Why Do Parents Become Involved? Research Findings and Implications

A decade ago, Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler of-fered a model of the parental involvement pro-cess that focused on understanding why parents become involved in their children’s education and how their involvement influences student outcomes. Since then, we and others have con-ducted conceptual and empirical work to en-hance understanding of processes examined in the model. In this article (companion to Walker and colleagues ’ article about scale development on the model in this issue), we review recent work on constructs central to the model’s initial question: Why do parents become involved in children’s education? Based on this review, we offer suggestions for (1) research that may deepen understanding of…