Parental Involvement and Student Engagement: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

Although parental involvement is among the most crucial aspects of social support for students’ school engagement and achievement, current review work on the relationship between parental involvement and student engagement is largely missing. Therefore, we conducted a systematic literature review on such topics from the perspectives of landscapes, methodology characteristics (e.g., conceptualisation and measurement), and study patterns from 2000–2022. Following PRISMA guidelines, 33 articles involving 47,307 students and 3391 parents were reviewed. The results yielded several interesting facts. First, studies on this topic were primarily conducted in the United States during the first decade, but publications increased during emergency remote teaching (ERT) and China produced most of the publications. Studies were primarily cross-sectional (72.7%) and used secondary school Caucasian or Asian samples. In addition, although studies varied greatly on the conceptualisation and measurement of parental involvement and student engagement, they seem to embrace the idea of measuring parental involvement via school and home subtypes (85%) and student engagement via ABC dimensions (i.e., affective, behavioural, and cognitive; 57.4%). Moreover, in terms of patterns, studies often (82%) investigated its relations with student engagement or how it mediated the connections between parental involvement and learning achievement (e.g., success at school, dropout). They, however, often failed to provide concrete/practical parental involvement strategies. This pattern of results indicated an urgent need for more studies on specific parental involvement practices that could promote student engagement from multiple stakeholders. Limitations and suggestions for future studies were provided accordingly.