Parental Involvement theory:
Joyce Epstein's theory of Parental Involvement is expounded in Epstein's Model, the Framework of Six Types of Involvement—sometimes referred to as the 'School-Family-Community Partnership Model'—which emerged in the early 1990s. Over the years, it has evolved, with the most recent version of the Framework of Six Types of Involvement described in School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action (4th Edition, 2019), co-authored by Epstein et al. This typology of Epstein's model is not based on empirical evidence; rather, it is founded on presumed actions that parents need to undertake to support their children's development in school, thereby influencing students' academic success.
They defined that parenting involves the provision of things such as health, housing, home environment to support their studies, parental skills in parent-child associations and provision of information to assist schools in knowing more about their children (Epstein et al. 2009). Therefore, the social status of the children's parents and their environment is presumed to significantly influence their involvement or participation in their kids' school affairs. Factors such as parents' actions, communication, and wealth play crucial roles in shaping their level of engagement with the educational process and interaction with school authorities of their children.
To delve further into the topic, Epstein's model introduced six concrete types of family involvement behaviors: positive home conditions, communication, involvement at school, home learning activities, shared decision-making within the school, and community partnerships. Epstein and her collaborators emphasize that each type of involvement is a two-way partnership—and ideally a partnership that is co-developed by educators and families working together—not a one-way opportunity that has been unilaterally determined by a school. In other words, it is all about how the parents and the school relate in connection to the educational affairs of students. When the six types of involvement are interlinked it clearly shows the direction of both factors and effects, some hidden factors such as the social standing in the community influence the development of children in schools via aspiration of parents, the participation of parents, and composition of pupils in schools.
With all that being said, the theory of parental involvement connected with Epstein's model is highly relevant to the aims of the researchers' study, serving as a guiding framework for better understanding throughout the research process. This theory presents an alternative strategy for properly assessing the impact of parental involvement on students' academic success, based on sufficient and proper knowledge. It emphasizes that each student's individual parental involvement is influenced by their unique social circumstances, which in turn affect their overall development and academic success.