PISA 2009 and the Effectiveness of Parental Involvement at School

Parental involvement in school life is a complex and embedded social phenomenon and its development is not in line with the various national scholastic systems. Some studies found that parental involvement is not related to student achievement (Balli, Wedman, & Demo, 1997; Bronstein, Ginsberg, & Herrera, 2005); however the role of families, the family–school relations and the parental involvement in education are considered significant to promote student achievement (Fan & Chen, 2001; Weiss, 2003; Seginer, 2006; Hill & Chao, 2009). The aim of this paper is to show the association between parental involvement at school and student learning outcomes. A comparative analysis has been done focusing on Italy and selecting some European countries. The data of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) held on the 2009 Year have been used. As a matter of fact in some countries the PISA survey provided a parental questionnaire to the parents of their selected sample of students. The main hypothesis is that the more involvement of parents at school, the better learning outcomes of students. Methodologically, after the descriptive analysis of the parental involvement at school in the different selected countries involved in the PISA research, regression and multilevel analysis have been done. The main results show how the effectiveness of parental involvement at school on student outcomes differs between countries and if and what other variables, such as the socioeconomic background of families and the typology of school, influence the association between parental participation at school and student achievement.