Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

5-2000

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Education

Major Professor

Robert Kronick

Committee Members

Kathleen Puckett, Lloyd Davis, Tom George

Abstract

Much demographic information and statistical data about students and their families are available to educators. However, school officials do not have a clearly defined method of identifying youngsters who may become dropouts and/or juvenile delinquentsWithout early intervention(s), many of these troubled children become completely alienated from their schools and frustrated to the point that their educational deficits cannot be remedied.

This study was guided by Dr. Ronald Rohner's Parental Acceptance-Rejection Theory, which postulates that children, who feel rejected or not accepted to some degree by their primary caretaker(s), are likely to develop an impaired sense of self-adequacy, self-concept, and world view. One hundred thirty students and their parents separately marked a Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ), which is concerned with parental attitudes/actions. With the use of these surveys, this study has attempted to learn if there exists a relationship between children's perceptions of their parents' attitudes toward them and their achievement and classroom behavior.

This research reveals that data collected from the sixth-grade students, who participated in this study, revealed a moderate correlation (.52) between the level of acceptance they perceived by their parents and their achievement scores. There was an even stronger correlation (.60) between their behavior scores and the level of acceptance they perceived from parents.

Also, this data seem to indicate that a student's behavior, as well as his/her academics, are affected when parental scores differed from their sons/daughters' scores on the PARQ. Twenty-nine students had PARQ scores that were as much as one standard deviation below their parents' scores. Twenty-seven of these twenty-nine students had scores on their comprehensive tests that were below the average scores of their classmates. Additionally, twenty-two of these students were also reported by their teachers on the Teacher Evaluation of Student Conduct form (TESC) to exhibit more than an average number of behavioral problems in the classroom when compared to their peers.

The implication from this study is that parents should be educated to help them understand that students’ emotional quotient can be impaired by their perceptions of their parents' attitudes/behaviors concerning them. Although parents may report they physically care for and emotionally nurture their children, it is the students' perceptions that may impact their school day.

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