Parental Communication And Academic Achievement Among O/A-Level Students

Abstract

Parental relationships and home learning environments can be influential on students' socio-emotional functioning and engagement in the learning process. But the mechanisms whereby certain aspects of the parent-child relationship are related to students' academic experiences are limited in their understanding. This study investigated the links between parental communication, conflict resolution, emotional support, academic guidance at home, financial capacity and learning conditions, socio-emotional well-being, academic engagement and academic achievement of O/A-level students. An ex-post facto design with a quantitative cross-sectional approach was used with a sample of 100 students. Descriptive statistics, Cronbach's alpha, Spearman's correlation, diagnostics for multicollinearity, ordinary least squares regression, ordinal logistic regression, and bootstrapped mediation analysis (5,000 resamples) were used for the analysis. The results revealed good internal consistency for all constructs (α = .768 – .921). Academic engagement (ρ = .509, p < .001) was positively associated with socio-emotional well-being, and was the strongest significant predictor of academic engagement (B = 0.325, p < .001), explaining 35.3% of the variance. The indirect effect of emotional support on academic engagement via socio-emotional well-being was significant (B = 0.176, 95% CI [0.079, 0.291]) and accounted for 51.18% of the total effect. Predictors of academic achievement, however, were not significant. The results underscore the significance of emotional support and socio-emotional wellbeing in boosting students' academic involvement and call for family-oriented educational interventions to focus on students' emotional needs along with their academic needs.