Parental Involvement in Primary Schools in Hong Kong and Japan: The Association among Family Background, Social Capital, and Student Achievement

Abstract

  Parental involvement is framed as an important factor of education, and often as a remedy to various educational issues. The international trend of decentralization and democratization of school decision-making processes, evident in the worldwide expansion of school choice or community schools, assumes the importance of parental involvement. This study sheds light on parental involvement in two East Asian societies where parental involvement in children’s education is commonly believed to be high, Hong Kong and Japan.

  The purpose of the study is to examine the association between family background, parental involvement in schooling and student achievement in primary school. The study focuses on parental involvement in the school, such as the communication between parents and teachers, parents and other parents, and participation in school events and PTA activities. Parental involvement in schools is conceptualized as parent’s social capital, with the assumption that parents’ ties with teachers, other parents and the school provide the parent with information, trust and norms that are beneficial for child achievement.

  The data for this paper draws from a dataset collected through the 2009 Japan Educational Longitudinal Study (JELS) and the 2010 Study of Family and School Life of Students in Hong Kong, which was designed in conjunction with the JELS data. For the analyses of this paper, I draw on the 6th grade data from ‘District A’ in both Japan and Hong Kong, with ‘District A’ representing an urban area in both societies. District A in Hong Kong is near the heart of Hong Kong, with a population of roughly 280,000. District A in Japan is a mid-size city situated near metropolitan Tokyo, with a population of 250,000. I employ a multi-level logit analyses to predict the probability that a student is in the high-achieving group. I hypothesize that student family background is associated with student achievement, and that this association is mediated by parent’s social capital.

  In this study, I found that, first, the association between family background and student achievement is higher in Japan than Hong Kong.　Although the disadvantage of low socioeconomic status (SES) families is greater in Hong Kong, the disadvantages for the educational achievement of children in low SES families is larger in Japan. Second, the extent of parental involvement in schools differs by dimension. In Japan, parents tend to have stronger ties with other parents. In Hong Kong, parents tend to participate more frequently in PTA activities. This suggests the difference between the two societies in what parents perceive as, or expect from ‘parental involvement.’ Third, in Japan, high SES parents tend to be more involved in schools, whereas in Hong Kong, high SES parents tend to be least involved. It needs to be emphasized, however, that the in-school parental involvement in this study only captures a basic level of parental involvement. For example, the measure does not include aspects of parental involvement at home, such as to what extent parents interact with children, parents monitor children’s studying, and parental involvement in school in terms of taking part in school management or classroom teaching. It can be expected that parents’ cultural and human capital become more important in these aspects of parental involvement. Therefore, when using a more multi-dimensional concept of social capital, high SES parents may possess more social capital in Hong Kong as well. Lastly, in Hong Kong, because low SES parents participate more in schools, controlling for this factor increases the effect of family background on student achievement. In Japan, the effect of family background on student achievement is not mediated by parent’s social capital.

  The findings suggest that in Japan, new ways of parental involvement in (View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)