Parents’ Conceptual Involvement in their Children’s Education: An Assessment-oriented View

Abstract

Knowing parents’ underlying beliefs concerning pedagogical issues may be an indispensable key to understanding diverse activities which parents are engaged in with their children. Meanwhile, assessment as a multifunctional educational mechanism has long engaged the minds of not only teachers and students but also their parents. Thus, this study sought to delve into parents’ conceptions of assessment with respect to external variables including gender, major, and degree. In doing so, Parents Conceptions of Assessment (PCoA) was administered to a subset of 180 parents. The construct validity of the inventory was substantiated via Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Analyzing the data, it was found that ‘Improvement’ is the parents’ dominant view toward assessment. Moreover, running MANOVA, parents’ educational degree revealed to play a significant role in the assessment–related conceptions of ‘Relevance’ and ‘Affect’. In the end, the results were discussed and implications were provided in the context of education.