CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

Education is a powerful tool used by the transmission of its societal values and
to train the future generations, equipping them with skills and competencies. To
this effect, parental in learner’s education becomes an influential factor which
can promote high achievement level and educational success among learners.
The school is the place where children’s attitudes, interests, skills and habits are
developed and these are some of the areas where parental involvement can
benefit. Henderson, cited in Gould (1999:2) found that parents are involved in
school in four ways. The first two are widely accepted: parents serve as teachers
of their children at home and also serve as volunteers and supporters at school.
The next two include parents becoming advocates for their children and decision
makers in school in areas such as school policy, hiring and budget. It is easy to
understand that not all the educational administration and faculty would be
comfortable with these last two. By becoming passionately involved in their
children education at home and in school, parents clear messages to their
children demonstrating their interest in their activities and strengthening the idea
that school is important. The financial capacity and positive ambition of parents
seems to have a principal role in their children’s education. Many educational
researchers have express great concern on the impact of the parent’s
involvement on a child’s educational achievement. Thus, this work attempts to
highlight the effects parental involvement has on learner’s academic
performance in Edea1 subdivision as it is structured in five chapters.

Historical background
The origin of parental involvement stems back from the language compensation
programs carryout in the 1960s and 1970 in the US and Europe, among other

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aims of this program is considered parents to be the primary role models in their
children’s education. Assuring their children’s involvement in academic
performances; monitoring their children’s academic progress and
communicating with teachers.
Lack of parental involvement in school is a call for concern and can no longer
be ignored.
This point is demonstrated by the researcher’s observations of the frustrations
displayed by fellow educators when discussing the effect of parental
involvement on learner’s performance. The current generation of formal
education has brought changes in the way parents participate in the education of
their children whereas in the past, in informal education, parents traditionally
had responsibility on pupils.
Today parents feel that they are less responsible. This creates a gap between all
stakeholders on what is expected to be obtained from what educational is
supposed to offer. Parents are expected to be actively involved in their
children’s educational because they are full partners to assist the education of
their children. The commitment derived from USA’s No Child Left behind
(NCLB) ACT enacted in 2001. This involvement and provision of necessities as
well as participating in school cover a whole range of direct contributions.
Parents play a pivotal role in the educational development of their children.
According to Salem and khan (2013) parental involvement is a process through
which parents meaningfully participate in the various educational activities of
their children. Parents who are more involved with their children’s academics
become more knowledgeable about school goal and procedures enhancing their
perceptions of control and competence over achievement outcomes.

Conceptual Background
Parental involvement entails parent’s participation in the educational process
and experiences of their children. Parental involvement as the control and

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development of a child’s interest by parents in relation development of a child’s
interest by parents in relation to our study it can be referred to as the continuous
efforts made by parents either at home or at school.
A learners is someone who attended college school to acquire knowledge skills
and values through formal education or training under the guidance of a teacher.
Nkwenti (2009) stated in Yienyuy (2009, 8) defines performances as the result
pupils get after a test or examination.
In this study academic performance refers to score in school examination which
can either be positive or negative.

Contextual Background
The effects of parental involvement on learners academic performance in some
colleges schools in Edea 1 subdivision was aimed at investigating parental
involvement over their children in providing their needs. As regard the
educational institution, the teachers play their role assessing the cause’s learners
poor performance and finding out the cause in relation to the various needs the
pupils are supposed to be given with in order to catch up with their academic
work. Parental involvement, from an economist’s perspective, can be defined as
direct effort, provided by the parent, in order to increase educational outcomes
of their children. This definition implicitly refers to an education production
function and makes parental involvement one of its arguments. The broad
perspective adopted here mirrors the definition of family involvement by the
Harvard Family Research Project, one of the leading research groups into family
involvement outside economics: their definition includes all activities by parents
that are intentionally “linked to learning” (Bouffard & Weiss [2008]). This
review is concerned with parental involvement in school, defined as the efforts
delivery by parents while their child is in school age. Traditionally, sociologists
and practitioners in education have defined family involvement from the
school’s perspective.

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There are other attempts at defining parental involvement in school. Traditional
definitions are limited to school-related activities and sociologists have made the
distinction between home-based activities (e.g. helping children with homework,
discussing their children’s experiences at school) and school-based activities
communication with the school and participation in school-based activities)
according to Nokali.Bachman and votuba Arzal [2010]).
The motivation of better educational outcomes for the child is common to most
attempts at defining parental involvement by education scholars. Parental
involvement is therefore instrumental to achievement, which in this view is what
parents care about. As a consequence, the effects of parental involvement are
generally measured on children.
Research on Parental involvement and academic performance in US suggest that
parental involvement appears to differ based on context at home and that of
school (Giallo TreyvaudMathiew) 2010. Research on parental involvement in
school is more mixed than the research at home particularly among different
racial and ethnic groups (Fan2001, Sui Chu & William 1996) therefor we will
use the validated measurement of parental involvement in how school fee
payment affects learners academic performance in some colleges in Edea 1
subdivision. How physiological needs influence learner’s academic performance
in some school in Edea 1 division and how parent’s learners relationship affects
learners academic performance.

Theoretical Background
This part gives an account of what has been written as theories by some authors
on the topic under study which are parenting style Theory by Baumrind (1960),
cognitive development theory by jean Piaget (1936) and Socio-cultural Theory
by lev Vygotsky (1934).
Parenting style theory by Diana Baumrind (1960) Diana Baumrind created what
is known as the pilar Theory. She developed this theory based on her

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observation on children and how their parents influenced their behaviour. Based
on these observations she came to the conclusion that there are three specific
parenting styles which parents use with children’s skills. The authoritative style
has rules but their children’s feeling and opinions are taking into consideration.
The permissive parents are known to be very lenient and often take more of a
friend role than a parent. Though they set roles; they might only come in where
there is a problem. Permissive parents are very nurturing and respond to their
children’s feelings while they may work to enforce the consequences.
Jean Piaget 1936 constructs a mental model for the whole world. He disagrees
with idea that intelligence was a fix trait and regarded cognitive development
process which occurs blue to biological maturation and interaction. He suggests
that children move through four stages of mental development and his theory
focuses not only in the acquisition of knowledge but on understanding the nature
of intelligence. To him every interaction and experience has an impact on the
development in early childhood.
Vygosky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD) theory of social interaction
was the conceptual framework of this study. The (ZPD) is the gap between
student’s capacities to carry out a task under guidance and the student’s capacity
to resolve a problem alone (Vygosky 1978) believe that learning occurs in this
zone. Vygosky also believes that the community and cultural dynamic s largely
influenced children’s learning and development. Vygotsky (1978) argues that
social interaction was necessary for learning to take place. In this respect, this
study is conducted to discover the tools parents need to put in place or assist
students in achieving a good academic performance connected with zone of
proximal development (ZPD). However, he introduced another level known as
scaffolding which refers to the child’s abilities when working under the
guidance of an adult or a more able peer. For example, when infants are learning
how to walk, they often start by holding the clothes or hands of an adult who
guide them. The infant will continue to do this until they have enough skills and

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strength to walk on their own. This theory support the idea that a child’s home
life is of importance (prior or Gerard, (2007) and parents contribute greatly to
the development and academic achievement.

Research question
In pursuit of the stated purposes of the study. The researcher will attempts to
answer the following questions.
1) What are the factors affecting parent involvement on learner’s academic
performance in Edea 1 subdivision
2) What are the roles of parents in learners academic achievement in
colleges schools in Edea 1 subdivision
3) What are the roles of parents in learner’s academic achievement in some
colleges in Edea 1.

Signification of the study

It is hope that when this study is carried out and the stated purposes are achieved
the result will help parents and stakeholders of education to put proper measures
in place to improve the parental involvement on academic performance of
learners in Edea 1 subdivision.

Statement of the problem

When parents send their children to school, much is expected from them as far
as good academic performance is concerned yet what are those elements that
affect pupils’academic performance. The researcher observed that some learners
perform poorly in their class examination. Enormous absenteeism due to fees,
homework not done lack of follow up at home, and others do not work well in
class due to writing materials. Some parents seem to depend only on teachers
with the belief to change or transform their children’s experts overnight and
anything below this expectation’s makes teachers unacceptable. In

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consideration, the researcher seeks to find out if parental involvement on
pupils’education has an impact on their academic performance. Hence it is
against this backdrop that this researcher set to investigate the extent at which
parental involvement affect pupil’s academic performance in some college’s
schools in Edea 1 subdivision.

Aim of the study

The purpose of the study is to examine the performance of learners in some
college’s school in Edea 1 subdivision.
Research objectives
This research seeks to achieve the following
 To find out the factors affecting parental involvement on learners
academic performance
 To access the roles of parents in learners academic achievement
 To determine the extent to which the parents as are involved in the
academic activities of learners

General question
To what extent does parental involvement affect pupil’s academic performance
in some college’s school in Edea subdivision?
 How does school fee payment affect learner’s academic performance?
 How does the supply of physiological needs affect learner’s academic
performance?
 How does parent-pupils relationship affect pupil’s academic
performance?

General hypothesis
Ho: there is no signification relationship between parental involvement and
pupil’s academic performance.

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Ha: there is a significant relationship between parental involvement and pupil’s
academic performance
Specific hypotheses
Ho1: there is no significant relationship between school fee payment and pupil’s
academic performance
Ha1: there is a significant relationship between school fees payment and pupil’s
academic performance
Ho2: there is no significant relationship between the supply of physiological
needs and pupil’s academic performance
Ha2: there is significant relationship between the supply of physiological needs
and pupil’s academic performance
Ho3: there is no significant relationship between parent-pupil relationship and
pupil’s academic performance
Ha3: there is a significant relationship between parent-pupil relationship and
pupil’s academic performance.

The educational Administrators

This study will be of great importance to administrators in the sense that they
will come to know the involvement of parents in taking care of the pupil’s
school needs. And it will be necessary to involve all parents in the parent’s
teachers meeting in school.
The teachers
The teachers as part of the stakeholders will reinforce their cordial relationship
with parents, they will also change some of the ways of handling problems.
The parents
Parents will understand why it is important for them to be involved in the
education of their children
The pupils

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Pupils will know the importance of their parent’s influence in their education
and strengthen the relationship. Besides, pupils will be socially adapted to
learning.

The government
The government will be able to create a forum like the social media to sensitize
the parents of their responsibility on pupils.
The general public
The study will help the general public to produce outstanding academic
performance.
Future researchers
This study will serve as a guide for other future research work.

Scope of the study

Geographical scope
The researcher’s desire was to extend the research to the whole region and
country but because of time constrains the study was carried out only in some
authorised selected colleges schools in Edea1 municipality Sanaga-maritime
division of the littoral region in Cameroon.
Thematically this study is found in vast domain of science of education precisely
in the socio pedagogic domain. The effects of parental involvement on learner’s
academic performance in some schools in Edea1 subdivision.

Operational definition of terms

Parental involvement:
Academic performances: is the result that learners in school obtain after a test
or an evaluation; this can be marks that pupils get after writing their evaluations.
School fees payment: is the money payable by the parents to the school in
connection to the learner’s education excluding enrolment fees.

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Physiological needs: according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs; physiological
needs are the most basic thing that everyone need for physical survival.
Parent-pupil relationship: this refers to the unique and enduring bond giving
between a caregiver and his or her child. It is also how parents can support and
encourage good study habits.
Effects: is change that affects something or someone either positive or negative.
Parents: are care givers of the other offspring in their own species. Besides a
parent is the caretaker of a child.
Pupil: according to Tambo (2003 13) a pupil is someone who is being taught
especially those of school age from nursery to primary school.
Performance: is the level of achievement of pupils in school.

Conclusion
This chapter has presented the background of the study; statement of the
problem; research objectives; research hypothesis; the scope of the study;
significance of the study and operational definition of terms

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