STEM educationParental, administrative support breeds academic success
Researchers used data collected from 180,000 students, 170,000 parents, 14,000 teachers, and 6,000 principals across thirty-four countries to look at the issue of cultural excellence — what parents, schools, and students are doing to improve success in reading, math, and science. It is a long-held belief that parental and administrative support helps breed academic success; and the new study offers data to back that up.
It is a long-held belief that parental and administrative support helps breed academic success; now there is data to back that up. A new study released today by the IEA and the TIMSS and PIRLS International Study Center at Boston College examines what makes up “cultural educational excellence” while quantifying the strengths of best practices at school, and at home.
“The data supports many long held beliefs about good ways of raising your children and preparing them for school,” says Dr. Michael Martin of Boston College, co-executive director of TIMSS and PIRLS and the study’s co-author. “The analysis focuses on, ‘How does that work, what’s behind that?’ There’s never been data to do this, to show this mechanism, this path.”
A Boston College release reports that the study is the first report looking at the issue of cultural excellence — what parents, schools, and students are doing to improve success in reading, math, and science. Researchers used data from 180,000 students, 170,000 parents, 14,000 teachers, and 6,000 principals who participated across thirty-four countries.
“This is the biggest and most comprehensive set of data at this grade level - fourth grade 10-year olds kids — by far,” says Dr. Martin. “There’s never been data from so many countries on such a level of achievement — really good measures of mathematics, science, reading achievement – really good background from questionnaires to the parents primarily, which was a good resource, but also from the school principals, teachers, students themselves, data from all of these sources. There’s never been a set of data like this.”
While researchers found each country has a unique approach towards education, the data also pointed to across the board similarities in school and home that affect achievement.
“The culture of educational excellence starts in the home,” says BC’s Dr. Ina Mullis, co-executive director of TIMSS and PIRLS and the study’s co-author. “It follows with a school that has a focus on educational success by all the parties concerned — the teachers, the administration, the parents, the students themselves. It continues into the classroom with a teacher that is holding student engagement. We know then we will have students in the end that have a higher achievement, a higher motivation, and actually I think have a higher probability of becoming life-long learners.”
