompt group. Level of family involvement was not significantly related to student achievement on the post-test. However, students across the 3 groups whose parent(s) held a 4-year college degree scored significantly higher on the post-test than did students neither of whose parents held a college degree, even though reported levels of family involvement were nearly identical across parent education levels. Qualitative data elicited in follow-up interviews with family members indicated that "quality of involvement" with homework merits examination in future research.