Students’ Perspective on Parental Involvement in Children’s Education: A Case Study of (at-risk) Secondary School Students under Punakha Dzongkhag

Parental involvement is the active participation of parents in their children’s educational processes and experiences. Numerous studies have established a significantly positive link between parental involvement and children’s academic, and socio-emotional outcomes. Many studies explored parents’ and teachers’ perspectives, however, parental involvement being a multi-dimensional variable, requires requisite perspectives from all stakeholders. A global paucity of studies exploring students’ perspectives and the absence of research on parental involvement, in the Bhutanese context, served as the impetus for this study. This study investigated the perspective of at-risk students on parental involvement in children’s education. The 257 participants faced circumstance(s) such as divorce, separation, and death of the parent(s). The mixed methods approach was employed to collect both quantitative and qualitative data to determine how the participants perceive parental involvement in their education. Survey questionnaires, focus group discussions, and narrative story writing were used to glean participants’ perspectives. The findings reveal the extent of involvement for different members of the family, the perceived importance of parental involvement at different levels of education, some common barriers to parental involvement, areas of involvement and neglect, and the impact of death, separation, and divorce of parents, on at-risk students. The study primarily recommends relevant stakeholders create awareness of the value of parental involvement as well as devise policy instruments to promote it for the holistic development of at-risk students.