Educational Stress and Parental Involvement: A way to students TOTAL health

1.1. Introduction

Each and every child is a unique gift to their Parents, who in turn are all willing to do whatever they can for the maximum development of their child’s potentialities. But majority of the parents do not know the ways in which they can and they have to help children in their Educational Stress.

Stress is a broad term which involves a complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of any diseases. It is an important aspect of children’s TOTAL health. Social interest, concern for children, a cooperative approach to the life and striving for ideal community promote both physical and psychological well being. It is an adjustment of the children to the environment with maximum efficiency and comfort.

Educational Stress is a major problem in our society. Every Parent wants their child to be the best in their education. But they don’t know their wishes imposing a big stress over their children. With this Educational Stress the children gradually deteriorate their mental health level. The outcomes of this stress are frustration, irritability, mistrust, isolation and alienation. Many adolescents resort to socially destructive and personally devastating ways for coping with this stress. As a result, many suicides and suicidal tendencies are reported among adolescents.

Parental Involvement is described in the child’s development literature as the degree to which ‘a Parent is committed to his or her role as a parent and to the fostering of optimal child’ (Maceoby and Martin 1983). Contemporary research on Parental Involvement in adolescents drives from Baumrind’s (1971) well known studies of children and their families whereby she identified the major parenting elements such as warmth, involvement, maturity, demands and supervision. The parenting behaviors that foster optimal development of child’s academic achievement have been extensively recorded in the literature. Empirical evidences indicate that high competency family environments are other in which parents talk frequently with the child (Blair 1977), parents have a close and supportive relationship with child (Stenlerg et al 1992; Lamb 1977), parents have high educational aspirations and expectations for the child (Sing et al 1995; Catsambis 1998), parents use induction techniques and point out the consequences of behavior to the child (Baumrind 1991).The significant amount of research has been done on Parental Involvement and its effect on students. Some researchers conceive it as participation in school activities (Becker and Epstein 1982; Stevenson and Baker 1987; Brody et al 1995), others as helping with homework or number of contacts between family and schools (Inerson et al 1981) and still others as Parental expectations and aspirations for children (Keith et al 1993).Many researchers are concerned with specific kinds of stress associated with students’ life, including the stress for applying to a college (Harsell 1982); looking for a job (Abbey, Dunkel – Schetter & Brickman 1983) and interpersonal stress (Barners, Potter & Fiedder 1983). The anxiety also results home environment. ‘Parents wants their kids to go on to the best school or college and children don’t want to disappoint’ says Richard Roberts, senior research scientist of Educational Testing Service (ETS).

So Parental Involvement and Educational Stress are related where parents should be logical, positive, sensitive and friendly attitude towards their children, the children could lower their Educational Stress.

1.2. Models of Parental Involvement

The multidimensional conceptualization of Parental Involvement was proposed by Grolnick and Slowiaczek (1994), along with that adopted by Chowdhury and Samal (1997) and Menghan et al (1997) and opinions from educationists, psychologists and sociologists provided direction.

In Educational Stress there are different aspects of Parenting to determine the multidimensional conceptualization of Parental Involvement. These factors must go hand in hand if Parental Involvement is to become effective enough to develop the intrinsic motivation of the child towards academic success. Deficit in any of these areas will have its negative impact on the child’s development, which in turn gets reflected in the academic success. For developing the Parental Involvement selected from a broad list of Parenting dimensions that have been recorded consistently in the literature and found applicable to parents and children of modern Indian society which are detailed as follows:

Parental Involvement can be of three types, namely (i) Behavioral, (ii) Intellectual and (iii) Personal.

1. Behavioral: Parents behavioral involvement is such type of involvement where Parents are directly involved with the children’s schools, schools activities and teachers. These can be in few of the following ways like – attending children’s schools, attending Parent-teacher meetings, contacting with class teachers and follow up with the children in day to day classroom studies and homework. In behavioral involvement, parents try to know and understand about their children’s problems in school and try to solve them. Hence, both teacher and Parent are concerned for the child.
2. Intellectual:   Intellectual involvement is also a very crucial factor in Parental Involvement. Parents intellectual expressions includes encouragement, structuring home environment, recreations, dealing with child’s expectations and aspirations, attending friends which make a bondage with parents and their children. If any problem arises in a student’s life from school, society or anywhere else – they are open to discuss with their parents and get an experts view, opinion and decisive way to deal with it.

• Personal:Personal involvement is also an important factor in Parental Involvement. The parents get involved in day to day classroom and home activities of the child, like providing material and non-material learning facilities, a happy home environment, home tutoring, planning of family activities and assignment of domestic responsibilities. Parents also help their children in making decisions, teach family culture and essential sense of mutual respect, calmness and peace of mind, family, social values, and share their day to day problem which reflects personal involvement of parents.

1.3. Need of the Study

The present study is important for students, Parents and school teacher, who play an important role in student’s life. Students are a very important part of our society. We have to handle this crowd of students very carefully. These students are our future in making a good society, a developing nation and a healthy socio-economic status of our country. We have to use them for growth of our country. Hence, Parents a have a very important role in making a child’s future, for the best use of the country. Parents have to be sincere towards their children’s developments. Parents have to take care of their child’s physical health, mental health and social developments. ‘Charity begins at home’ – this statement has its true meaning in Parental Involvement and care towards their children.

A school is also a society in itself. This society comprises of students and teachers. In this society, a teacher helps the students in their studies, structures their behavior and takes them towards perfection as an educated and socialized human being. The present study attempts to investigate upon Educational Stress and its effects. It would also be analyzed the Parental Involvements.

1.4. Statement of the problem

The formal title of the present problem is:

“Educational stress and Parental involvement: A way to student’s TOTAL health”.

1.5. Operational definitions of the terms used

1. Educational Stress:   Educational Stress is defined as the stress realized by the Secondary school students due to educational setting, which affects their social, health, emotional and educational activities.

1. Total health: It pertains to a student’s overall physical, psychological, social, mental, emotional, intellectual and aesthetical health.

1. Parental Involvement:   Parental Involvement is the effect and engrossment made by parents for their children in every aspect which are financial, mental, physical and emotional in nature.

1.6. Significance of the study:

 

The present problem is very pertinent in our today’s society. Education is one of the most important requirements for every citizen of a civil society. Every parent wants to educate their children so that they can shape up a better career and a future for themselves and become a respectable and responsible citizen.

 

In this educating and career building process, both parents and school are deeply involved with the children. This necessarily brings in comparison and competition between co-students. This finally results in extreme stressful situations for students.

 

It becomes a necessary and important responsibility for parents to help their children to overcome and handle education stress. This study is an extensive attempt to understand how parents involve themselves to help their children to overcome this vice.

In India and abroad, there had hardly been any exploration in this important area. I take this opportunity to make an in-depth study for the sake of our society, our children and their parents.

 

2. Review of related literature

Review of the related literature is the essential stage towards a research and serves several purposes in research. Previously done research and related literature leads in deciding upon the framing of problem, stating needs of the study, suggesting research design, relating the result of the study to previous knowledge, and suggesting further research. It is required that review should be conducted carefully and presented well to add to an understanding of the selected problem and help place the study in historical perspective. It would be difficult to build a body of accepted knowledge on an educational topic with out meticulously done review of the related literature. The review of related literature is presented in this chapter in different subheadings.

2.1. Parental Involvement:

Parental involvement is a major part of children’s education. Many researchers and psychologists have thought and wrote about this as an important part of the children’s achievement. Social, emotional, educational and economical, in every aspect, parental involvement is a very important part of children’s life. This chapter deals with important literatures and research works that has been found in this aspect both in India and abroad.

2.1.1 Studies in India:

While reviewing literature in India, a handful of studies are done on Parental Involvement.

Kuruvilla, M (2006) said that development of parental involvement inventory based on multi-dimensional conceptualization and motivational model.

Nanda, C (2007)  researched over that parents’ encouragement to child’s education and academic motivation in relation to some demographic variables and their influence on ninth grade students’ academic achievement.

Chowdhury, A & Samal, J (1997) conducted study on Parental involvement and academic achievement of the peer, accepted and peer rejected children.

Usha, P (1997) wrote over ‘Family acceptance of child’.

Majumdar, I (1983) stated that home perceptions and school perceptions of children are directly proportional , ie, one who perceived parents more richly perceived school at a similar level.

Ojha, H (1973) states that:

1. Mothers’ love, father’s permissiveness and love were positively related to child’s achievements, whereas mother’s rejection and protection were negatively related. Maternal restriction, permissiveness and neglect and paternal neglect were not related with achievement.
2. Encouragement for independence by parents was associated with high achievement in children.

Similarly, Sultana, M (1983) finds out that:

1. There is a significant difference between the fathers of the two groups in their attitude regarding fastening dependency, breaking will, harsh punishment, deception, marital conflict, non-punishment, and irresponsibility of father, suppression of aggression, exclusion from outside influences, strictness and suppression of sexuality.
2. There is also significant difference between the mothers of the two groups in their attitude regarding encouraging verbalization, fostering dependency, and reclusion of mother, martyrdom, fear of harming the baby, marital conflict and suppression of aggression.
3. The fathers of both groups are more accepting.

Agarwal, K L (1986) states that:

1. the high achieving group has been getting higher parental encouragement,
2. the high achieving girls got greater parental encouragement,
3. the urban boys  get greater parental encouragement in comparison to their rural counterparts,
4. the urban girls  get greater parental encouragement than the rural ones,
5. the girls, in general, received greater parental encouragements than the boys.

 

2.1.2 Studies in abroad:

Lamb, M.E. (1997) illustrates and emphasizes on the role of father in a child’s upbringing.

Menaghan, E. G, Jones, K.L. & Mott, F.L. (1997) conducted research on The intergenerational costs of parental social stress; academic and social difficulties in early adolescence for children of young mothers.

Paulson, S. E. (1994) writes  on ‘Relations of parenting styles and parental involvement with ninth grade students’ achievements’.

Sing, K., Bickley, P.G.,Trivette., P.S., Keith., T.Z., Keith, P.B. & Anderson, E (1995) write on ‘The effects of four components of parental involvement on eighth grade students achievements’.

Steinberg, L., Lamborn, S.D., Dornbusch, S.M. & Dartiny, N. (1992) illustrate on ‘Impact of parenting practice on adolescent achievement: authorative parenting, school involvement and encouragement to succeed’.
2.2 Educational stress:

Educational stress is a major part of every child’s life which they face in their day to day life. There have been many researches done on this topic by researchers in India and abroad.

2.2.1 Studies in India:

Biswas,P.C. (1990) stresses exclusively on the role of fathers in handling the stressful life of his child.

Abu, H & Meher, M. elaborates on ‘level of aspiration, which is defined as one’s subjective probability that he/she will reach a certain level of education’ which  is proportional to a child’s education stress which will decide how much a child can achieve.

2.2.2 Studies in abroad:

The major objective of the present research is to systematically identify the most relevant stresses perceived by students as characterizing their school-related sphere of life. Very few researchers have attempted to systematically study stress perceptions of students, school goers, undergraduates or graduates [Newton et al., 1984, p. 540].

This glaring omission is accentuated by the abundance of research on stress in which undergraduate students served as subjects. In this brand of research students were exposed to types of stress, real or imagined, which were largely irrelevant to their university or work life, such as an electric shock [e.g., Dembroski & MacDougall, 1978; Friedman, 1981] or only tangentially related to their daily experiences, such as crowding [e.g., Baum & Gatchel, 1981]. Similarly, while there is a fairly large and growing literature on test anxiety among students [Tryon, 1980], anxiety is often defined in terms of worrisome, self-preoccupying thoughts that interfere with task performance [Sara-son, 1984]. Thus anxiety (and test anxiety) is considered as a response to perceived stress, conceptually distinct from stress [French, Caplan & Van Harrison, 1982; Vitaliano, Russo, Carr & Herrwagan, 1984]. Researchers who did address themselves to students’ stresses were mostly concerned with specific segments of the student population, such as medical 668 [e.g., Coborn, 1975] or law students [e.g., Gilbert & Holahan, 1982; Shanfield & Benjamin, 1985] or in developing global and generalized measures of perceived stress and strain [e.g., Cohen, Kamarck & Mermelstein, 1983].

Yet another group of researchers were concerned with specific kinds of stress associated with students’ life, including the stress of applying to a college [Hansell, 1982] looking for a job [Abbey, Dunkel-Schetter & Brickman, 1983] and interpersonal stress [Barnes, Potter & Fiedler, 1983]. Even the counseling literature provided little guidance: a recently developed instrument which reportedly assessed students’ life stress [Lustman, Sowa & O’Hara, 1984] was clinically oriented and followed the tradition of life events research in that on-going (i.e., ‘chronic’) stresses [Campbell, 1983] and daily hassles [Kanner, Coyne, Schaeffer & Lazarus, 1981] were excluded from this instrument. Kanner, Coyne, Schaefer and Lazarus [1981], for example, reported that minor daily events were more strongly related to strain and poor mental health than were major life events such as those included in the Lustman et al. [1984] inventory. It thus appeared that there is a lack of substantive understanding as to what constitute the realm of exam-related stresses for undergraduate students.

Despite the large and growing body of research on stress, researchers differ widely about its basic definition. Stress has been defined as a stimulus, a response, and a hypothetical state [Fleming, Baum & Singer, 1984; Sarason, 1984; Shirom, 1982]. This research focused on psychosocial stress, to the total exclusion of physical and/or physiological stress (like exposure to intense levels of noise or heat, or crowding, or to high levels of toxic substances). Researchers have several alternative conceptualizations of stress to choose from, including those formulated by the followers of the person-environment fit theory [Caplan, 1983; Van Harrison, 1978] and the one developed by Schuler [1980]. Those conceptualizations by and large accepted the core definition of stress originated by Lazarus [Lazarus & Delongis, 1983; Lazarus, 1981] but elaborated, extended and otherwise modified it to include additional environ-mental, situational or personality components. According to Lazarus [Lazarus & Launier, 1978] stress occurs when a person appraises a given relationship with his/her environment as potentially harmful or threatening in that an environmental demand is perceived to exceed or tax the person’s adaptive resources. At the extreme, this view would suggest that nothing is stressful unless the individual defines it as such and that no condition or event is universally stressful [Fleming & Baum, 1984].

Reviewing the related literature, it may be suggested that very few studies have been conducted on ‘Educational Stress’. It is the need of the day that more and more insightful study is required in India as well as in Euro-American campuses to understand the plight of young adults. The variable is also relevant in contemporary society as students are rapidly loosing there childhood due to stress caused by school, curriculum, throat cut competitions, thrust on the shoulders for the future, and very importantly, due to expectation by parents and society. The lack of researches on ‘Parental Involvement’ very aptly suggests the need and importance of present study.

 

3. Educational Implications:

 

This is true, now a days ‘Stress’ is a big factor. Educational Stress on children is making a big trouble in children’s life. So being a parent they have to know how to solve this trouble with logically, calmly, and softly with their children. Because A Children not only the parents, he/she is a asset of our country. So parents should handle it very carefully.

 

From this study makes some Educational Implications, those are –

 

1. Parental Involvement overcomes their children stress.
2. Proper Parental Involvement helps to achieve their children’s academic career.

• Intellectual parental Involvement makes a children understanding, reasonable and gentle.

1. Behavioural Parental Involvement makes a children’s study routine, examination tricks, positive home environment – where a children feel secure with their study, which reduce their educational stress.
2. Parental Personal Involvement makes a happy home environment, which reduce their educational stress.

 

These all are reduce children’s educational stress and make them a good citizen, who are the asset of our country.

 

Conclusion:

 

This era of globalization has tremendous concomitant implication for knowledge, education and learning. It demands a situation of ‘survival of the fittest’, which in turn implies a complete and wholesome or TOTAL development of individuals. The individuals of the global world are expected to evaluate events in a holistic approach. Hence, the citizenry at the student age faces significant challenges to cope to and gets stressed. Here it becomes necessary for both the parents and teachers to understand, empathizes, estimate, handhold and guide the children to overcome / face the situations, find solutions and sail through smoothly. These later, help the students to find their place in the world and build self confidence.