Parents' educational beliefs and children's early academics: Examining the role of SES

Leanne Elliott and Heather J. Bachman

Children and Youth Services Review, 2018, vol. 91, issue C, 11-21

Abstract: In this study, associations between parents' educational beliefs and growth in their children's kindergarten achievement were examined to determine whether relations differed across levels of socioeconomic status (SES) among contemporary kindergarten students, with a particular focus on whether this moderation effect was mediated by parental enrichment practices. Participants included 13,399 children drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–11 (ECLS-K:2011) and their parents. Educational beliefs included parents' beliefs about the skills necessary for a child entering kindergarten and parents' expectations for their children's eventual educational attainment. SES was operationalized as both income status and parental educational attainment, and enrichment was measured as educationally-related practices in the home and extracurricular activities. Educational beliefs were significantly and positively related to achievement, such that children whose parents rated early skills as important and held higher expectations for their children showed higher math and reading scores at the end of kindergarten. In addition, both school readiness beliefs and expectations were positively related to enrichment practices, and a significant interaction between school readiness beliefs and education was detected, such that school readiness beliefs were more strongly predictive of enrichment among parents with lower levels of education. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Keywords: School readiness; Parent beliefs; SES; Achievement; Expectations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740917311234
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:91:y:2018:i:c:p:11-21

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2018.05.022

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().