I originally wanted to focus my research question on the effects of parental involvement on student academic performance. After conducting research into the topic area it is clear to me that this area has been fairly thoroughly studied. The research shows that higher levels of parental involvement are associated with higher levels of student academic achievement.
As this is the case I would like to shift the focus of my research towards how to increase parent involvement. By increasing parental involvement I would hope to increase the academic performance of the students. Specifically I would want to look at the effect of positive interaction with parents on a student’s academic performance. A positive interaction would be any interaction where the focus is on what the student has done well, rather than on what they may be doing wrong.
In terms of data collection, I would want to keep a record of each time I interact with a parent, and whether the interaction was positive, negative, or neutral. I would then want to track the grades of students, with particular attention paid to the timing of interactions with parents and the grades that students receive on assignments soon after this interaction.
Another possible area of study would be to look at the effects of positive interactions with parents on the overall level of parental involvement. This would mean monitoring the level of parental involvement following positive, negative or neutral interactions. This would be measured by the number of parent-initiated interactions with the school.