Parental Involvement in 21st Century Schools

Parental involvement in schools has been significantly examined within sociological research with dominant themes in the literature highlighting the positive impact on children’s academic performance school culture and community-school partnerships had by strong parent-school relationships (Conroy 2012; Jeynes 2011). In the twenty-first century however the nature of common family structures no longer mirrors that of earlier decades within which parental involvement research was originated (Jeynes 2011). Consequently a wide gap within the literature exists with respect to applicable parental involvement practices to the changing social landscape of the globalized community. Parental involvement with schools is dependent on a wide spectrum of variables with these forces additionally not existing in a vacuum but highly dependent of one another; these factors include the issues traditionally cited in the parental involvement literature as well as new factors more pertinent to the twenty-first century family (Manz et al. 2010). This study proposed herein examines the factors which influence parental involvement in the twenty-first century using a mixed methods approach.