The role of parental attitudes in children's motivation toward homework assignments

Completing homework assignments is part of students' daily routine. Because this task is embedded within the home environment, parents play an important role in homework-related attitudes and behaviors. Recent findings have demonstrated that effort and cognitive engagement while doing homework are better proximal predictors of positive outcomes than merely the time spent on it. The purpose of the current study was to examine whether parental goal emphasis explains children's motivational orientation toward homework and the perceived dissonance between home and school. Participants included parent-child dyads (N = 220), who completed surveys adapted from the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales. Path analysis using structural equation modeling indicated that parents' emphasis on mastery goals was associated with children's mastery goals, which was in turn linked with higher achievement in school. Parents' emphasis on performance goals was associated with children's performance goals and a higher sense of dissonance between home and school.