Parent’s Expectation And Its Impact On Their Children’s Academic Performance

Keywords

Parents; Expectation; Children; Academic; Dental.

Introduction

Education is one of the key factors for a country’s development, so it goes without saying how much of importance and pressure is exerted on academic support. Past research shows that parental expectations impact student academic achievement [5]. However, schools and families don’t realise that there is a powerful psychological side to parent involvement [7]. Parents that expect their children to do well convey that expectation to their children and provide appropriate support at home, such that their children believe that they can succeed academically [11].

According to Henderson and Berla (1994) parental involvement affects their children's school attendance, graduation, and students’ behaviours and attitude towards school. (Gaddis, no date) Furthermore, Epstein (2009) stated that it's a known thing that most parents want their children to succeed in school and to be good partners in their children’s education and thus extend themselves into every supportive scope (Perlesz, 1994).

In addition to this, the parents also want to play a role in decision making [2]. Carrier decision making is one of such important decisions where a parent’s approach can either inspire their children to explore a diverse set of potential occupations or to follow a path their parents approve of [3]. Studies also prove that adolescents, who feel competent in career decision-making, tend to make more satisfying career choices later in life [12].

Materials And Method

In this study a sample of 120 parents of BDS students of Saveetha Dental College will be taken into consideration. 30 parents of students from each year (that is 1st to 4th year) regardless of gender consideration. These parents will be given a well-constructed questionnaire. Eventually, the data collected from the survey will be used to analyze and evaluate the varying expectations of parents of BDS students. The questionnaire assessed factors such as whose choice it was to enter BDS College, difference between the parent’s expectation and child’s performance, the parental involvement in the child's curriculum, parent’s ideal thoughts on disciplining college students and their method.

Result

- Table 1 shows the raw data collected for the parent’s level of involvement out of the 120 parents questioned.
- Graph 1.1 shows the parental involvement in percentage, where the number of parents accepting their high involvement in their children’s curriculum is the highest at 48%.

- Table 2 focuses on the student’s interest towards the course or college and whether this alters the interest level.
- It shows that there are considerable amount of student joining the college and course without interest at a value of 47 of 120 and by parental compulsion at a value of 41 on 120 students.
- Graph 1.2 illustrates that in general there were more number of students showing interest towards their course with a value of 97 students out of 120.

- Table 3 illustrates that majority of parents expect their children to do exceptionally well in their study (51 out of 120) and that no parents showed lack of confidence in their children by thinking that would do poorly (0%).
- Graph 1.3 shows the data in percentage form.
- The vertical lines joining the 2 curves express the difference in parental expectation and their children’s achievement.

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Table 1:

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Table 1.

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Table 2:

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Table 2.

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Table 3:

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Table 3.

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Table 4:

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Table 4.

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Figure 1:

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Graph 1.1.

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Figure 2:

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Graph 1.2.

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Figure 3:

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Graph 1.3.

Discussion

First of all, when parents’ have high expectations of their children it may influence them to pursue activities which will be of their parents liking [13]. Parents who punish their children for not achieving all As, or criticise them for pursuing art instead of a prestigious professions such as medicine pressurizes the children to choose occupations of their parents liking in order to make them proud.Whereas, those parents who show no specific expectations of their children's career allows the them to explore a variety of professions and thus eventually choosing one of their own liking [6].

Secondly, parents also influence the level of education or training that their children achieve; the knowledge they have about work and different occupations [7]; the beliefs and attitudes they have to work; and the motivation they have to succeed. The family has greater potential in influencing every child’s achievement.(10) Thus, a proper guideline can be given to the parents on parental communication, monitoring/supervision and positive parental role modeling [8].

Thirdly, as seen in table3, eventually there is an increase in level of interest compared to the number of uninterested beginners and the number of forced children. This could be an impact of adjustment, teaching method, college environment or facilities. Furthermore, as illustrated in table 4 majorities of the 120 surveyed parents showed great involvement by admitting to being parents who strictly monitor their children at home [15]. Moreover, the parent’s expectation generally exceeds their children’s achievement strength as in the graph 1.2 thus relaying a burden on the children who failed to satisfy their parents. But sometimes these expectations do end up giving a push to their children to not give up and work harder in order to see a satisfactory smile on their parents’ face thus becoming a motivational factor to success. (Xie, no date)

However, one set back in this survey is that there were no opportunities to counter check whether the answers provided were true. In addition, this data cannot be guaranteed to be the same if collected in another country because of the impact of diversity in the culture or environment of another country [1].

Conclusion

This study can be summarized as that the relations among the variables: parental expectations, and academic achievement are both interrelated. It can be agreed that parental expectation is a concerning factor in every student’s life. It has a major influence on their children’s attitude and confidence which they adapt as they grow up. Thus, the parents need to be guided and counselled on how not to induce negative pressure but instead be supportive.