Date of Award

Summer 2005

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Curriculum, Instruction, and Leadership

First Advisor

Kimberly Kimbell-Lopez

Abstract

A study was conducted to examine the relationship among student achievement, responsive parent involvement, and home culture factors such as reading aloud, shared reading, oral language, monitored television viewing, and library/bookstore visits. The study focused on two research questions: (1) Which home culture factors facilitated student achievement? and (2) What did parents do at home to facilitate student achievement? A sample of 240 parents of third graders who took the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in northwestern and northeastern Louisiana schools completed a survey to determine factors of parent involvement and home culture. An exploratory factor analysis was performed on the responses on a parent survey to determine the independent variables of home culture, which were subdivided into the behaviors of (a) reading aloud and shared reading, (b) oral language, (c) monitored television viewing, (d) library or bookstore visits, (e) discussion of what a child reads, and (f) establishment of a quiet area in which the child could study or read. A Spearman rho correlation (p < .02) was performed to determine correlations between factors identified in the study that clustered from the parent survey and achievement results reported in school percentile ranks. Findings indicated that there was no independent variable that best predicted school performance on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.

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