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Mothers' academic involvement and children's achievement: Children's theory of intelligence as a mediator
Learning and Individual Differences 35 (2014) 130–136
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Learning and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/lindif
Mothers' academic involvement and children's achievement: Children's theory of intelligence as a mediator Jinxia Zhao a,b, Meifang Wang a,⁎ a b
Department of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, China Department of Education, Linyi University, Linyi 276005, China
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 17 September 2013 Received in revised form 11 June 2014 Accepted 28 June 2014 Keywords: Mothers' autonomy support versus control Theory of intelligence Academic achievement China
a b s t r a c t The present study examined whether children's theory of intelligence functioned as a mediating mechanism underlying the effects of mothers' academic involvement on children's achievement and whether children's gender moderated the associations among these variables. A total of 524 Chinese junior high school students participated in this study. Results indicated that mothers' autonomy-supportive involvement was positively correlated and controlling involvement was negatively correlated with children's achievement. These associations were mediated by children's theory of intelligence for both boys and girls. With the mediating role of children's theory of intelligence taken into account, mothers' control was not directly related to boys' or girls' achievement; however, mothers' autonomy support was directly related to girls' but not boys' achievement. These findings are discussed in terms of their relevance to the literature and their implications for research and practice. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Parents' academic involvement is largely defined as parents' interactions with schools and with their children to promote children's success in academics (Hill & Tyson, 2009). To date, the literature linking parents' academic involvement to children's achievement is extensive (Grolnick, Kurowski, Dunlap, & Hevey, 2000; Hill et al., 2004; Kuperminc, Darnell, & Alvarez-Jimenez, 2008). However, most research has generally taken the approach of examining the extent to which parents are involved in children's learning. Although such an approach is important for elucidating the effects of parents' academic involvement, how parents are involved must be considered to further understand the effects of parents' academic involvement on children's achievement (Pomerantz, Moorman, & Litwack, 2007). Autonomy support and control have long been considered two central constructs of parent's involvement practices. Drawing from Self-Determination Theory (SDT), autonomy support is defined here as parents' allowance of children to explore their own environments, to initiate their own behavior, and to take initiative in solving their own problems (Moorman & Pomerantz, 2008). By contrast, parents' control refers to parents' exertion of pressure over children with methods such as commands, directives, and love withdrawal (Pomerantz et al., 2007) to channel children toward particular outcomes. Silk, Morris, Kanaya, and Steinberg (2003) suggested that ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, No. 88 East Wenhua Road, Jinan 250014, China. Tel.: +86 531 86180193; fax: +86 531 86180179. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (M. Wang).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2014.06.006 1041-6080/© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
autonomy support and control are distinct parenting constructs rather than opposite ends of a continuum. The absence of parents' autonomy support does not necessarily imply the presence of parents' control. Similarly, the absence of parents' control does not mean that the parent is autonomy supportive. Moreover, these two types of parental involvement have been found to be differentially related to children's academic outcomes. For instance, Cooper, Lindsay, and Nye (2000) found that children of parents who adopted autonomy-supportive orientations toward assisting children with homework scored higher on a standardized achievement test than children of parents who adopted controlling orientations. In a study in which children and their mothers worked on homework-like tasks in a laboratory, Grolnick, Gurland, DeCourcey, and Jacob (2002) found that the more autonomy supportive and less controlling that mothers were, the better children's performance during the tasks was. Despite such progress, most research in this area has been conducted in Western cultures; few studies have focused on Chinese parents' academic involvement. Given that ideas about the role of parents in children's learning differ between China and Western countries, it is important to examine the effects of Chinese parents' autonomy support and control in academics on children's achievement. Specifically, in China, parents are generally believed to be responsible for children's outcomes in academics; this belief is mainly reflected in the indigenous Chinese notion of guan (Chao, 1994). At the heart of guan is parents' training of children that involves continual monitoring (Chao, 1994). Influenced by this mainstream cultural notion of parenting, Chinese parents may exert more control in their academic involvement (Cheung & Pomerantz, 2011). Because parents' controlling behaviors are often viewed as an act of love in China (Chao, 1994),
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such involvement may have less of a negative effect on children's academic functioning in Chinese culture. Notably, although the aforementioned perspectives do not explicitly address how parents' autonomy support may affect children in China, the positive effect of such involvement may be not as strong as that found in Western countries, as the traditional Chinese culture prioritizes relatedness over autonomy (Wang, Pomerantz, & Chen, 2007). However, China (especially urban China) has experienced considerable industrialization and Westernization over the past few decades. These changes may have reduced the East–West differences in how parents are involved in children's learning and how children interpret and respond to parents' involvement. Thus, one might wonder whether the changes in modern China might make the associations between parents' academic autonomy-supportive and controlling involvement and children's achievement similar between Chinese and Western samples. Given this conflicting theory, the present study examined the associations between Chinese parents' autonomy support and control in academics and children's achievement. 1.1. Children's theory of intelligence as a mediator In contrast to the relative wealth of research relating parents' involvement to children's achievement, considerably less research has investigated the mechanism through which parents' involvement relates to children's achievement. Some evidence suggested that many aspects of children's beliefs (e.g., self-perceived competence) mediated this association (Grolnick, Ryan, & Deci, 1991). Whether does children's theory of intelligence, a belief about the changeability of intelligence, underlies the effects of parents' academic involvement? To our knowledge, no study has focused specifically on this issue. In this study, we contended that children's theory of intelligence may act as a mediator between parents' academic involvement and children's achievement. According to Dweck (1999), students may hold different beliefs about the nature of intelligence. Some students hold an entity theory of intelligence and believe that intelligence is more of a stable, unchangeable trait. Other students espouse an incremental theory of intelligence and think that intellectual ability can be improved or increased with effort. Empirical research suggests that the two views of intelligence shape children's achievement in different ways such that an incremental theory of intelligence facilitates and an entity theory of intelligence inhibits children's achievement (Aronson, Fried, & Good, 2002; Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007). Although most studies have examined the effect of children's theory of intelligence on their achievement, a small number of studies have focused on the determinants of children's theory of intelligence. In particular, a few studies have shown that parents' process- versus person-focused involvement affects children's theory of intelligence (Cimpian, Arce, Markman, & Dweck, 2007; Pomerantz & Kempner, 2013), which suggests that the quality of parents' academic involvement may act as a general antecedent of children's theory of intelligence. Some researchers focused on autonomy support versus control in examining the quality of parents' involvement (Grolnick et al., 2002; Pomerantz et al., 2007). When parents support children's autonomy by allowing them to initiate their own behavior and to take an active role in solving their own problems, children may feel that they are capable of influencing their lives (Pomerantz & Wang, 2009) and developing their abilities, which may foster children's development of an incremental theory of intelligence. By contrast, when parents attempt to control children by making decisions for them, children may feel that they are not capable of influencing their lives and developing their abilities, which may lead children to develop an entity theory of intelligence. As mentioned above, parents' autonomy-supportive and controlling involvement may be associated with children's theory of intelligence, which, in turn, may be related to children's achievement. Thus, we
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hypothesized that children's theory of intelligence may function as a mediating mechanism, accounting for the relations between parents' autonomy-supportive and controlling involvement in academics and children's achievement. 1.2. Children's gender as a moderator Previous studies have suggested that parents' involvement and children's achievement may vary systematically on the basis of children's gender. Compared to boys, girls perceive their parents to be more supportive and less controlling (Duchesne & Ratelle, 2010; Kristjansson & Sigfusdottir, 2009) and have higher achievement (Kenney-Benson, Pomerantz, Ryan, & Patrick, 2006). Although boys and girls have been found to have different levels of parents' involvement and achievement, studies testing children's gender as a moderator of the association between parents' involvement and children's achievement are scant. The results from the few studies in this area support the possibility that the association between parents' involvement and children's achievement is similar between boys and girls (Jeynes, 2005; Kristjansson & Sigfusdottir, 2009). However, these studies primarily investigated the direct association between parents' involvement and children's achievement and did not consider possible mediating mechanisms. Bhanot and Jovanovic (2005) found that mothers' intrusive involvement in children's math homework is negatively related to girls' but not boys' perceptions of their math ability. Simpkins, Fredricks, and Eccles (2012) reported that children's perception about their reading ability is positively related to time spent reading for girls but not for boys. The findings of the above two studies may provide indirect evidence for the idea that the effects of parents' academic involvement on children's academic functioning may differ across gender when children's beliefs in their abilities is taken into account as a potential mediator. Given this potentially moderating role of gender, the current study also examined whether the paths in our mediating models were moderated by children's gender. 1.3. The current study To extend the understanding of parents' academic involvement beyond prior research in Western cultures, the present study investigated the associations between Chinese parents' academic involvement and children's achievement as well as the possible mediating mechanism underlying these associations. Because parents' involvement may be of considerable importance as children enter into middle school—a time during which students' motivation regarding schoolwork decreases (Shi et al., 2001; Wang & Pomerantz, 2009)— we focused on children during this period of development. Given that mothers tend to be more involved than fathers in children's learning (Pleck, 1997), this study primarily focused on mothers' academic involvement. Our major goals were threefold. The first goal was to examine the associations between mothers' academic involvement and children's achievement. Based on the extant literature, we hypothesized that mothers' autonomy-supportive involvement would positively and that mothers' controlling involvement would negatively correlate with children's achievement. The second goal was to explore the mediating role of children's theory of intelligence in these associations. In this respect, we hypothesized that mothers' autonomysupportive (vs. controlling) involvement would negatively relate to children's entity (vs. incremental) theory of intelligence, which, in turn, would negatively (vs. positively) relate to children's achievement. The last goal was to determine whether children's gender is a potential moderator of the associations within our models. There is less relevant literature to guide hypothesis development regarding this issue; however, based on the aforementioned indirect evidence (Bhanot & Jovanovic, 2005; Simpkins et al., 2012), we hypothesized that the relationships among mothers' academic involvement, children's theory of
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intelligence, and children's achievement would be stronger for girls than for boys. Notably, prior research has demonstrated that family socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with children's achievement; i.e., children from lower SES backgrounds are at increased risk for lower achievement (Davis-Kean, 2005; Hill et al., 2004). Thus, SES was examined as a possible confounding variable to ensure that the findings of this study were not due to SES. 2. Method 2.1. Participants This study was part of an ongoing project of parenting and children's adjustment. The participants consisted of 524 (246 boys, 278 girls) children aged 12–16 years (M = 13.89; SD = 0.92) enrolled in grades 7–9. These students were recruited from one public junior high school in the city of Jinan, located in Shandong Province, Eastern China. Ninety-one percent of the participants lived in two-parent households, and 80% were only children. 2.2. Procedure The design of this study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of Shandong Normal University. Before the study, both school approval and written informed consent from parents for their children to participate in the study were obtained. In addition, the children were assured of the voluntary and confidential nature of the research. The survey was group administrated to children by one or two trained research assistants in separate classrooms after regular classes. The children were informed that the questionnaires included questions on their beliefs and experiences in daily life and were encouraged to respond to all the items as accurately as possible. Data collection lasted approximately 30 min.
was 0.89. Given that statements indicating an incremental theory of intelligence are more compelling and socially desirable than statements indicating an entity theory of intelligence, only statements indicating an entity theory were presented in this measure, as prior studies have done (Erdley, Cain, Loomis, Dumas-Hines, & Dweck, 1997; Wang & Ng, 2012). 2.3.3. Children's achievement Based on the final objective examinations, children's achievement in Chinese, Math, and English were obtained from the school. Scores for these three major subjects have been found to be a valid measure of school academic achievement in China (Chen, Wang, & Cao, 2011). Scores in each subject were standardized within the grade. The mean across the three subjects was taken, with higher scores representing higher achievement. 2.3.4. SES Considering that family income reported is vulnerable to serious measurement errors in China (Bian, 2002), we used the information concerning parents' educational attainment and current occupations to assess family SES, following the method used by Shi and Shen (2007). Specifically, paternal/maternal education was coded on a sixpoint scale ranging from 1 (uneducated) to 6 (master's or doctoral degree), and occupation was coded on a five-point scale ranging from 1 (unemployed) to 5 (professional/executive). The total score for paternal/maternal education and occupation was calculated as the indicator of SES (ranging from 4 to 22), with higher scores reflecting higher family SES (Shi & Shen, 2007; Wang, Xing, & Zhao, in press). In current study, the correlations between paternal/maternal education and their occupations were .31 and .30, respectively. 3. Results 3.1. Descriptive statistics and correlations
2.3. Instruments 2.3.1. Mothers' autonomy-supportive versus controlling involvement The extent to which mothers' academic involvement is autonomy supportive versus controlling was assessed with 18 items (Pomerantz, Wang, Cheung, & Qu, 2014) modified from the measure of parents' general autonomy support and control (Cheung & Pomerantz, 2011). Of the 18 items, 8 items assessed autonomy support (e.g., “My mother allows me to make choices about my studying whenever possible” and “My mother listens to my opinion or perspective when I talk with her about my studying”), and 10 items assessed control (e.g., “When I do not do well in school, my mother tells me of all the sacrifices she has made for me” and “My mother tells me how disappointed she is in me when I do not do well in school”). For each item, the participants indicated the extent to which these statements were true of their mothers on a five-point scale (1 = not at all true, 5 = very true). Scores for mothers' autonomy-supportive and controlling involvement were obtained by calculating the mean of the relevant items, with higher scores representing greater involvement. This measure has been shown to have acceptable reliability and construct validity in China (Zhang, 2012). In the current sample, the alpha coefficients were 0.89 for autonomy support and 0.87 for control. 2.3.2. Children's theory of intelligence The widely used 3-item measure from Dweck (1999) was adopted to assess children's theory of intelligence. One sample item read, “A person's smartness is not something that s/he can change very much”. The participants rated each item on a five-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all true) to 5 (very true). The mean of the items was taken, with a higher score representing a stronger entity theory of intelligence. This measure has acceptable reliability and validity in China (Wang & Ng, 2012). In the current study, the alpha coefficient for the measure
Means and standard deviations of all the key variables included in our analyses along with Pearson product–moment correlations among the variables are presented in Table 1. Correlation analyses showed that, mothers' autonomy support was negatively correlated with children's theory of intelligence and positively correlated with children's achievement. Mothers' control was positively correlated with children's theory of intelligence and negatively correlated with children's achievement. Children's theory of intelligence was negatively correlated with children's achievement. Additionally, we also assessed the correlations between SES and the key variables and found that SES was positively correlated with mothers' autonomy support and children's achievement. Thus, family SES was included in the structural equation model (SEM) analyses presented below. 3.2. Testing the measurement model Before running structural models to test our hypotheses, a measurement model including three latent constructs (autonomy support, control, and theory of intelligence) was first established by using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In this model, theory of intelligence was indicated by three scale items; autonomy support and control were each indicated by two randomly composed parcels. The use of parcels makes the model have fewer estimated parameters and fewer chances for residuals to be correlated (Little, Cunningham, Shahar, & Widaman, 2002). All the randomly composed parcels met the requirements specified by Little et al. (2002). That is, the parcels were internally reliable with alphas above .60 (αs = .75 to .80), and exploratory factor analyses on each parcel yielded a single factor with Eigenvalue greater than one. The latent constructs in the model were allowed to correlate freely. We performed an analysis using Maximum
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Table 1 Descriptive statistics and correlations among variables. Variables
1
– −.08 −.22⁎⁎⁎ .25⁎⁎⁎ .10⁎
1. Autonomy support 2. Control 3. Theory of intelligence 4. Achievement 5. Socioeconomic status
2
3
– .23⁎⁎⁎ −.13⁎⁎ .01
– −.23⁎⁎⁎ .01
4
M (SD)
– .16⁎⁎⁎
Total
Boys
Girls
3.68 (.87) 2.70 (.90) 2.02 (1.11) .31 (2.24) 15.57 (3.69)
3.58 (.88) 2.84 (.89) 2.03 (1.18) −.15 (2.24) 15.67 (4.17)
3.77 (.86) 2.57 (.90) 2.01 (1.05) .71 (2.17) 15.49 (3.22)
Note. ⁎ P b .05. ⁎⁎ P b .01. ⁎⁎⁎ P b .001.
Likelihood estimation in Amos7.0. Significance tests for standardized factor loadings were used to evaluate the adequacy of each indicator, and the fit indices CFI, TLI, RMSEA, and SRMR were used to evaluate the fit of the model. This analysis aimed to specify the extent to which the observed indicators actually represent the corresponding latent constructs (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1996). The results of CFA showed that the measurement model had a good fit to the data (CFI = .99, TLI = .99, RMSEA = .05, SRMR = .03) and that the standardized loadings of each indicator upon its latent factor were all above .65. These results support the measurement component of the model, suggesting that the indicators adequately represent their respective latent factors.
children's achievement, with the direct effect of control and the effect of SES on children's achievement included in the model (Fig. 2). The results showed that the model had an excellent fit to the data, CFI = 1.00, TLI = 1.00, RMSEA = .00, SRMR = .01. Specifically, the direct pathway from mothers' control to children's achievement was not significant, but the indirect pathway via their theory of intelligence was significant (Z = 3.52, p b .001), suggesting that the association between mothers' control and children's achievement is explained entirely by the mediating role of children's theory of intelligence. The model explained 9% of the variance in children's achievement. 3.4. The moderating role of children's gender
3.3. Testing the mediation model Having established a measurement model, we then tested two SEMs to evaluate our mediation hypotheses. We again used Amos7.0 with Maximum Likelihood estimation. The significance of indirect effects was evaluated by the Sobel test. The first model examined whether children's theory of intelligence mediates the relation between mothers' autonomy support and children's achievement, taking into account the direct effect of autonomy support and the effect of SES on children's achievement (Fig. 1). The results showed that the model fit the data well, CFI = .99, TLI = .99, RMSEA = .02, SRMR = .02. Specifically, mothers' autonomy support was both directly related to children's achievement and indirectly related to children's achievement through children's theory of intelligence (Z = 3.04, p b .01). These results generally support our hypotheses and suggest that the relation between mothers' autonomy support and children's achievement can be explained partially by the mediating role of children's theory of intelligence. The overall model explained 13% of the variance in children's achievement. The second model tested whether children's theory of intelligence mediates the association between mothers' control and
Autonomy support
-.23*** (-.24**/-.23**)
.22*** (.08/.30***)
SES
.13** (.10/.20***)
Theory of intelligence -.18*** (-.22**/-.17**)
Before examining the moderating role of children's gender in the associations among mothers' academic involvement, children's theory of intelligence, and children's achievement, we calculated the mean-level differences between boys and girls with respect to these variables by using three separate one-way ANOVAs. The results demonstrated that (Table 1) girls had higher perceived autonomy support, F(1, 522) = 6.32, p b .05, η2 = .01, lower perceived control, F(1, 522) = 11.75, p = .001, η2 = .02, and higher achievement, F(1, 522) = 19.97, p b .001, η2 = .04, than boys. To explore whether the structural relations in the models varied across boys and girls, two multi-group analyses were conducted. In each multi-group analysis, a constrained model in which all structural paths were forced to be equal across the two groups was compared to a baseline model in which all paths were freely estimated across boys and girls. A significant chi-square difference (Δχ2) between the baseline model and the constrained model indicated a gender difference. The model for mothers' autonomy support was tested first. The results showed that the baseline model had a good fit across the gender groups, CFI = .99, TLI = .99, RMSEA = .03, SRMR = .03. When structural paths were forced to be equal across gender, although the constrained model also had a satisfactory fit to the data, CFI = .99, TLI = .98, RMSEA = .03, SRMR = .04, a significant difference
Control
-.09 (-.05/-.04)
Achievement
Fig. 1. The mediating model of mothers' autonomy support, children's theory of intelligence and children's achievement. The coefficients outside the parentheses are for the total sample. The first coefficient in the parentheses is for the boys, and the second coefficient in the parentheses is for girls. Note. SES = socioeconomic status; **P b .01, ***P b .001.
.25*** (.30***/.22***)
SES
Theory of intelligence -.21*** (-.20***/-.23***)
.16*** Achievement (.19***/.16***)
Fig. 2. The mediating model of mothers' control, children's theory of intelligence and children's achievement. The coefficients outside the parentheses are for the total sample. The first coefficient in the parentheses is for boys, and the second coefficient in the parentheses is for girls. Note. SES = socioeconomic status; ***P b .001.
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between the baseline model and the constrained model emerged, Δχ2 (4, N = 524) = 9.82, p b .05, indicating that the structural paths of the model differed across boys and girls. As presented in Fig. 1, for girls, both the direct pathway from mothers' autonomy support to children's achievement and the indirect pathway through children's theory of intelligence (Z = 2.15, p b .05) were significant after the model was adjusted for SES. The overall model explained 20% of the variance in girls' achievement. For boys, after the model was adjusted for SES, the direct pathway from mothers' autonomy support to children's achievement was not significant, but the indirect pathway via their theory of intelligence was significant (Z = 2.19, p b .05). The overall model explained 7% of the variance in boys' achievement. The same steps were conducted to test the model for mothers' control. The multi-group analysis revealed that both the baseline model, CFI = 1.00, TLI = 1.00, RMSEA = .00, SRMR = .02, and the constrained model, CFI = 1.00, TLI = 1.00, RMSEA = .02, SRMR = .04, had a good fit to the data, and the results from a model comparison showed that imposing the equality constraints did not significantly deteriorate the fit of the model, Δχ2 (4, N = 524) = 8.32, p N .05, indicating that the structural paths in the model were equivalent across boys and girls (Fig. 2). Specifically, for both boys and girls, mothers' control was not directly related to children's achievement but was indirectly related to children's achievement via children's theory of intelligence (Z = 3.78, p b .001). The overall model explained 9% of the variance in boys' and girls' achievement. 4. Discussion Prior research in Western cultures indicates that parents' academic involvement is associated with children's achievement. This study extended such findings to China. In addition, this study went beyond prior research in this area by examining the mechanism underlying the effects of mothers' academic involvement on children's achievement and the moderating role of children's gender. The results largely supported our hypotheses, as discussed below. As anticipated, the present study showed that children who perceived their mothers to have more autonomy-supportive and less controlling involvement in academics had higher achievement in school; this finding is consistent with prior research conducted in Western cultures (Cooper et al., 2000; Grolnick et al., 2002). These findings partly suggest that recent developments in China (especially in urban China) may have weakened the influence from traditional cultural notions. For example, China's Open Door policy permits influences of Western culture that emphasize independence. In this context, on the one hand, the meanings attached to control in contemporary China may be different from those in the past, such that children may view parents' continual monitoring and behavioral correction to be more of an intrusion upon their sense of autonomy and less of an act of love. On the other hand, parents' academic involvement practices in modern China may have also changed toward more autonomy-supportive involvement and less controlling involvement. These changes in contemporary China might have increased the convergence in the associations between parents' autonomy-supportive and controlling involvement and children's achievement between Chinese and Western culture. This finding of cultural similarities may be explained by SDT, which posits that the need for autonomy is universal and that satisfaction of this need is essential for children's optimal development across cultures (Ryan & Deci, 2002; Wang et al., 2007). When parents have more autonomy-supportive involvement in academics, they may attend to children's work but let them do it on their own (Moorman & Pomerantz, 2008; Ng, Kenney-Benson, & Pomerantz, 2004), which may foster the development of children's independence associated with completing academic tasks. Additionally, parents with more autonomy-supportive involvement may also discuss with children the reasons for their failure at academic tasks and help them to
develop learning skills that may contribute to future academic success (Ng et al., 2004). As a result, children may attain higher achievement. In contrast, when parents are more controlling, they may make decisions for children regarding academics (Pomerantz & Wang, 2009), which may limit children's opportunities to develop skills associated with completing academic tasks, such as persistence, self-monitoring, and organization. Moreover, parents who are more controlling may also punish children because of their academic failure (Ng et al., 2004), which may undermine their learning motivation. As a result, children's academic achievement may suffer. The SEM analyses demonstrated that children's theory of intelligence mediated the associations between mothers' academic involvement and children's achievement, after adjusting for the effect of SES. The results from the multi-group analyses supported the generality of these indirect associations across boys and girls. This finding not only adds to the literature by examining the mechanisms underlying the effects of parents' academic involvement on children's achievement but also suggests an alternative way to optimize children's theory of intelligence through enhancing parents' autonomy-supportive involvement. In the discussion that follows, we provide possible explanations for this finding. As mentioned earlier, parents who are more autonomy supportive may communicate to children that people are capable of developing their abilities and therefore may foster the development of an incremental theory of intelligence in children. In a learning context, children of such parents may tend to choose challenging tasks that allow for the acquisition of new skills and insights (Dupeyrat & Mariné, 2005). Thus, they may attain higher achievement. By contrast, parents who are more controlling may signal to children that people are not capable of developing their abilities, which may lead children to develop an entity theory of intelligence. In a learning context, children of such parents may avoid many challenging tasks, thereby restricting their opportunities to acquire new skills (Dupeyrat & Mariné, 2005). Consequently, their achievement may suffer. Notably, when the mediating role of children's theory of intelligence and the effect of family SES were taken into account, we found that although mothers' control was not directly related to boys' and girls' achievement, mothers' autonomy support was directly related to girls' but not boys' achievement. This finding was basically consistent with our hypothesis and indicated that the association between mothers' autonomy support and children's achievement was stronger for girls than for boys. According to socialization theory on gender role differentiation, mothers may feel a greater responsibility to socialize their daughters and thus may spend more time with their daughters (Huston, 1983). Given the increased ongoing contact between mothers and daughters, mothers' autonomy support may have a stronger association with girls' achievement than boys' achievement. Notably, the present study only focused on mothers' academic involvement, despite the increasingly central role of fathers in child development. Whether the effects of fathers' academic involvement on boys' and girls' achievement are similar to those found for mothers' academic involvement in this study requires investigation in future research. The present study suffers from several methodological limitations. First, except for children's achievement, the data for both mothers' academic involvement and children's theory of intelligence were solely based on children's reports, which may introduce systematic biases in estimates of associations among variables. Further research using multiple data sources and multiple methodologies will provide more robust, valid evidence of the associations among the variables investigated in this study. Second, this study used a cross-sectional design, and thus, the directions of the effects cannot be determined. However, prior longitudinal research has indicated that parents' academic involvement and children's theory of intelligence (Blackwell et al., 2007; Cheung & Pomerantz, 2011) predict children's achievement, and that parents' person- versus process-focused involvement predicts children's theory of intelligence (Pomerantz & Kempner, 2013). Thus, mothers' autonomy
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support and control in academics may have affected children's theory of intelligence, which, in turn, may have affected children's achievement. Yet, some studies suggested that children's achievement contributes to mothers' involvement practices as well (Grolnick et al., 2002; Pomerantz & Eaton, 2001; Wang, Chan, & Lin, 2012). Thus, further research needs to focus on the reciprocal associations between mothers' autonomy support versus control and children's achievement as well as the mechanisms. Third, in this study, the sample was recruited from the Jinan region of China only. Whether our results can be applied to children in other regions remains unknown. Future research should recruit representative samples from different regions in China to replicate the results of this study. 5. Educational implications The findings of this study may have implications for programs aimed at improving parents' knowledge and skills of how to become effectively involved in children's learning. First, school psychologists should inform parents of the beneficial effect of autonomy support and the harmful effect of control on children's theory of intelligence and their achievement. Second, school psychologists should help parents to improve their skills related to their involvement in academics. Specifically, parents should be advised to support children's autonomy in academics through practices such as allowing children's freedom of choice, supporting their initiative, adopting their perspective, and discussing learning strategies and plans for the future. Moreover, parents should be advised that the use of controlling techniques, such as commands, directives, and love withdrawal, to pressure children toward particular outcomes should be avoided as much as possible. These programs, if implemented appropriately, might help encourage autonomy-supportive involvement and discourage controlling involvement in academics among parents, which may, in turn, benefit children's theory of intelligence and their achievement. References Aronson, J., Fried, C. B., & Good, C. (2002). Reducing stereotype threat and boosting academic achievement of African-American students: The role of conceptions of intelligence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 113–125. Bhanot, R., & Jovanovic, J. (2005). Do parents' academic gender stereotypes influence whether they intrude on their children's homework? Sex Role, 52, 597–607, http:// dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11199-005-3728-4. Bian, Y. J. (2002). Chinese social stratification and social mobility. Annual Review of Sociology, 28, 91–116, http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.28.110601.140823. Blackwell, L. S., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention. Child Development, 78, 246–263, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624. 2007.00995.x. Chao, R. K. (1994). Beyond parental control and authoritarian parenting style: Understanding Chinese parenting through the cultural notion of training. Child Development, 65, 1111–1119, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1994. tb00806.x. Chen, X., Wang, L., & Cao, R. (2011). Shyness-sensitivity and unsociability in rural Chinese children: Relations with social, school, and psychological adjustment. Child Development, 82, 1531–1543, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011. 01616.x. Cheung, C. S., & Pomerantz, E. M. (2011). Parents' involvement in children's learning in the United States and China: Implications for children's academic and emotional functioning. Child Development, 82, 932–950, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624. 2011.01582.x. Cimpian, A., Arce, H. C., Markman, E. M., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Subtle linguistic cues affect children's motivation. Psychological Science, 18, 314–316, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j. 1467-9280.2007.01896.x. Cooper, H., Lindsay, J. J., & Nye, B. (2000). Homework in the home: How student, family and parenting-style differences relate to the homework process. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 464–487, http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1999.1036. Davis-Kean, P. E. (2005). The influence of parent education and family income on child achievement: The indirect role of parental expectations and the home environment. Journal of Family Psychology, 19, 294–304, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.19.2. 294. Duchesne, S., & Ratelle, C. (2010). Parental behaviors and adolescents' achievement goals at the beginning of middle school: Emotional problems as potential mediators. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 497–507, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ a0019320.
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Learning and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/lindif
Mothers' academic involvement and children's achievement: Children's theory of intelligence as a mediator Jinxia Zhao a,b, Meifang Wang a,⁎ a b
Department of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, China Department of Education, Linyi University, Linyi 276005, China
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 17 September 2013 Received in revised form 11 June 2014 Accepted 28 June 2014 Keywords: Mothers' autonomy support versus control Theory of intelligence Academic achievement China
a b s t r a c t The present study examined whether children's theory of intelligence functioned as a mediating mechanism underlying the effects of mothers' academic involvement on children's achievement and whether children's gender moderated the associations among these variables. A total of 524 Chinese junior high school students participated in this study. Results indicated that mothers' autonomy-supportive involvement was positively correlated and controlling involvement was negatively correlated with children's achievement. These associations were mediated by children's theory of intelligence for both boys and girls. With the mediating role of children's theory of intelligence taken into account, mothers' control was not directly related to boys' or girls' achievement; however, mothers' autonomy support was directly related to girls' but not boys' achievement. These findings are discussed in terms of their relevance to the literature and their implications for research and practice. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Parents' academic involvement is largely defined as parents' interactions with schools and with their children to promote children's success in academics (Hill & Tyson, 2009). To date, the literature linking parents' academic involvement to children's achievement is extensive (Grolnick, Kurowski, Dunlap, & Hevey, 2000; Hill et al., 2004; Kuperminc, Darnell, & Alvarez-Jimenez, 2008). However, most research has generally taken the approach of examining the extent to which parents are involved in children's learning. Although such an approach is important for elucidating the effects of parents' academic involvement, how parents are involved must be considered to further understand the effects of parents' academic involvement on children's achievement (Pomerantz, Moorman, & Litwack, 2007). Autonomy support and control have long been considered two central constructs of parent's involvement practices. Drawing from Self-Determination Theory (SDT), autonomy support is defined here as parents' allowance of children to explore their own environments, to initiate their own behavior, and to take initiative in solving their own problems (Moorman & Pomerantz, 2008). By contrast, parents' control refers to parents' exertion of pressure over children with methods such as commands, directives, and love withdrawal (Pomerantz et al., 2007) to channel children toward particular outcomes. Silk, Morris, Kanaya, and Steinberg (2003) suggested that ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, No. 88 East Wenhua Road, Jinan 250014, China. Tel.: +86 531 86180193; fax: +86 531 86180179. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (M. Wang).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2014.06.006 1041-6080/© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
autonomy support and control are distinct parenting constructs rather than opposite ends of a continuum. The absence of parents' autonomy support does not necessarily imply the presence of parents' control. Similarly, the absence of parents' control does not mean that the parent is autonomy supportive. Moreover, these two types of parental involvement have been found to be differentially related to children's academic outcomes. For instance, Cooper, Lindsay, and Nye (2000) found that children of parents who adopted autonomy-supportive orientations toward assisting children with homework scored higher on a standardized achievement test than children of parents who adopted controlling orientations. In a study in which children and their mothers worked on homework-like tasks in a laboratory, Grolnick, Gurland, DeCourcey, and Jacob (2002) found that the more autonomy supportive and less controlling that mothers were, the better children's performance during the tasks was. Despite such progress, most research in this area has been conducted in Western cultures; few studies have focused on Chinese parents' academic involvement. Given that ideas about the role of parents in children's learning differ between China and Western countries, it is important to examine the effects of Chinese parents' autonomy support and control in academics on children's achievement. Specifically, in China, parents are generally believed to be responsible for children's outcomes in academics; this belief is mainly reflected in the indigenous Chinese notion of guan (Chao, 1994). At the heart of guan is parents' training of children that involves continual monitoring (Chao, 1994). Influenced by this mainstream cultural notion of parenting, Chinese parents may exert more control in their academic involvement (Cheung & Pomerantz, 2011). Because parents' controlling behaviors are often viewed as an act of love in China (Chao, 1994),
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such involvement may have less of a negative effect on children's academic functioning in Chinese culture. Notably, although the aforementioned perspectives do not explicitly address how parents' autonomy support may affect children in China, the positive effect of such involvement may be not as strong as that found in Western countries, as the traditional Chinese culture prioritizes relatedness over autonomy (Wang, Pomerantz, & Chen, 2007). However, China (especially urban China) has experienced considerable industrialization and Westernization over the past few decades. These changes may have reduced the East–West differences in how parents are involved in children's learning and how children interpret and respond to parents' involvement. Thus, one might wonder whether the changes in modern China might make the associations between parents' academic autonomy-supportive and controlling involvement and children's achievement similar between Chinese and Western samples. Given this conflicting theory, the present study examined the associations between Chinese parents' autonomy support and control in academics and children's achievement. 1.1. Children's theory of intelligence as a mediator In contrast to the relative wealth of research relating parents' involvement to children's achievement, considerably less research has investigated the mechanism through which parents' involvement relates to children's achievement. Some evidence suggested that many aspects of children's beliefs (e.g., self-perceived competence) mediated this association (Grolnick, Ryan, & Deci, 1991). Whether does children's theory of intelligence, a belief about the changeability of intelligence, underlies the effects of parents' academic involvement? To our knowledge, no study has focused specifically on this issue. In this study, we contended that children's theory of intelligence may act as a mediator between parents' academic involvement and children's achievement. According to Dweck (1999), students may hold different beliefs about the nature of intelligence. Some students hold an entity theory of intelligence and believe that intelligence is more of a stable, unchangeable trait. Other students espouse an incremental theory of intelligence and think that intellectual ability can be improved or increased with effort. Empirical research suggests that the two views of intelligence shape children's achievement in different ways such that an incremental theory of intelligence facilitates and an entity theory of intelligence inhibits children's achievement (Aronson, Fried, & Good, 2002; Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007). Although most studies have examined the effect of children's theory of intelligence on their achievement, a small number of studies have focused on the determinants of children's theory of intelligence. In particular, a few studies have shown that parents' process- versus person-focused involvement affects children's theory of intelligence (Cimpian, Arce, Markman, & Dweck, 2007; Pomerantz & Kempner, 2013), which suggests that the quality of parents' academic involvement may act as a general antecedent of children's theory of intelligence. Some researchers focused on autonomy support versus control in examining the quality of parents' involvement (Grolnick et al., 2002; Pomerantz et al., 2007). When parents support children's autonomy by allowing them to initiate their own behavior and to take an active role in solving their own problems, children may feel that they are capable of influencing their lives (Pomerantz & Wang, 2009) and developing their abilities, which may foster children's development of an incremental theory of intelligence. By contrast, when parents attempt to control children by making decisions for them, children may feel that they are not capable of influencing their lives and developing their abilities, which may lead children to develop an entity theory of intelligence. As mentioned above, parents' autonomy-supportive and controlling involvement may be associated with children's theory of intelligence, which, in turn, may be related to children's achievement. Thus, we
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hypothesized that children's theory of intelligence may function as a mediating mechanism, accounting for the relations between parents' autonomy-supportive and controlling involvement in academics and children's achievement. 1.2. Children's gender as a moderator Previous studies have suggested that parents' involvement and children's achievement may vary systematically on the basis of children's gender. Compared to boys, girls perceive their parents to be more supportive and less controlling (Duchesne & Ratelle, 2010; Kristjansson & Sigfusdottir, 2009) and have higher achievement (Kenney-Benson, Pomerantz, Ryan, & Patrick, 2006). Although boys and girls have been found to have different levels of parents' involvement and achievement, studies testing children's gender as a moderator of the association between parents' involvement and children's achievement are scant. The results from the few studies in this area support the possibility that the association between parents' involvement and children's achievement is similar between boys and girls (Jeynes, 2005; Kristjansson & Sigfusdottir, 2009). However, these studies primarily investigated the direct association between parents' involvement and children's achievement and did not consider possible mediating mechanisms. Bhanot and Jovanovic (2005) found that mothers' intrusive involvement in children's math homework is negatively related to girls' but not boys' perceptions of their math ability. Simpkins, Fredricks, and Eccles (2012) reported that children's perception about their reading ability is positively related to time spent reading for girls but not for boys. The findings of the above two studies may provide indirect evidence for the idea that the effects of parents' academic involvement on children's academic functioning may differ across gender when children's beliefs in their abilities is taken into account as a potential mediator. Given this potentially moderating role of gender, the current study also examined whether the paths in our mediating models were moderated by children's gender. 1.3. The current study To extend the understanding of parents' academic involvement beyond prior research in Western cultures, the present study investigated the associations between Chinese parents' academic involvement and children's achievement as well as the possible mediating mechanism underlying these associations. Because parents' involvement may be of considerable importance as children enter into middle school—a time during which students' motivation regarding schoolwork decreases (Shi et al., 2001; Wang & Pomerantz, 2009)— we focused on children during this period of development. Given that mothers tend to be more involved than fathers in children's learning (Pleck, 1997), this study primarily focused on mothers' academic involvement. Our major goals were threefold. The first goal was to examine the associations between mothers' academic involvement and children's achievement. Based on the extant literature, we hypothesized that mothers' autonomy-supportive involvement would positively and that mothers' controlling involvement would negatively correlate with children's achievement. The second goal was to explore the mediating role of children's theory of intelligence in these associations. In this respect, we hypothesized that mothers' autonomysupportive (vs. controlling) involvement would negatively relate to children's entity (vs. incremental) theory of intelligence, which, in turn, would negatively (vs. positively) relate to children's achievement. The last goal was to determine whether children's gender is a potential moderator of the associations within our models. There is less relevant literature to guide hypothesis development regarding this issue; however, based on the aforementioned indirect evidence (Bhanot & Jovanovic, 2005; Simpkins et al., 2012), we hypothesized that the relationships among mothers' academic involvement, children's theory of
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intelligence, and children's achievement would be stronger for girls than for boys. Notably, prior research has demonstrated that family socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with children's achievement; i.e., children from lower SES backgrounds are at increased risk for lower achievement (Davis-Kean, 2005; Hill et al., 2004). Thus, SES was examined as a possible confounding variable to ensure that the findings of this study were not due to SES. 2. Method 2.1. Participants This study was part of an ongoing project of parenting and children's adjustment. The participants consisted of 524 (246 boys, 278 girls) children aged 12–16 years (M = 13.89; SD = 0.92) enrolled in grades 7–9. These students were recruited from one public junior high school in the city of Jinan, located in Shandong Province, Eastern China. Ninety-one percent of the participants lived in two-parent households, and 80% were only children. 2.2. Procedure The design of this study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of Shandong Normal University. Before the study, both school approval and written informed consent from parents for their children to participate in the study were obtained. In addition, the children were assured of the voluntary and confidential nature of the research. The survey was group administrated to children by one or two trained research assistants in separate classrooms after regular classes. The children were informed that the questionnaires included questions on their beliefs and experiences in daily life and were encouraged to respond to all the items as accurately as possible. Data collection lasted approximately 30 min.
was 0.89. Given that statements indicating an incremental theory of intelligence are more compelling and socially desirable than statements indicating an entity theory of intelligence, only statements indicating an entity theory were presented in this measure, as prior studies have done (Erdley, Cain, Loomis, Dumas-Hines, & Dweck, 1997; Wang & Ng, 2012). 2.3.3. Children's achievement Based on the final objective examinations, children's achievement in Chinese, Math, and English were obtained from the school. Scores for these three major subjects have been found to be a valid measure of school academic achievement in China (Chen, Wang, & Cao, 2011). Scores in each subject were standardized within the grade. The mean across the three subjects was taken, with higher scores representing higher achievement. 2.3.4. SES Considering that family income reported is vulnerable to serious measurement errors in China (Bian, 2002), we used the information concerning parents' educational attainment and current occupations to assess family SES, following the method used by Shi and Shen (2007). Specifically, paternal/maternal education was coded on a sixpoint scale ranging from 1 (uneducated) to 6 (master's or doctoral degree), and occupation was coded on a five-point scale ranging from 1 (unemployed) to 5 (professional/executive). The total score for paternal/maternal education and occupation was calculated as the indicator of SES (ranging from 4 to 22), with higher scores reflecting higher family SES (Shi & Shen, 2007; Wang, Xing, & Zhao, in press). In current study, the correlations between paternal/maternal education and their occupations were .31 and .30, respectively. 3. Results 3.1. Descriptive statistics and correlations
2.3. Instruments 2.3.1. Mothers' autonomy-supportive versus controlling involvement The extent to which mothers' academic involvement is autonomy supportive versus controlling was assessed with 18 items (Pomerantz, Wang, Cheung, & Qu, 2014) modified from the measure of parents' general autonomy support and control (Cheung & Pomerantz, 2011). Of the 18 items, 8 items assessed autonomy support (e.g., “My mother allows me to make choices about my studying whenever possible” and “My mother listens to my opinion or perspective when I talk with her about my studying”), and 10 items assessed control (e.g., “When I do not do well in school, my mother tells me of all the sacrifices she has made for me” and “My mother tells me how disappointed she is in me when I do not do well in school”). For each item, the participants indicated the extent to which these statements were true of their mothers on a five-point scale (1 = not at all true, 5 = very true). Scores for mothers' autonomy-supportive and controlling involvement were obtained by calculating the mean of the relevant items, with higher scores representing greater involvement. This measure has been shown to have acceptable reliability and construct validity in China (Zhang, 2012). In the current sample, the alpha coefficients were 0.89 for autonomy support and 0.87 for control. 2.3.2. Children's theory of intelligence The widely used 3-item measure from Dweck (1999) was adopted to assess children's theory of intelligence. One sample item read, “A person's smartness is not something that s/he can change very much”. The participants rated each item on a five-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all true) to 5 (very true). The mean of the items was taken, with a higher score representing a stronger entity theory of intelligence. This measure has acceptable reliability and validity in China (Wang & Ng, 2012). In the current study, the alpha coefficient for the measure
Means and standard deviations of all the key variables included in our analyses along with Pearson product–moment correlations among the variables are presented in Table 1. Correlation analyses showed that, mothers' autonomy support was negatively correlated with children's theory of intelligence and positively correlated with children's achievement. Mothers' control was positively correlated with children's theory of intelligence and negatively correlated with children's achievement. Children's theory of intelligence was negatively correlated with children's achievement. Additionally, we also assessed the correlations between SES and the key variables and found that SES was positively correlated with mothers' autonomy support and children's achievement. Thus, family SES was included in the structural equation model (SEM) analyses presented below. 3.2. Testing the measurement model Before running structural models to test our hypotheses, a measurement model including three latent constructs (autonomy support, control, and theory of intelligence) was first established by using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In this model, theory of intelligence was indicated by three scale items; autonomy support and control were each indicated by two randomly composed parcels. The use of parcels makes the model have fewer estimated parameters and fewer chances for residuals to be correlated (Little, Cunningham, Shahar, & Widaman, 2002). All the randomly composed parcels met the requirements specified by Little et al. (2002). That is, the parcels were internally reliable with alphas above .60 (αs = .75 to .80), and exploratory factor analyses on each parcel yielded a single factor with Eigenvalue greater than one. The latent constructs in the model were allowed to correlate freely. We performed an analysis using Maximum
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Table 1 Descriptive statistics and correlations among variables. Variables
1
– −.08 −.22⁎⁎⁎ .25⁎⁎⁎ .10⁎
1. Autonomy support 2. Control 3. Theory of intelligence 4. Achievement 5. Socioeconomic status
2
3
– .23⁎⁎⁎ −.13⁎⁎ .01
– −.23⁎⁎⁎ .01
4
M (SD)
– .16⁎⁎⁎
Total
Boys
Girls
3.68 (.87) 2.70 (.90) 2.02 (1.11) .31 (2.24) 15.57 (3.69)
3.58 (.88) 2.84 (.89) 2.03 (1.18) −.15 (2.24) 15.67 (4.17)
3.77 (.86) 2.57 (.90) 2.01 (1.05) .71 (2.17) 15.49 (3.22)
Note. ⁎ P b .05. ⁎⁎ P b .01. ⁎⁎⁎ P b .001.
Likelihood estimation in Amos7.0. Significance tests for standardized factor loadings were used to evaluate the adequacy of each indicator, and the fit indices CFI, TLI, RMSEA, and SRMR were used to evaluate the fit of the model. This analysis aimed to specify the extent to which the observed indicators actually represent the corresponding latent constructs (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1996). The results of CFA showed that the measurement model had a good fit to the data (CFI = .99, TLI = .99, RMSEA = .05, SRMR = .03) and that the standardized loadings of each indicator upon its latent factor were all above .65. These results support the measurement component of the model, suggesting that the indicators adequately represent their respective latent factors.
children's achievement, with the direct effect of control and the effect of SES on children's achievement included in the model (Fig. 2). The results showed that the model had an excellent fit to the data, CFI = 1.00, TLI = 1.00, RMSEA = .00, SRMR = .01. Specifically, the direct pathway from mothers' control to children's achievement was not significant, but the indirect pathway via their theory of intelligence was significant (Z = 3.52, p b .001), suggesting that the association between mothers' control and children's achievement is explained entirely by the mediating role of children's theory of intelligence. The model explained 9% of the variance in children's achievement. 3.4. The moderating role of children's gender
3.3. Testing the mediation model Having established a measurement model, we then tested two SEMs to evaluate our mediation hypotheses. We again used Amos7.0 with Maximum Likelihood estimation. The significance of indirect effects was evaluated by the Sobel test. The first model examined whether children's theory of intelligence mediates the relation between mothers' autonomy support and children's achievement, taking into account the direct effect of autonomy support and the effect of SES on children's achievement (Fig. 1). The results showed that the model fit the data well, CFI = .99, TLI = .99, RMSEA = .02, SRMR = .02. Specifically, mothers' autonomy support was both directly related to children's achievement and indirectly related to children's achievement through children's theory of intelligence (Z = 3.04, p b .01). These results generally support our hypotheses and suggest that the relation between mothers' autonomy support and children's achievement can be explained partially by the mediating role of children's theory of intelligence. The overall model explained 13% of the variance in children's achievement. The second model tested whether children's theory of intelligence mediates the association between mothers' control and
Autonomy support
-.23*** (-.24**/-.23**)
.22*** (.08/.30***)
SES
.13** (.10/.20***)
Theory of intelligence -.18*** (-.22**/-.17**)
Before examining the moderating role of children's gender in the associations among mothers' academic involvement, children's theory of intelligence, and children's achievement, we calculated the mean-level differences between boys and girls with respect to these variables by using three separate one-way ANOVAs. The results demonstrated that (Table 1) girls had higher perceived autonomy support, F(1, 522) = 6.32, p b .05, η2 = .01, lower perceived control, F(1, 522) = 11.75, p = .001, η2 = .02, and higher achievement, F(1, 522) = 19.97, p b .001, η2 = .04, than boys. To explore whether the structural relations in the models varied across boys and girls, two multi-group analyses were conducted. In each multi-group analysis, a constrained model in which all structural paths were forced to be equal across the two groups was compared to a baseline model in which all paths were freely estimated across boys and girls. A significant chi-square difference (Δχ2) between the baseline model and the constrained model indicated a gender difference. The model for mothers' autonomy support was tested first. The results showed that the baseline model had a good fit across the gender groups, CFI = .99, TLI = .99, RMSEA = .03, SRMR = .03. When structural paths were forced to be equal across gender, although the constrained model also had a satisfactory fit to the data, CFI = .99, TLI = .98, RMSEA = .03, SRMR = .04, a significant difference
Control
-.09 (-.05/-.04)
Achievement
Fig. 1. The mediating model of mothers' autonomy support, children's theory of intelligence and children's achievement. The coefficients outside the parentheses are for the total sample. The first coefficient in the parentheses is for the boys, and the second coefficient in the parentheses is for girls. Note. SES = socioeconomic status; **P b .01, ***P b .001.
.25*** (.30***/.22***)
SES
Theory of intelligence -.21*** (-.20***/-.23***)
.16*** Achievement (.19***/.16***)
Fig. 2. The mediating model of mothers' control, children's theory of intelligence and children's achievement. The coefficients outside the parentheses are for the total sample. The first coefficient in the parentheses is for boys, and the second coefficient in the parentheses is for girls. Note. SES = socioeconomic status; ***P b .001.
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between the baseline model and the constrained model emerged, Δχ2 (4, N = 524) = 9.82, p b .05, indicating that the structural paths of the model differed across boys and girls. As presented in Fig. 1, for girls, both the direct pathway from mothers' autonomy support to children's achievement and the indirect pathway through children's theory of intelligence (Z = 2.15, p b .05) were significant after the model was adjusted for SES. The overall model explained 20% of the variance in girls' achievement. For boys, after the model was adjusted for SES, the direct pathway from mothers' autonomy support to children's achievement was not significant, but the indirect pathway via their theory of intelligence was significant (Z = 2.19, p b .05). The overall model explained 7% of the variance in boys' achievement. The same steps were conducted to test the model for mothers' control. The multi-group analysis revealed that both the baseline model, CFI = 1.00, TLI = 1.00, RMSEA = .00, SRMR = .02, and the constrained model, CFI = 1.00, TLI = 1.00, RMSEA = .02, SRMR = .04, had a good fit to the data, and the results from a model comparison showed that imposing the equality constraints did not significantly deteriorate the fit of the model, Δχ2 (4, N = 524) = 8.32, p N .05, indicating that the structural paths in the model were equivalent across boys and girls (Fig. 2). Specifically, for both boys and girls, mothers' control was not directly related to children's achievement but was indirectly related to children's achievement via children's theory of intelligence (Z = 3.78, p b .001). The overall model explained 9% of the variance in boys' and girls' achievement. 4. Discussion Prior research in Western cultures indicates that parents' academic involvement is associated with children's achievement. This study extended such findings to China. In addition, this study went beyond prior research in this area by examining the mechanism underlying the effects of mothers' academic involvement on children's achievement and the moderating role of children's gender. The results largely supported our hypotheses, as discussed below. As anticipated, the present study showed that children who perceived their mothers to have more autonomy-supportive and less controlling involvement in academics had higher achievement in school; this finding is consistent with prior research conducted in Western cultures (Cooper et al., 2000; Grolnick et al., 2002). These findings partly suggest that recent developments in China (especially in urban China) may have weakened the influence from traditional cultural notions. For example, China's Open Door policy permits influences of Western culture that emphasize independence. In this context, on the one hand, the meanings attached to control in contemporary China may be different from those in the past, such that children may view parents' continual monitoring and behavioral correction to be more of an intrusion upon their sense of autonomy and less of an act of love. On the other hand, parents' academic involvement practices in modern China may have also changed toward more autonomy-supportive involvement and less controlling involvement. These changes in contemporary China might have increased the convergence in the associations between parents' autonomy-supportive and controlling involvement and children's achievement between Chinese and Western culture. This finding of cultural similarities may be explained by SDT, which posits that the need for autonomy is universal and that satisfaction of this need is essential for children's optimal development across cultures (Ryan & Deci, 2002; Wang et al., 2007). When parents have more autonomy-supportive involvement in academics, they may attend to children's work but let them do it on their own (Moorman & Pomerantz, 2008; Ng, Kenney-Benson, & Pomerantz, 2004), which may foster the development of children's independence associated with completing academic tasks. Additionally, parents with more autonomy-supportive involvement may also discuss with children the reasons for their failure at academic tasks and help them to
develop learning skills that may contribute to future academic success (Ng et al., 2004). As a result, children may attain higher achievement. In contrast, when parents are more controlling, they may make decisions for children regarding academics (Pomerantz & Wang, 2009), which may limit children's opportunities to develop skills associated with completing academic tasks, such as persistence, self-monitoring, and organization. Moreover, parents who are more controlling may also punish children because of their academic failure (Ng et al., 2004), which may undermine their learning motivation. As a result, children's academic achievement may suffer. The SEM analyses demonstrated that children's theory of intelligence mediated the associations between mothers' academic involvement and children's achievement, after adjusting for the effect of SES. The results from the multi-group analyses supported the generality of these indirect associations across boys and girls. This finding not only adds to the literature by examining the mechanisms underlying the effects of parents' academic involvement on children's achievement but also suggests an alternative way to optimize children's theory of intelligence through enhancing parents' autonomy-supportive involvement. In the discussion that follows, we provide possible explanations for this finding. As mentioned earlier, parents who are more autonomy supportive may communicate to children that people are capable of developing their abilities and therefore may foster the development of an incremental theory of intelligence in children. In a learning context, children of such parents may tend to choose challenging tasks that allow for the acquisition of new skills and insights (Dupeyrat & Mariné, 2005). Thus, they may attain higher achievement. By contrast, parents who are more controlling may signal to children that people are not capable of developing their abilities, which may lead children to develop an entity theory of intelligence. In a learning context, children of such parents may avoid many challenging tasks, thereby restricting their opportunities to acquire new skills (Dupeyrat & Mariné, 2005). Consequently, their achievement may suffer. Notably, when the mediating role of children's theory of intelligence and the effect of family SES were taken into account, we found that although mothers' control was not directly related to boys' and girls' achievement, mothers' autonomy support was directly related to girls' but not boys' achievement. This finding was basically consistent with our hypothesis and indicated that the association between mothers' autonomy support and children's achievement was stronger for girls than for boys. According to socialization theory on gender role differentiation, mothers may feel a greater responsibility to socialize their daughters and thus may spend more time with their daughters (Huston, 1983). Given the increased ongoing contact between mothers and daughters, mothers' autonomy support may have a stronger association with girls' achievement than boys' achievement. Notably, the present study only focused on mothers' academic involvement, despite the increasingly central role of fathers in child development. Whether the effects of fathers' academic involvement on boys' and girls' achievement are similar to those found for mothers' academic involvement in this study requires investigation in future research. The present study suffers from several methodological limitations. First, except for children's achievement, the data for both mothers' academic involvement and children's theory of intelligence were solely based on children's reports, which may introduce systematic biases in estimates of associations among variables. Further research using multiple data sources and multiple methodologies will provide more robust, valid evidence of the associations among the variables investigated in this study. Second, this study used a cross-sectional design, and thus, the directions of the effects cannot be determined. However, prior longitudinal research has indicated that parents' academic involvement and children's theory of intelligence (Blackwell et al., 2007; Cheung & Pomerantz, 2011) predict children's achievement, and that parents' person- versus process-focused involvement predicts children's theory of intelligence (Pomerantz & Kempner, 2013). Thus, mothers' autonomy
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support and control in academics may have affected children's theory of intelligence, which, in turn, may have affected children's achievement. Yet, some studies suggested that children's achievement contributes to mothers' involvement practices as well (Grolnick et al., 2002; Pomerantz & Eaton, 2001; Wang, Chan, & Lin, 2012). Thus, further research needs to focus on the reciprocal associations between mothers' autonomy support versus control and children's achievement as well as the mechanisms. Third, in this study, the sample was recruited from the Jinan region of China only. Whether our results can be applied to children in other regions remains unknown. Future research should recruit representative samples from different regions in China to replicate the results of this study. 5. Educational implications The findings of this study may have implications for programs aimed at improving parents' knowledge and skills of how to become effectively involved in children's learning. First, school psychologists should inform parents of the beneficial effect of autonomy support and the harmful effect of control on children's theory of intelligence and their achievement. Second, school psychologists should help parents to improve their skills related to their involvement in academics. Specifically, parents should be advised to support children's autonomy in academics through practices such as allowing children's freedom of choice, supporting their initiative, adopting their perspective, and discussing learning strategies and plans for the future. Moreover, parents should be advised that the use of controlling techniques, such as commands, directives, and love withdrawal, to pressure children toward particular outcomes should be avoided as much as possible. These programs, if implemented appropriately, might help encourage autonomy-supportive involvement and discourage controlling involvement in academics among parents, which may, in turn, benefit children's theory of intelligence and their achievement. References Aronson, J., Fried, C. B., & Good, C. (2002). Reducing stereotype threat and boosting academic achievement of African-American students: The role of conceptions of intelligence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 113–125. Bhanot, R., & Jovanovic, J. (2005). Do parents' academic gender stereotypes influence whether they intrude on their children's homework? Sex Role, 52, 597–607, http:// dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11199-005-3728-4. Bian, Y. J. (2002). Chinese social stratification and social mobility. Annual Review of Sociology, 28, 91–116, http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.28.110601.140823. Blackwell, L. S., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention. Child Development, 78, 246–263, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624. 2007.00995.x. Chao, R. K. (1994). Beyond parental control and authoritarian parenting style: Understanding Chinese parenting through the cultural notion of training. Child Development, 65, 1111–1119, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1994. tb00806.x. Chen, X., Wang, L., & Cao, R. (2011). Shyness-sensitivity and unsociability in rural Chinese children: Relations with social, school, and psychological adjustment. Child Development, 82, 1531–1543, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011. 01616.x. Cheung, C. S., & Pomerantz, E. M. (2011). Parents' involvement in children's learning in the United States and China: Implications for children's academic and emotional functioning. Child Development, 82, 932–950, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624. 2011.01582.x. Cimpian, A., Arce, H. C., Markman, E. M., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Subtle linguistic cues affect children's motivation. Psychological Science, 18, 314–316, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j. 1467-9280.2007.01896.x. Cooper, H., Lindsay, J. J., & Nye, B. (2000). Homework in the home: How student, family and parenting-style differences relate to the homework process. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 464–487, http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1999.1036. Davis-Kean, P. E. (2005). The influence of parent education and family income on child achievement: The indirect role of parental expectations and the home environment. Journal of Family Psychology, 19, 294–304, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.19.2. 294. Duchesne, S., & Ratelle, C. (2010). Parental behaviors and adolescents' achievement goals at the beginning of middle school: Emotional problems as potential mediators. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 497–507, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ a0019320.
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