The Impact of Home Culture, Parental Involvement and Attitudes on Cognitive Skills of Immigrant Students in Denmark
Beatrice Schindler Rangvid, June 2009, AKF
Introduction
Results from the international education literature indicate that the impact of school factors on students’ achievement is relatively small compared with the influence of students’ home background. Even though it is easier to change schools than to change students’ home backgrounds, such changes are expected to yield much higher returns. In addition to this, results from the existing literature show that immigrant students cluster together in the same schools marginalising them socially from Danish students (Rangvid 2007). It is generally believed that students’ integration in social networks with Danish students also impacts on students’ academic achievement, e.g. due to better language acquisition and mutual help with schoolwork. Since which school to enrol one’s child in is a choice parents make, this dimension is also regarded as being part of the influence of parents attitudes.
While the impact of parental socioeconomic status, such as education, income and family structure has been extensively studied in the literature on immigrant students’ academic achievement and educational attainment, this study adds to the literature by exploring the additional impact of home culture, parental involvement and attitudes towards issues related to schooling and integration into the Danish host society. If the analysis shows that (some of) these factors are clearly related to student achievement, these results might point at specific policy actions for immigrant families with school children.
This study uses quantitative analyses to gain an insight into the impact of students’ home background on academic achievement. Data from several PISA-assessments enable me to examine different aspects concerning students’ home culture, e.g. whether parents talk with their children about school, about political/social issues or about books, movies and TV-programmes, and the amount of educational resources in the students’ homes (textbooks, dictionaries, a desk for studying, a quiet place to study). Moreover, several aspects concerning parental involvement in their child’s schooling and attitudes towards integration in the host society are examined, e.g. the language spoken at home (Danish or other), homework assistance from parents, aspects concerning parents’ acceptance of their children’s absence from school, of children’s participation in mother-tongue lessons, leisure time activities, paid jobs and the immigrant concentration in the school in which parents chose to enrol their child are included in the analysis.
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