Peer-reviewed article
A Systematic Review of Literature on Parental Involvement and Its Impact on Children Learning Outcomes
Irene Musengamana ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This systematic review examined 24 studies published between 2018 and 2022 to understand how parental involvement affects children's academic learning outcomes. The review found that certain forms of parental involvement—such as learning support at home, homework assistance, and school-family communication—positively impact children's academic performance. However, other approaches like strict parenting and excessive performance expectations may negatively affect children's studies. The analysis used Epstein's parental involvement model, which categorizes involvement into home, school, and community-based dimensions.
Key points
- Parental involvement dimensions including learning at home, homework assistance, and school-family communication positively impact children's academics
- Strict parenting and high expectations for children's performance may negatively influence children's studies
- The review applied Epstein's parental involvement model with three dimensions: home, school, and community-based involvement
- Student-level characteristics moderate the effect of parental involvement on academic success
- Study selection was limited to 2018-2022, English-language articles from Web of Science and Scopus databases
Limitations
The review was restricted to English-language publications in limited databases over a specific time frame (2018-2022), which may not capture all relevant research globally. The review synthesizes correlational findings without establishing causation.
Abstract
It has long been thought that parents and their involvement in their children's academics impact both the learning outcomes and cognitive development of their children.The objective of this comprehensive review of literature is to explore influence parental involvement in children's studies has on performance academically.This review included empirical studies that matched the study's objectives and were published between 2018 and 2022 in English in scholarly journals (Web of Science and Scopus databases) that met the inclusion criteria.Initial stage of search resulted into a total of 621 research articles which were identified through searching with different keywords of parental involvement, parental practices, learning outcomes, academic achievement and performance.After careful assessment and analysis of each record based on objective of the study, 24 scholarly articles were retained for this review by following the 2020 PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analysis Protocols Statement).The first presentation of the results was a synthesis of studies that reported how parental involvement's dimensions are associated with and has impact on students' learning success.This review defined parental involvement based on Epstein's parental involvement model which includes 3 dimensions: home, school, and community-based involvement.Through the lens of existing literature, we further reviewed and critically analyse study findings on how individual student level characteristics play a role to moderate parental involvement's effect on children academic success.As per results, parental involvement dimensions like: learning at home, homework assistance, and schoolfamily communication is found to positively impact children's academics, whereas other dimensions such as strict parenting and high expectation for children's performance might negatively influence children's studies.This review was restricted to limited databases, time frame, and language which may be the direction for other research studies in the future.