School support, parental involvement, and academic and social-emotional outcomes for English-language learners in elementary school.

English language learners;Parental involvement;Elementary school;Academic achievement;School support;Social-emotional outcomes

Sarah Kate Niehaus

University:University of Louisville

Department:Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology

关键词: English language learners;    Parental involvement;    Elementary school;    Academic achievement;    School support;    Social-emotional outcomes;   

Others  :  https://ir.library.louisville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2060&context=etd

美国|英语

来源: The Universite of Louisville's Institutional Repository

【 摘 要 】

This dissertation study examined the relationships between school support (i.e.,student services and family outreach), parental school involvement, and academic andsocial-emotional outcomes for children who are English Language Learners (ELLs).Specifically, the goals of the study were to: a) determine if higher levels of schoolsupport were associated with more positive academic and social-emotional outcomes forELLs, b) examine the extent to which parental school involvement mediated therelationship between school support and ELL student outcomes, and c) explore howELLs' perceived academic and social-emotional skills were related to their actualachievement levels. Restricted-use data collected from direct child assessments,children's self-reports, and parent, teacher, and school administrator surveys from theEarly Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort of 1998 (ECLS-K) were used.The sample included approximately 1,020 third-grade students who were identified inkindergarten as ELLs. Structural equation modeling was used to measure school supportand then to analyze the direct and indirect effects of school support on ELL studentoutcomes, as potentially mediated by parental school involvement. Results showed thathigher levels of school support predicted more parental involvement among ELL families, more parental involvement was associated with fewer social-emotional concernsfor ELL children at school, and fewer social-emotional problems were linked to higherachievement scores. ELL students' overall academic self-concept was not significantlyrelated to their academic achievement, but this relationship was stronger whenconsidering domain-specific measures of self-concept and achievement in reading andmathematics. Contrary to expectations, results showed that ELL students had lowerachievement and more social-emotional concerns when they attended schools thatprovided more support services, although there are a variety of possible explanations forthese findings that are discussed in the paper. Mediation analyses showed that none of theindirect effects reached conventional levels of statistical significance. Several avenues forfuture research are discussed as well as implications for policy and practice in terms ofhow schools can best serve the growing population of ELL students and families.