The Association between Parental School Involvement and Students' Psychosocial Outcomes: Understanding Protective Factors for Children with Disabilities in Refugee Camp Schools

Background and Purpose: Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) has emphasized the right to high-quality education for all children, including refugees and stateless children and youth. For refugee children, particularly children with disabilities (CWDs), education can help prevent exploitation and offer significant psychosocial protections. Generally, parental engagement plays an important role in children’s academic outcomes and school retention. However, very few studies have explored the impacts of parental engagement on psychosocial development, and none look specifically at CWDs who live in refugee camps. A previous study has found that special needs schools support CWDs functioning in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. This study examined how parental engagement is associated with changes in CWDs’ prosocial behaviors in refugee camp schools and if this moderates the relationship between disability status and school setting. This study, and the focus on understanding the role of parental engagement and psychosocial development in a school setting, is informed by social learning theory.

Methods: Researchers collected two waves of data in Kakuma in 2019 and 2021 for CWDs enrolled in special needs schools (n=78) or who transitioned into mainstream schools (n=51). The dependent variable was prosocial scores from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (α = 0.72). The independent variable was parental engagement, a sum of three questions (0=low, 1=medium, 2=high). Covariates included school type (0=special needs, 1=mainstream), time (0= Wave 1, 1= Wave 2), and disability (0 = mild disability, 1 = severe disability), following the guidelines of the Washington Group on Disability Statistics. This study employed three stepwise linear regression models with robust standard errors. We regressed prosocial scores on parental engagement, disability, school setting, and time. Additionally, we tested three multiplicative effects: interaction between school and time (Model 1, 2, 3), engagement and school (Model 2), and engagement and disability (Model 3).

Results: The mean age of the sample was 14 years old (SD=4.2), and the group was 59% male. 65% of children had severe disabilities, 64% of parents reported high engagement, and 30% reported medium engagement. In all models, parental engagement was associated with higher prosocial scores (p<0.05). However, neither child’s disability nor gender significantly predicted variance in prosocial scores in any model. Only the interaction term between time and school was significant at p<.01.

Conclusion and Implications: Understanding the impact of parental engagement on the education of children with disabilities has important implications for meeting the SDG4 of ensuring inclusive and equitable education for all. Results suggest that parental engagement is a protective factor for children with disabilities in refugee camps and contributes to better functioning of these children over time regardless of disability or school. Future research can look at barriers and facilitators of parental engagement and aid in interventions to promote parental engagement to ensure that children with disabilities can access education and thrive in school settings. Social work practitioners working with refugee children can promote parental engagement in all children’s education, especially in the education of children with disabilities.