父母教养与学业成就:心理因素的中介作用

Parenting and Academic Achievement: the Mediating Role of Psychological Factors

近十几年来,研究者们致力于探究父母教养与子女学业成就关系的内在机制。认知、大五人格、动机与自我概念作为学习者的心理特质,在父母教养与学业成就间起着重要的中介作用。父母教养能通过影响这些心理因素间接地影响子女的学业成就。尽管研究者们在该领域已经取得较为丰富的研究成果,仍需要在将来加强综合性研究、应用研究和跨文化比较研究,以深化和拓展对这一领域的探索,同时促进已有研究成果的应用。

This article reviews literature on the relationship between parenting,children＇s academic achievement and the psychological mediating factors.The review of the empirical research indicates that parenting has a significant influence on children＇s cognitive abilities such as attention,memory and language ability,which are in turn associated with children＇s academic achievement.However,genetic behavioural research pointed to the mediating role of cognitive abilities as being stronger during childhood and weak in adolescence.Importantly,literature also alludes to the importance of parenting in the development of children＇s Big Five personality traits,especially conscientiousness and neuroticism.And consciousness has been confirmed to play a mediating role in the relationship between parentinig styles and academic achievement.The authors argure that future research should aim to explore the role of narrow personality traits rather than broad Big Five personality factors in the relationship between parenting and academic achievement.Furthermore,some studies showed that both intrinsic/extrinsic motivation and achievement goal orientations are mediating factors between parenting and academic achievement,and that authoritative parenting style is likely to increase academic achievement through promoting the development of children＇s master goal orientation and intrinsic motivation.However,some researchers propose that parenting styles may influence children＇s learning motivation through their impact on academic achievement rather than the reverse. A great deal of research indicated that parenting styles and parenting practices were both strong predictors of children＇s self-concepts including academic self-concept.Researchers also tend to examine the relationship between children＇s academic self-concept and their academic achievement as opposed to examining the relationship between non-academic self-concepts and academic achievement,because academic self-concept could better predict academic achievement than other self-concepts. Owing to the sophisticated relationship between parenting,self-concepts and academic achievement,it is suggested that advanced statistic techniques and qualitative research methods be employed to clarify the mechanism.Moreover,future research should more comprehensively examine influences of parents,peers,the school and society on children＇s learning and their academic achievement so as to increase our understanding of the relationship between them.In addition,because of a variety of differences between China and western countries,it is quite necessary to carry out cross-cultural research to compare results across different cultures.However,research on the topic is so lacking in China that Chinese researchers should pay more attention to this area.Finally,current researchers also need to carry out applied reseach studies to promote the application of research results.Especially intervention studies should be strengthened,through which researchers can not only put research results into practice,but can also examine causal relations among relevant variables.