A Holistic View of the Impact of Family Life on a Child’s Education Outcomes

Little research has focused on the self-perceptions of students and parents in affecting education outcomes. This thesis aims to identify the most influential factors for a child’s academic success through interviews of both students and their parents. The project illuminates which factors students and parents value the most, and it provides a holistic analysis by comparing responses within an individual family unit. Interview data is analyzed based on fourteen specific factors of analysis grouped by themes such as family involvement, socioeconomic status, parental pressure and cultural background. Student and parent responses are analyzed separately and then compared, including student-parent pairs within the same family. The results indicate that the majority of students perceive parental involvement to be the most impactful for their academic success while parents attribute it to their child’s intrinsic motivation. However, students reveal that their intrinsic motivation is linked to parental expectations and involvement during childhood. Further, parental involvement is primarily communicated through parental pressure and parental expectations, both of which are affected by factors of parenting style, parental philosophy of education, and cultural and socioeconomic background.