Educational Success Among Elementary School Children from Low Socioeconomic Status Families: A Systematic Review of Parenting Factors

Background and Purpose: As champions for social justice and equality, social workers have a moral responsibility to advocate for marginalized populations. One tool that can be used to promote awareness of societal factors affecting the lives of socially excluded individuals is systematic reviews. By critically analyzing the extant scientific literature, systematic reviews can be used to identify gaps in the literature on marginalized populations and to identify how resilient individuals and groups excel in the face of adversity. This systematic review examined parenting factors that promote the academic achievement of low socioeconomic status (SES) children in elementary school. Through the adoption of a strengths-based perspective, this systematic review highlights how children from low SES families “beat the odds” and succeeded academically and sought to synthesize research contrary to the prevailing stereotype that all children from low SES families underperform in school.  

Methods: Using “best practices” methods for conducting systematic reviews and expert consultation, a priori inclusion criteria were defined and a bibliographic search of 11 electronic databases (PsycINFO, ERIC, Education Full Text, Social Work Abstracts, and Family and Society Studies Worldwide via EBSCO host; Social Services Abstracts, Sociological Abstracts, and Dissertations and Theses: Full Text via ProQuest host; and PubMed, Cochrane Library and the Campbell Collaboration Library), a manual search of two journals (Journal of Educational Psychology and the Journal of Children & Poverty), and reference harvesting for published and grey literature were conducted. Included studies were limited to English language reports published between 1994 and 2014 that employed quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods to examine parenting practices, processes, and beliefs positively associated with school success among low SES elementary school children. Two independent researchers extracted data on study population and parenting-related correlates of academic achievement.

Results: Upon review of study titles, abstracts, and full-text articles, the bibliographic search yielded 30 relevant studies that met a priorieligibility criteria; 19 (63%) were published articles and the remaining manuscripts were doctoral dissertations (n=11; 37%).  Half of the studies were published between 1994 and 2004 and half were published between 2005 and 2014. The included studies employed quantitative (n=16), qualitative (n=9), and mixed (n=5) methods.

Conclusions and Implications: Overall, findings from this systematic review indicated that greater parent-school involvement, higher parental expectations for current and long-term academic performance, and warm, responsive, and consistent parenting styles were the strongest predictors of academic achievement among low SES elementary school children. By critically examining existing scientific literature and identifying specific parenting behaviors and beliefs that promote the academic success of children from low SES families, social work researchers can promote responsive educational reform, contribute to stronger home-school partnerships, and shed light on the unrecognized or underappreciated strengths of marginalized children and families.