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. 2025 Feb 8;13:106. doi: 10.1186/s40359-025-02389-6

Relationship between parental school involvement and its barriers among parents of students in grades 4 to 9: based on latent class and correspondence analyses

Junqiao Guo 1, Bihua Zhao 1,✉
PMCID: PMC11806804  PMID: 39923088

Abstract

Background

Parental school involvement is critical for students’ academic and educational success. This study addresses a research gap by conducting latent class and correspondence analyses to uncover and visually depict the intricate relationships between parental school involvement and its barriers.

Methods

Data were obtained from 1,307 parents of students in grades 4 to 9 in China. Students in grades 4 to 9 experience preadolescence (grades 4 to 6) and early adolescence (grades 7 to 9), which are critical periods of transition in individual development. The latent class analysis revealed sub-populations of parental school involvement and its barriers. The correspondence analysis demonstrated the relationship between the groups of both parental school involvement and its barriers.

Results

The results showed: (1) six distinct groups of parental school involvement, namely the High Involvement in Child’s Things, All High Involvement, High Initiative Involvement, High Passive Involvement, Medium Involvement, and Low Involvement groups; (2) five groups of barriers to parental school involvement, namely the High Work-Transportation, High Work, Medium Personal, High Transportation, and None Barriers groups; (3) a visual pattern of the relationship between six groups of parental school involvement and five groups of barriers to parental school involvement. Specifically, the All High Involvement and High Initiative Involvement groups were closer to the None Barriers class; Medium Involvement was related to High Work Barriers; Low Involvement to Medium Personal Barriers; and High Passive Involvement to High Transportation Barriers.

Conclusions

This study clarifies relationships between the latent groups of parental involvement in school and the latent groups of barriers to involvement, which support the reformulated explanatory model of barriers to parental involvement in education.

Keywords: Parental school involvement, Barriers to parental school involvement, Latent class analysis, Correspondence analysis

Introduction

Parents play a crucial role in the development of their children and ought to actively participate in their children’s educational processes. A consensus is reached among students, parents, and teachers that it is crucial for parents to participate in their children’s education [1]. A growing body of research has demonstrated that parental involvement is crucial for improving students’ academic performance [2], including achievements in academic [3–6], reading and math [7], and science [8]. Previous studies have also revealed that parental involvement positively influences students’ non-academic outcomes, including enhanced social skills and functioning [1, 9], increased creative self-efficacy [10], improved language abilities [11], greater life satisfaction [12], fewer depressive symptoms [13], and higher well-being [14]. Furthermore, parental involvement is influenced by parents’ beliefs about children’s education, which vary across cultures. For instance, previous studies have indicated that Asian parents tend to place a greater emphasis on the importance of an early academic start for their children compared to Euro-American parents [15]. Additionally, research involving Mexican American mothers has demonstrated that they actively encourage their children to participate in extracurricular activities, such as sports and music classes [16]. In China, parents’ beliefs about their children’s education are influenced by Chinese culture [17–19], which is fundamentally rooted in Confucianism, with its emphasis on education as a means of achieving upward social mobility [18]. Influenced by these cultural values, Chinese parents often maintain high expectations for their children’s academic performance [19]. These high parental expectations may encourage parents to become more involved in their children’s education [20]. Given the significant impact of parental involvement on children’s development and the high expectations held by Chinese parents, it is essential to examine parental involvement within the framework of Chinese culture. However, it is not sufficient to merely explore parental involvement; it is also crucial to identify the barriers to such engagement in order to better understand why parents do not participate in their children’s learning [21]. Hence, this study aimed to further investigate parental involvement and the barriers to parental involvement within the context of Chinese culture.

Defining parental school involvement

Parental school involvement is a type of parental involvement. Although studies regarding parental involvement have increased during the past several decades, the difficulties with defining parental involvement has been persistent and inconsistent [3, 4, 22, 23], because the definitions vary across different studies. For example, parental involvement can be generally described as the resources, investments, or activities that parents contribute to their children’s academic, social, and emotional development throughout the process of education [4, 24–26]. The resources could be behavioral, personal, or intellectual [24]. Thus, based on the resources, the general definition of parental involvement is broad.

To avoid the general definition, specific dimensions of parental involvement have been inferred from different studies. For instance, Epstein proposed that many studies identified six types, such as parenting environments, communication between home and school, volunteering for school activities, study at home, making the school decision, and collaboration with community [27]. According to Fantuzzo et al., parental involvement comprises three constructs, namely involvement based on school, conference of home-school, and involvement based on home [28]. Wong and Hughes explored four factors of parents’ involvement: perceptions about their children’s school, communication, the responsibility shared by teachers and parents, and involvement in school-related activities [22]. The aspects of parental involvement in prior studies are similar and include parents’ behavior at school and at home. Parental involvement can be described as plenty of parents’ activities and be classified into school-based and home-based activities [26]. In other studies, parental involvement had two categories, including parental home involvement, such as talking school activities with their children at home, and parental school involvement, such as attending meetings of parent-teacher association [1, 9, 29, 30].

In this study, parental school involvement encompasses all kinds of behavior that parents display toward the education of their children at school, including being a volunteer at the school, attending school-related events or meetings, participating in parent-teacher association meetings, and discussing with children’s teachers [31, 32].

Barriers to parental school involvement

Barriers to parental school involvement can be conceptualized as the reasons there is a gap between reality and rhetoric in parental school involvement [33]. In other words, what factors impede parents engagement in children’s school education? A host of barriers to parental school involvement exist. Hornby and Lafaele put forward the model of factors that act as obstacles to involvement of parents, including “individual, parent, and family;” “child;” “parent-teacher;” and “societal” factors [33]. Additionally, some practical barriers, such as lack of time, uncertainty regarding how to reach the school, and inconvenient school opening hours, were identified by schools via semi-structured interviews [34].

The studies mentioned above explored macro barriers (i.e., individual, parent, family, teacher, and societal factors) to parental involvement. However, some studies have emphasized specific (micro) obstacles to parental involvement, such as scheduling challenges, work constraints, negative interactions with children’s teachers, negative perceptions of school invitations, childcare difficulties, transportation/safety issues, and language barriers [21, 32, 35]. Moreover, interviewing parents, teachers or headteachers has revealed different barriers to parental school involvement, including loaded work schedules, time constraints, childcare difficulties, absence of school contact information, difficulty reaching schools, parents’ low literacy levels, transport constraints, parents’ unwelcome feeling at school, and language difficulties [1, 34, 36, 37]. Similarly, working late hours are obstacles to parents’ participation in school-related activities [38]. A design of mixed methods with questionnaires, interviews, and forum data identified sixteen barriers to parental involvement, including hectic work, time constraints, tiredness, distance or transportation restrictions, lack of interest in children’s education, unavailable teachers, communication or language barriers, among others [39].

Given the variety of barriers to parental involvement, it is difficult to produce an exhaustive list of barriers. This study focused on the barriers that showed commonly in previous research, such as work schedule issues, child care difficulties, transportation or safety issues, difficult-to-reach schools, language obstacles, and absence of interest in the education of children.

Link between parental school involvement and its barriers

Fan et al. reformulated the explanatory model of barriers to parental involvement in education initially proposed by Hornby and Lafaele [33, 40]. The model illustrates the link between parental participation and its barriers and suggests that different barriers should be related to different forms of parental school involvement. As Fan et al. stated, different dimensions of parental involvement are linked to different obstacles in various forms or the same obstacles to various degrees [40]. Previous research has demonstrated that there are different obstacles to parental school involvement [33, 34, 39]. However, only a little research has simultaneously examined parental involvement as well as its barriers. For example, Turney and Kao found that parental involvement were negatively correlated to its barriers [35]. Huang et al. classified parental school involvement with related barriers into four types [21]. Furthermore, in the semi-structured interviews, parents stated their involvement in school and the factors that influenced them to engage in school-related activities of their children [32]. Based on these findings and the explanatory model of barriers to parental involvement in education [33, 40], it can be inferred that parental school involvement may be correlated with the barriers that hinder it. Therefore, this study further examined the relationship between parental school involvement and the associated barriers to gain a better understanding of the factors that hinder various forms of parental school involvement within the context of Chinese culture.

The present study

Previous studies have investigated parental involvement using a variable-centered approach [6, 7, 35]. However, this method, which relies on total or mean scores to represent the characteristics of variables, fails to account for the heterogeneity among variables that yield the same total or mean scores. For instance, consider two parents who each have a total score of 4 in terms of parental school involvement. One parent scored three points for communicating with the teacher and one point for school volunteering, while the other parent earned one point for communicating with the teacher and three points for school volunteering. Although their total scores are identical, their patterns of involvement in their children’s education differ. In other words, a variable-centered approach does not effectively capture the heterogeneity of parental school involvement within the group. In contrast, latent class analysis (LCA), a person-centered method, can be employed to categorize participants into distinct groups and identify the heterogeneity within these groups based on the observed variables [41–43]. Hence, this study conducted latent class analyses (LCAs) to identify the groups of parental school involvement and the groups of barriers to parental school involvement.

Although previous research has examined the latent groups of parental school involvement with the barriers to involvement among Chinese parents using an LCA [21], it did not investigate these latent groups specifically among the parents of students in grades 4 to 9 in mainland China. Students in grades 4 to 9 experience preadolescence (grades 4 to 6) and early adolescence (grades 7 to 9), which are critical periods of transition in individual development [44–46]. Meta-analyses have shown that parental school involvement during these stages is essential for promoting students’ academic achievement and adjustment [47, 48]. Thus, the current study aimed to investigate parental school involvement and the barriers that hinder such involvement among parents of students in grades 4 to 9.

Furthermore, prior research did not provide a visual representation of the relationship between the latent groups of parental school involvement and the latent groups of barriers to involvement [21]. To put it another way, few studies have deeply explored what types of parental school involvement are highly correlated with what types of barriers to parental school involvement and visually present the relationship between the two in a diagram. However, correspondence analysis (CA) can be used to visualize the association between the groups of parental school involvement and the groups of barriers to parental school involvement. CA is a method of data analysis for detecting how the categorical variables are related, representing tabular data graphically, and facilitating a two- or three-dimensional perceptual map of the categories of variables [49–51]. Therefore, this study conducted CA to represent the association between the groups of parental school involvement and the groups of barriers to parental involvement graphically on a two-dimensional perceptual map.

Given the aforementioned reasons, the present study aimed to conduct LCAs to test the groups of parental school involvement and the groups of barriers to parental school involvement among parents of students in grades 4 to 9 in mainland China. Subsequently, a CA was performed to visually represent the link between the groups of parental school involvement and the groups of barriers to parental school involvement.

In summary, the purpose of the present research was threefold:

  1. To identify the groups of parental school involvement.

  2. To examine the groups of barriers to parental school involvement.

  3. To assess the link between the groups of parental school involvement and the groups of barriers to parental school involvement visually.

Methods

Participants

In this study, 1,580 parents enrolled in and submitted completed questionnaires via an online platform. Parents were excluded from the present study if their children did not complete the student questionnaire (n = 147), or the parents responded “not supported by school” (n = 126) to the parental school involvement question. The rationale for excluding the responses of parents who indicated “not supported by school” from this study is as follows: First, it is uncertain whether these parents are willing to engage in their children’s education [21]. Second, it is unclear whether these parents participate in their children’s educational processes [52]. Third, to better align with the barriers to parental involvement, which presents two options (i.e., yes or no), it is more appropriate to eliminate the uncertain choice from the options for parental school involvement. Finally, this study aims to utilize complete data to explore the various groups of parental school involvement; however, including this option may detract from the central focus of the research. In the final sample, participants were parents of 1,307 fourth (n = 241), fifth (n = 223), sixth (n = 164), seventh (n = 258), eighth (n = 215), and ninth (n = 206) grade students. Approximately 48.66% (n = 636) were girls’ parents, and 51.34% (n = 671) were boys’ parents; approximately 48.05% (n = 628) were parents of upper primary school students, and 51.95% (n = 679) were parents of secondary school students.

Procedure

Students and their parents were recruited from three elementary and two secondary schools in Wuhu, Anhui Province, China. This study received approval from these schools with the local education authority’s support. At the beginning of the investigation, students and parents gave their informed consent. Students in grades four to nine were accompanied by their teachers to the computer room. The research assistants, who were trained professionally in the aims, criteria, and content of the study, read out the instructions of the test and explained the principle of voluntary participation. Following the instructions, students completed the questionnaires via an online platform. After completing the questionnaires, they were given invitation letters for their parents, which depicted the objective of the study and requested the parents’ participation. Interested parents could scan the code in the invitation letter and complete the questionnaire by an online platform. Informed consent was obtained electronically from participating parents prior to data collection for this study. In this study, a set of questionnaires were finished by parents, who presented information of their children’s identification (i.e., student ID number) and gender.

Measures

Parental school involvement

Parental school involvement was assessed through parents’ self-reports based on ten items translated from Programme for International Student Assessment 2015 (PISA 2015) [53]. These items measured participants’ engagement in school-related events in the prior academic year, including statements such as “took my initiative on talking about my child’s behavior with teachers,” “discussed my child’s progress on the initiative of my child’s teachers,” “volunteered in physical school-related activities,” and “engaged the conferences for parents.” The ten items were evaluated by three responses, including “yes,” “no,” and “not supported by school.” When participants answered “not supported by school,” we could not identify the willingness and capacity of parental involvement in school-related events. For instance, some parents whose initiatives are resisted by schools actually have the willingness to participate in school-related events, and they may participate in activities, such as raising questions about school policies [52]. Additionally, similar to prior study [21], the participants who answered “not supported by school” were excluded from analyses. The Cronbach’s α coefficient for the scale used in this study was 0.80.

Barriers to parents’ involvement in school activities

Barriers to parental school involvement were measured by asking participants to indicate “yes” or “no” in response to different factors which hindered parents’ participation in school-related events during the prior academic year [53]. The barriers to parental school involvement in PISA 2015 indicated that parents met with impeditive factors when they participated in their children’s school events [53]. These factors were depicted by ten items, such as “I was not capable of getting off from my work,” “I met with transportation problems,” “I’m afraid that my language skills were not enough,” and “I have no idea of engaging in school activities.” Response options were recorded as 0 = “no” and 1 = “yes”. The Cronbach’s α coefficient for the scale used in this study was 0.72.

Statistical analyses

To test for the heterogeneity of both parental school involvement and its barriers, LCAs were employed using Mplus 7.11 on the basis of parents’ answers to the dichotomous variables. Specifically, a series of LCAs were tested to capture the optimal model. The best-fitting model of LCA was determined by jointly taking into account statistical fit indices, practical applicability, and meaningful interpretability [43]. The statistical fit indices include the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), adjusted BIC (aBIC), entropy value, and indices of the likelihood-ratio test, including Lo–Mendell–Rubin (LMR) and the Bootstrap Likelihood Ratio Test (BLRT) [42]. Specifically, smaller values of AIC, BIC, and aBIC indicated a better model for the data [54]. The entropy value closer to 1.0 indicated better classification accuracy. Entropy values around 0.80 and above suggested that correct assignment in class probabilities was at least 90% [55]. The k-group model was determined superior based on significant p-values for LMR and BLRT tests [42].

In this study, CA was performed by the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22.0 to explore and visualize the association between the categories of parental school involvement and the categories of barriers to parental school involvement, and represent the association graphically on a two-dimensional perceptual map. In the perceptual map, the higher association of the categories of variables was determined by the relative proximity of the inter-point distance (i.e., the variable category’s position relative to the others’ positions) [51, 56].

Results

LCA of parental school involvement

To assess the most suitable model of groups of parental school involvement, LCA was conducted with varying numbers of groups from one to six. The six-class involvement model was identified as the optimal fitting model by taking into account both its meaningful interpretability and the statistical fit indices. As displayed in Table 1, the six-class involvement model exhibited lower values for AIC, BIC, and aBIC. It was also characterized by significant p values for LMR and BLRT tests, along with a sufficient entropy value. Additionally, each group within the six-class involvement model demonstrated substantive interpretability.

Table 1.

Comparison of LCA model fit indices of parental school involvement

Model AIC BIC aBIC Entropy LMR(p) BLRT(p)
1-Class involvement 13725.68 13777.44 13745.67 - - -
2-Class involvement 11715.63 11824.31 11757.61 0.840 0.0000 0.0000
3-Class involvement 10997.80 11163.42 11061.77 0.856 0.0000 0.0000
4-Class involvement 10763.15 10985.70 10849.11 0.886 0.0000 0.0000
5-Class involvement 10595.50 10874.98 10703.45 0.877 0.0004 0.0000
6-Class involvement 10472.09 10808.50 10602.03 0.882 0.0000 0.0000
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The likelihood of parental school involvement is presented in Fig. 1. The largest class, class1-involvement (34.97%, n = 457) was characterized by high involvement in scheduled meetings and discussing the child’s behavior, progress, learning, and development with teachers, and low to medium levels of volunteering in school activities. Class1-involvement was termed the High Involvement in Child’s Things group. Class2-involvement (32.36%, n = 423) encompasses parents who participated in all kinds of school- and child- related activities, and was designated as the All High Involvement group. Class3-involvement (7.27%, n = 95) was characterized by high involvement in scheduled meetings, being proactive in discussing the child’s behavior, progress, learning, and development with teachers, and low to medium levels of discussing passively the child’s behavior and progress with child’s teachers, as well as volunteering in school-related activities. Class3-involvement was termed the High Initiative Involvement group. Class4-involvement (6.20%, n = 81) was characterized by high involvement in scheduled meetings, discussing passively the child’s behavior and progress with teachers, and low to medium levels of other involvement. This class was termed the High Passive Involvement group. Participants in class5-involvement (10.56%, n = 138) had a high probability of participating in scheduled meetings and discussing the learning and development of children with teachers, and low to medium levels of other involvement. This class was termed the Medium Involvement group. Class6-involvement (8.65%, n = 113) was represented by participants with high involvement in scheduled meetings, and low to medium levels of other involvement. Hence, this class was designated as the Low Involvement group.

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

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Profile plot of the six groups of parental school involvement. Note. Item1-behaviour discussion initiatively; Item2-behaviour discussion passively; Item3-progress discussion initiatively; Item4-progress discussion passively; Item5-local school government; Item6-physical activities volunteers; Item7-school activities volunteers; Item8-scheduled meeting for parents; Item9-support learning discussion; Item10-child’s development discussion

LCA of barriers to parental school involvement

A series of latent class models, with varying counts of groups, were examined to identify the best model of groups representing barriers to parental school involvement. Table 2 provides the LCA models depicting barriers to school participation of parents. The five-class barriers were the best model, having the lowest BIC and aBIC values for this class. This decision was also based on significant p values on LMR and BLRT and an adequate entropy value. Although, the six-class barriers had the lowest AIC value, the improvement from the five-class barriers was negligible. Altogether, taking into account both the indices of model fitting and the interpretability of the model, the five-class barriers model was retained.

Table 2.

Comparison of LCA model fit indices of barriers to parental school involvement

Model AIC BIC aBIC Entropy LMR(p) BLRT(p)
1-Class barriers 8963.82 9015.58 8983.81 - - -
2-Class barriers 7945.59 8054.28 7987.57 0.789 0.0000 0.0000
3-Class barriers 7733.51 7899.13 7797.48 0.874 0.0000 0.0000
4-Class barriers 7605.58 7828.13 7691.54 0.800 0.0060 0.0000
5-Class barriers 7527.17 7806.64 7635.11 0.841 0.0000 0.0000
6-Class barriers 7514.12 7850.53 7644.05 0.870 0.0000 0.0000
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The class structure of the five-class barriers is presented in Fig. 2. Class1-barriers (2.75%, n = 36) was characterized by high barriers of work (such as clashing work meetings, loaded work) and transportation, and medium to high personal obstacles (e.g., language skills, not knowing how participate), and child (e.g., child dislikes). This class was termed the High Work-Transportation Barriers group. Class2-barriers (10.71%, n = 140) was marked with high barriers of work, and low scores of other barriers. It was designated as the High Work Barriers group. Participants in class3-barriers (13.39%, n = 175) reported having lower obstacles to participation in their children’s school activities except for medium to high barriers of language skills and not knowing how to participate in activities; it was termed the Medium Personal Barriers group. Class4-barriers (7.96%, n = 104) encompass participants who have high barriers of transportation and low to medium barriers of other reasons. It was termed the High Transportation Barriers group. The largest group of participants were classified into class5-barriers (65.19%, n = 852), which was characterized by a low number of all kinds of barriers to parental involvement. This class was designated as the None Barriers group.

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

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Profile plot of the five groups of barriers to parental school involvement. Note. Item1-meeting times; Item2-work; Item3-take care of children; Item4-unsafe way; Item5-transportation; Item6-unwelcome at school; Item7-language skills; Item8-not relevant for child’s development; Item9-don’t know how I could participate; Item10-my child dislikes

CA of parental school involvement and its barriers

The Chi-square test showed a significant dependency (X2 = 69.38, df = 20, p < 0.001) in the relationships between the six-class parental school involvement and the five-class barriers to parental school involvement. Subsequently, a simple CA was conducted to estimate the association between the six-class parental school involvement and the five-class barriers to parental school involvement by taking the square root of the total inertia. Total inertia, which represents the overall variance, refers to the weighted sum of the squared distances from the data points to their respective centroids [49]. In this study, the data points include the six-class parental school involvement and the five-class barriers to parental school involvement. In a CA, the overall inertia was decomposed to identify a small number of dimensions that effectively represent all the locations of the six-class parental school involvement and the five-class barriers to parental school involvement. This extraction of dimensions is analogous to the extraction of factors in Exploratory Factor Analysis [57]. In this study, Dimension 1 and Dimension 2 were extracted during the CA, as illustrated in the perceptual map (Fig. 3). Dimension 1 (the X-axis in Fig. 3) represents the first principal axis, accounting for 73.5% of the total inertia. Dimension 2 (the Y-axis in Fig. 3) serves as the second principal axis, contributing 16.4% to the total inertia. The intersection of the X-axis reference line (i.e., y = 0) and the Y-axis reference line (i.e., x = 0) represents the centroid [57], which is the origin in Fig. 3. The origin corresponds to the average profile of six-class parental school involvement and five-class barriers to parental school involvement.

Fig. 3.

Fig. 3

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Perceptual map of the 6-class parental school involvement versus the 5-class barriers to parental school involvement

In interpreting the results presented in Fig. 3, the principle is that an association between two points within the same quadrant of the coordinate system is possible [58]. The closer the distance between the two points, the stronger the association; conversely, the greater the distance, the weaker the association [51, 56, 58]. Therefore, it can be observed from Fig. 3 that the class2-involvement, class3-involvement and the class5-barriers are located closer to each other within the same quadrant. This proximity indicates a stronger association between the class5-barriers and class2-involvement, as well as a stronger relationship between class5-barriers and class3-involvement. The distance between class2-barriers and class5-involvement is closer than that of other barriers, indicating a stronger association with class5-involvement compared to the other barriers. The class6-involvement and class3-barriers are located closer to each other, indicating a stronger correlation between the two. Similarly, the class4-involvement and class4-barriers are located closer to each other, indicating a stronger correlation between the two.

Discussion

The current study used an LCAs to determine the groups of parental school involvement and the groups of barriers to parental school involvement in analyzing 1,307 parents of students in grades 4 to 9 in China. Eventually, this study identified six groups of parental school involvement and five groups of barriers to involvement of parents. Besides, this study visually represented the relationship between six groups of parental school involvement and five groups of barriers to involvement of parents by a CA. The findings of this study are discussed below.

Six groups of parental school involvement

Among six groups of parental school involvement, the first two groups, class1-involvement and class2-involvement, were the largest (34.97%) and second largest (32.36%) groups, respectively. The two groups included parents who usually engaged in kinds of school-related events, suggesting that most parents had high participation in their children’s education. This finding supports the work of prior studies [35, 36]. The results indicate that most parents care about their children’s schooling and would like to participate in school-related events. In the context of Chinese culture, which emphasizes education as a means of achieving upward social mobility [18], most of parents often maintain high expectations for their children’s academic performance [19]. These high parental expectations may encourage parents to become more involved in their children’s education [20]. Thus, most parents usually engage in different school-related activities. Moreover, parents who were classified as class3-, class4-, and class5-involvement commonly participate in specific activities in the various groups, which could be explained by the reasons that parents are hindered by some barriers, such as work and scheduling issues [32]. Also, parents who were classified as class6-involvement (8.56%) usually did not engage in school-related activities, except for scheduled meetings and local school government activities. The limited involvement of parents in their children’s school activities can be attributed to socio-economic barriers and time constraints. Specifically, many parents must work full-time to support their families, which limits their energy and time to participate in school-related events. Prior research has also found that some parents do not engage in their children’s education due to job demands and time constraints [21]. In other words, when conflicts arise between work and their children’s school-related activities, parents often have to prioritize their jobs, resulting in a low level of involvement. Previous studies have demonstrated that low levels of parental involvement exert a negative effect on children’s life satisfaction, peer and teacher relationships, and academic achievement [7, 12]. Therefore, schools and teachers should not only pay more attention to this group of parents but also strive to overcome these obstacles and enhance their involvement by utilizing targeted intervention techniques, such as ad hoc meeting schedules or online participation choices. Moreover, schools can create opportunities for parents who are single, work outside the home, and reside at a considerable distance from the school to participate in volunteer activities at various times and locations to enhance parental involvement in their children’s education [27].

Furthermore, as shown in Fig. 1, attendance at scheduled meetings was the activity in which parents most commonly participated. The result is in line with the findings of PISA 2015 [53]. A study conducted on Chinese parents has revealed that 91.90% of them participate in scheduled meetings [59]. In China, these meetings are typically organized in the middle or at the end of the semester, following student examinations. Due to high educational expectations, nearly all parents are inclined to attend these meetings to gain insights into their children’s academic performance. Therefore, in this study, almost all parents have reported that they participate in scheduled meetings. Most parents also reported that they had communicated with children’s teachers, which is confirmed by prior research [60]. In the context of communication between parents and educators regarding school programs and student progress, it is essential for schools and teachers to implement effective strategies for parental involvement. For instance, providing comprehensive information on all school policies, programs, reforms, and transitions to parents; establishing a regular schedule for disseminating pertinent notices, memos, phone calls, newsletters, and other forms of communication directed at parents; and arranging for parent and student collection of report cards, accompanied by conferences focused on enhancing academic performance [27]. Besides, it should be noted that a large part of the parents answered that they did not engage in physical and school activities as volunteers, which is also supported by previous research [21, 53]. Several reasons may back this finding. First, in the Chinese culture, some schools may not have the activities that parents volunteer for. For instance, half of the schools in Wei and Ni’s study, which was conducted in China, did not have formal parent councils [60]. Thus, parents may not have had the opportunity to know what school-related activities they could engage in. Second, parents may not have been invited by schools to participate in activities that are unrelated to child development [52]. Third, it is possible that parents do not know these activities exist. Prior research has suggested that parents had little awareness of the existence of parent councils [60]. The same could apply to other school activities, especially the activities that are not directly related to their children.

Five groups of barriers to parental school involvement

Five groups of barriers to parental school involvement were identified by the findings of the LCA. The None Barriers class, which is the largest class (65.19%), includes parents who face little barriers when they engage in school activities. This result is supported by previous study [21]. Additionally, some parents face different barriers when they participate in their children’s school-related events. As the report of PISA 2015 stated, parents frequently encounter some of these barriers concurrently [53]. This study identified the parents who often face different barriers at once and classified them as the High Work-Transportation Barriers, High Work Barriers, Medium Personal Barriers, and High Transportation Barriers groups. Close attention should be paid to parents who experience class1-barriers. Although the proportion of parents who are classified under class1-barriers are relatively low, they usually face many barriers simultaneously, including work and schedule meetings, childcare difficulties, transportation problems, language barriers, and uncertainty regarding how to participate. Also, in other groups of barriers, parents face several obstacles while engaging in the school activities of their children. These findings are supported by previous studies [32, 35, 37, 39], which have indicated that parents indeed face several barriers when they participate in school-related activities. To address the barriers that prevent parents from engaging in their children’s education, it is essential to enhance collaboration between families and schools. Some effective strategies include ensuring that all communication with families is clear, actionable, and linked to the academic success of the children; actively recruiting volunteers to demonstrate that the time and skills of all families are valued; and developing flexible schedules for volunteering, assemblies, and events to accommodate working parents [27].

Moreover, as shown in Fig. 2, almost all parents did not feel unwelcome at school. Hence, that is not a barrier to engaging in school-related activities. This finding is supported by prior research [21], whose study has revealed that almost all parents do not feel unwelcome at school. However, the result is inconsistent with prior research [37, 52] conducted in other countries. For instance, a semi-structured telephone interview revealed that only 16% of parents felt welcome at school [37]. Similarly, several parents reported that the collaboration between schools and parents was difficult, and they often felt unwelcome and unwanted in the school [52]. The inconsistent results may be attributed to the inherent attitudes of Chinese parents toward teachers and education, as well as the impact of home-school collaboration in education. Under the influence of a strong belief in respecting teachers and valuing education, Chinese parents show great respect for teachers and trust that they possess the professional expertise necessary to impart knowledge and skills to children in a school setting [61]. Therefore, Chinese parents tend to trust teachers and schools, fostering a positive attitude towards them. In addition, home-school collaboration in education was promoted in Chinese schools through the establishment of family committees, the organization of reading, writing, and recreational activities, and the sharing of various resources [62]. In the process of home-school collaboration, parents may feel that schools offer numerous opportunities for them to engage in their children’s education. Given the positive attitude towards teachers and schools, as well as the opportunities that schools offer for parents to engage in their children’s education, parents generally do not feel unwelcome at school.

Besides, as shown in Fig. 2, nearly all parents did not encounter barriers related to themselves (i.e., I suppose involvement is not important for the development of my child) and their children (i.e., my child does not want me to participate), which suggests that most parents attach importance to their children’s education, and most children do not reject their parents engagement in their study. This finding aligns with the educational beliefs inherent in Chinese culture [18]. With the inherent belief that education is essential for students, both parents and children recognize its significance. Parents are often willing to overcome obstacles and actively involve themselves in their children’s education. As previous studies found, parents valued and espoused the significance of parental school involvement and were willing to participate in school-related activities to promote their child’s development [1, 52], and students also recognized the value of parental involvement [1].

Associations between six groups of parental school involvement and five groups of barriers

The present study assessed associations between six groups of parental school involvement and five groups of barriers with a CA. As shown in Fig. 3, the All High Involvement and High Initiative Involvement groups were associated with the None Barriers class, which indicates that parents participate more actively in school-related activities when they are in a situation with little barriers to parental school involvement. These associations have several explanations. First, parents tend to engage in school-related events when there are no or few obstacles to parental school involvement, such as time restraints, work limitations, and scheduling issues [32, 34]. Second, parents who face few barriers have more time and energy, which may promote high involvement in school activities. This finding suggests that decreasing barriers to parental school involvement may improve parents’ involvement.

Moreover, as shown in Fig. 3, the Medium Involvement class is related to the High Work Barriers class, the Low Involvement class to the Medium Personal Barriers class, and the High Passive Involvement class to the High Transportation Barriers class. In other words, this study found that specific types of parental school involvement were tied with specific groups of barriers, which supports the reformulated explanatory model of barriers to parental involvement in education [40]. Prior research has identified issues of work and scheduling as the most commonly reported obstacle to parental school involvement [32]. Parents who reported high working and meeting issues usually participated in their children’s school-related events with uncertainty and high random; these were named the Medium Involvement class. Thus, to improve parental school involvement, parents should adjust their work (including meetings in the work) schedule to engage in the school-related activities. Additionally, schools and teachers should take more initiatives to have positive interactions with students’ parents, further choose an appropriate time for both of them to talk about the behavior, academic performance, and progress of students. The flexible schedules for meetings, volunteer activities, and events should be organized to allow working parents to participate [27]. Little communication can make misunderstanding of each other. For example, parents and teachers both feel that the other party ought be more initiative [52]. Hence, both teachers and parents ought to evaluate the quality of key communications to enhance effective communication [27].

Parents who faced personal barriers such as language and uncertainty regarding how to participate are less inclined to engage in school-related events; they formed the Low Involvement class. Some studies have identified that these two obstacles stop parents from engaging in school-related activities [34, 38, 39]. The administrators and teachers also reported that a low sense of efficacy may determine what parents participate in [36]. Some Chinese parents may lack confidence during conversations with their child’s teachers, which could engender low involvement in school activities. Parents, teachers, and schools can collaborate to overcome these challenges. Specifically, parents should enhance their understanding of and confidence in parenting and child development [27]. Teachers should improve their ability to elicit and comprehend family perspectives on children’s progress, acknowledge parents’ efforts and strengths, and understand their needs, concerns, and goals [27]. Schools should offer language translation services to assist parents as necessary [27]. Also, parents who encounter transportation and safety barriers are more likely to participate in activities passively; we refer to them as the High Transportation Barriers class. Previous studies found that transport was an important factor to influence participation in school activities [37, 39]. It is not convenient for parents with transport and safety challenges to participate in school-related events. Parents would not go to the school unless they are invited to be involved, which results in high passive involvement in school activities.

Conclusions, limitations, and future directions

This study identified the link between the six groups of parental school involvement and the five groups of barriers to parental school involvement and presented it visually with LCAs and a CA. More importantly, the results of this study supported the reformulated explanatory model of barriers to parental involvement in education [40].

However, several limitations should be noted. First, parents provided self-reported ratings, which could be influenced by social desirability bias and inaccuracy regarding their school involvement. For instance, Harris and Goodall [1] found that parents, teachers, and students had various interpretations of the view that parental participation in children’s schooling was a ‘good thing.’ Hence, to comprehensively examine parental school involvement and its barriers, future studies can employ triangulation methods, such as surveys of teachers or students, to validate parental self-reports. Second, the questionnaire items on parental school involvement and its barriers may be limited. That is, they did not capture all of the ways or obstacles to parental school participation. Even though, the types of parental school participation and its barriers in this study are substantial and practical [35]. Future studies may also explore other types of parental school participation and its barriers to comprehensively understanding parental school involvement, such as parents’ own level of literacy (including digital literacy), challenges related to language proficiency, parents’ understanding of the school’s open-door policy, the effectiveness of communication between parents and their children, lack of interest in children’s education, and unavailable teachers [34, 39]. Third, this study did not separate mothers’ and fathers’ reports during the investigation. Prior studies indicated that mothers were more prone than fathers to involve in their children’s education or participate in related activities [34, 63]. Future research is needed to evaluate mothers’ and fathers’ school involvement (and its barriers) separately. Fourth, participants who indicated “not supported by school” were excluded to maintain a focused examination of parental involvement groups in this research. However, it is important to note that different schools may implement varying invitation policies. Future research should investigate the invitation policies of schools and more details about the choice of “not supported by school.” For example, some parents are willing to participate in their children’s education despite the school not supporting it, while some parents are reluctant to engage when the school does not endorse involvement. Finally, this study did not obtain some parent information, including age, marital status, the level of education, and economic factors. Previous studies identified some factors that affect involvement or barriers to involvement, such as literacy or educational levels, age of parents, single-parent families, and socio-economic status [34–37, 39]. Specifically, prior research has demonstrated that parents with higher economic and socio-cultural status are more likely to engage in their children’s education and encounter fewer barriers [21]. Future studies should incorporate these factors to further investigate their impact on both parental school involvement and the barriers to such involvement.

Acknowledgements

Not applicable.

Abbreviations

LCA

Latent Class Analysis

LCAs

Latent Class Analyses

CA

Correspondence Analysis

AIC

Akaike Information Criterion

BIC

Bayesian Information Criterion

aBIC

Adjusted Bayesian Information Criterion

LMR

Lo–Mendell–Rubin

BLRT

Bootstrap Likelihood Ratio Test

Authors’ contributions

Junqiao Guo and Bihua Zhao contributed to the study conception and design. Junqiao Guo collected the data, reviewed literature, conducted data analyses, and written the first draft of the manuscript. Bihua Zhao designed the study, collected the data, reviewed literature, and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding

This study was funded by the Project of Humanity and Social Science Planning of University in Anhui Province of China (SK2019ZD23).

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Anhui Normal University (AHNU-ET2022049). All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with ethical standards of the Declaration of Helsinki. Participants have the right to voluntarily choose to participate in this study. Informed consent was obtained electronically prior to the collection of data from participants.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Footnotes

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Data Availability Statement

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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