Student Disengagement and School Dropout: Parenting Practices as Context (original) (raw)

The main purpose of this paper-based thesis (180 ECTS) is to examine school dropout among Icelandic youth longitudinally, from two perspect-ives: theories on school dropout that conceptualize students’ disengage-ment as the central concept in understanding the process of leaving school prematurely; and the literature on the influence that the family has on youth adjustment from the perspective of parenting practices. Icelandic youth were followed over an eight-year period, from age 14 to 22. This study is part of a larger ongoing, longitudinal study: the Reykjavik Adolescent Risk-Taking Longitudinal Study (RAR-LS; Adalbjarnardottir, 1994). The findings have been presented in three papers (Blondal & Adalbjarnardottir, 2009, 2012, 2014 in press). More precisely, the aim of this thesis is to further expand the existing literature on school dropout by following adolescents over an eight-year period through three approaches. First, it looks at multidimensional aspects of student engagement at age 14 and its development from age 14 to 15 in relation to school dropout. The diversity of the student group is taken into account, particularly those who appear to be at risk of dropping out but still beat the odds, and those who appear to be on promising educational pathways but fail to do well. Second, it explores general aspects of parent¬ing in relation to school dropout, examining the longitudinal relationship of both parental involvement and parenting style with school dropout. Third, it further expands the combined findings of the study on student engagement and parenting practices in relation to educational status at age 22, by exploring how the context of authoritative parenting influences school dropout and graduation through students’ engagement in adolescence. The thesis contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it uses a longitudinal design that covers a long period—over eight years—unusual in studies of socialization and school dropout. This design makes it possible to conclude quite confidently about the predictive power of family factors on school dropout. Second, the thesis contributes to the literature by exploring students’ different educational pathways in relation to multidimensional constructs of disengagement during adolescence. It places a special focus on students who are the exceptions to predictions about the expected pathways, an approach that is rare in research on school dropout but provides valuable insights into possible reasons for academic resilience among at-risk students and vulnerabilities for academically strong students. Third, it explores the behavioral and emotional components of engagement, as they change over time in relation to different educational pathways, unlike most research on dropouts, which includes only behavioral components and at one point in time. Fourth, the ability to explore the relationship between multidimensional character¬istics of parenting practices and school dropout revealed import¬ant pathways to consider for adolescent development. Previous research on the relationship between family characteristics has been criticized for being focused too narrowly, looking mainly at parental involvement in the child’s education. In general, the findings from studies with this focus have been inconsistent and weaker than expected. Thus, to better understand the influence that parents have on their child’s education it is important to look at a broader conceptualization of child upbringing that characterizes the parents’ actions in their communications with their child. Fifth, the thesis explores longitudinally how multifaceted parenting practices during adolescence (age 14) influence educational status at age 22 (gradu¬ation/ dropout) through student engagement at age 15. Even though student engagement is a central concept in most theories of school dropout and dropout often seems to result from a long-term process of withdrawal from school, little research has focused on how parenting practices may relate to school dropout through the process of student disengagement. The main results of the thesis indicate that adolescents’ behavioral and emotional disengagement differs according to their educational pathways. Based on their achievement at age 15 and educational attainment at age 22, they were classified into groups that took expected versus unexpected paths. Those who were “at risk” academically at age 14, but graduated contrary to expectations, showed less behavioral disengagement than the expected dropouts. Moreover, high achievers who dropped out unexpectedly showed more behavioral and emotional disengagement compared to expected graduates. In general, during the following year (age 15), disengagement increased among the unexpected dropouts but decreased among the expected graduates. A second major finding is that adolescents who at age 14 characterized their parents as authoritative (showing acceptance and supervision) were more likely to have completed upper secondary education by age 22, compared to those who perceived their parents as authoritarian, indulgent, or neglectful. It is worth noting that this finding remained pronounced even after controlling for parents’ SES, adolescents’ gender, parents’ involve¬ment in their education, and adolescents’ temperament. In addition, even when controlling for the strong influence that previous academic achieve¬ment had on standardized test scores at age 15, adolescents with autho¬ritative parents were more likely to complete upper secondary education by age 22 than were those from authoritarian and neglectful families. A third major finding is that a broader conceptualization of parenting was a considerably stronger predictor of school dropout than were the specific behaviors depicted in parental involvement in their child’s education. In the fourth major finding, the students’ level of engagement at age 15 mediated the association between multidimensional parenting practices as perceived by adolescents at age 14 and their educational status at age 22. Adolescents who perceived their parents as more authoritative (i.e., providing high levels of acceptance and supervision, and granting psychological autonomy) were more likely to have completed upper secondary school at age 22, compared to their counterparts who perceived their parents as less authoritative. Student engagement seems to play a critical role in this relationship between parenting practices and school dropout/graduation. Importantly, those adolescents who had more authoritative parents were not only less likely to feel disengaged at school, but also more likely to complete upper secondary school. The main conclusions of these combined findings are that the context of authoritative parenting seems to protect adolescents from the general decline in engagement at an age that places them at risk of dropping out, even when they are doing well academically. During this challenging period of adolescence characterized by psychosocial and biological changes, young persons have to make critical decisions about their education. In addition they have to adjust to increased academic challenges as well as more complicated, less structured, and often more impersonal school environ¬ments than they experience in the lower grades (Eccles, et al., 1993; Wang & Holcombe, 2010). The findings suggest that a parent-child relationship characterized by emotional support and mutual respect, in which the parents impart clear standards for their child’s behavior but at the same time grant autonomy, may buffer against the edu¬cational challenges in adolescence by fostering their child’s positive school behavior, along with positive feelings towards their studies and bonding with school. At this critical point students’ feelings towards their academic tasks and school, as well as their school behaviors and the way their disengagement develops the following year, can have an impact: some students who are at risk academically become more resilient and some who seem to be on a promising educational track become more vulnerable. By using a broad conceptualization of parenting this thesis sheds light on the family processes that lie behind the strong relationship between family background and educational attainment. Furthermore it suggests that the effects that specific practices such as parental involvement have on youth’s educational attainment depend on the characteristics of the parent-child relationship. These findings should give parents encouragement and guide¬lines in their important role of supporting their children’s educational success during adolescence. Moreover, they should enhance the understanding of teachers, school counselors, principals, and educational policy makers about the importance of working with students who are not in supportive relationships with their family.