Elsevier

Social Science Research

Volume 74, August 2018, Pages 132-145
Social Science Research

How far can the apple fall? Differences in teacher perceptions of minority and immigrant parents and their impact on academic outcomes

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2018.05.001Get rights and content

Abstract

While a large body of research has focused on increasing parental involvement in schools, less work has considered teacher perceptions of parental involvement. Teacher perceptions of parents are important because they influence teacher practices and relationships with students, with ensuing consequences for student outcomes. Prior research suggests that teacher perceptions of parents vary by children's family background, but empirical work comparing teacher perceptions of parental involvement across groups and the impact of such perceptions on different student outcomes is lacking. Using nationally representative data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, we find that even after taking into account parents' self-reported involvement in their adolescent children's education, teachers are less likely to perceive that minority immigrant parents are as involved as native-born White parents. Patterns also differ for teachers of English and teachers of math in ways that are consistent with racial and ethnic stereotypes about academic ability. Further, teacher perceptions of parental involvement matter for student GPAs and teacher recommendations.

Introduction

Increasing and strengthening ties between families and schools is an important policy concern in the U.S. (Epstein, 2005). Implicit in such policies is that schools and families agree on a shared notion of effective and appropriate parental involvement in children's education. However, this is often not the case – teachers may expect specific forms of school-based parental involvement such as volunteering in classrooms or regularly initiating contact (Lareau, 1989) while parents, particularly those from minority and immigrant families, may instead favor involvement that is less visible to schools, such as providing moral support for their children's education (e.g., Auerbach, 2006; López, 2001). Moreover, there is evidence that teachers' perceptions of parental involvement are strongly shaped by characteristics of families, including race/ethnicity and nativity. Teachers, who are predominantly White and middle-class, may subscribe to negative stereotypes about the parenting abilities of minority and immigrant parents (e.g., Noguera, 2003; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2008). Such parents, in turn, may not only have different notions of what constitutes meaningful parental involvement but may also experience more barriers to involvement (Bower and Griffin, 2011; Turney and Kao, 2009), furthering teachers' perceptions of these parents as uninvolved.

However, existing studies are limited because they often consider only teacher reports of parental involvement or only parent self-reports of their involvement. In contrast, this study employs linked teacher and parent surveys from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), a nationally representative study of 10th-grade students. We examine teacher perceptions of the parental involvement of 10th-grade students, how such perceptions vary by parents' race/ethnicity and nativity, even after taking into account parents' own self-reports of various types of involvement, and further, whether teacher perceptions of parental involvement matter for student GPAs and teacher recommendations. We argue that teacher perceptions of parental involvement vary by families' racial, ethnic, and immigrant backgrounds, independent of parents' own reports of involvement, and further, teacher perceptions of parental involvement play a strong role in student academic outcomes.

Section snippets

Why teacher perceptions of parents matter

Studies have shown that when teachers perceive parents to be detrimental to learning, they also have less positive opinions about students (Dallaire et al., 2010; Thompson et al., 2004; Zhang, 2011). Thompson et al. (2004) surveyed over one hundred teachers in an “underperforming” high school serving primarily minority students and found that teachers who were more likely to blame parents for underachievement were also more likely to blame students themselves for underachievement. The

Data and sample

We use data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), a nationally representative study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) of students who were 10th-graders in 2002. ELS:2002 employs a two-stage sampling process in which schools, and then students within schools, are selected for participation. Private schools, Latinx students, and Asian students are oversampled. In addition to student surveys, ELS:2002 includes surveys of parents and teachers

Descriptive results

We begin our analyses with descriptive statistics on teacher perceptions of parental involvement. Table 1 shows English and Math teacher perceptions of parental involvement by race/ethnicity and generation status of the student. Although they are included in analyses, we refrain from interpreting findings for third-generation Asian students and first- and second-generation Black students given the limited number of observations for these groups. Overall, we find that English and Math teacher

Summary and limitations

Our study posed two research questions about teacher perceptions of parental involvement. First, we examined how teacher perceptions of parents' involvement vary by families' race/ethnicity and nativity. Our results show that not only do teacher perceptions of parental involvement vary by students' race/ethnicity and nativity but also that patterns of teacher perceptions differ for English and math teachers. Overall, we find that English teachers are less likely to perceive the parents of

Acknowledgements

Phoebe Ho gratefully acknowledges support from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant #R305B090015 to the University of Pennsylvania. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

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