The investigation of parental involvement in practices of English language learning for young adolescent learners

The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which parents of secondary school students (5th to 8th) participate in their children's home-based learning activities in English courses with regard to some variables. The study was designed based on descriptive survey model and comparative and correlational associative models. The sample of the research comprised 343 parents whose children studied at 5th to 8th classes of secondary schools in Muğla province. The Parent Involvement in Students' Home Based Learning Activities Scale (PI-SHBLAS) was used to collect data. In the first part of parents' form, questions on demographic characteristics and in the second part family participation opinions were evaluated with a 30-item Likert-type scale with 5 responses ("5=Always", "4=Often", "3=Sometimes", "2=Rarely", "1=Never"). The data showed that the frequency of parents' participation was not found significant according to gender. The father participants were observed more eager and enthusiastic than the mother participants for parental involvement process in terms of participating their children's home-based English language learning activities. Moreover, it was observed that as the class level of the children increase, the active participation of the parents decrease. The parents with children, who study in the 8th grade, do not participate actively and sufficiently in their children's English education process. Furthermore, except for the dimension of 'Parents' Willingness and Being Open to Improvement', all dimensions do not differentiate significantly towards the parents' marital status. Besides, in the dimension of parents' willingness and being open to improvement, while married and never married parents have the lowest degree of being open to developments, which means that they sometimes eager and feel ready to developments, separate parents and widow share the highest level of willingness to ready for improvements, which means that they are often in need of being open to developments. Also, when it comes to parents' age factors, it was revealed that the parents, who are 31-36 years old and 43-48 years old, highly believe in self-development for assisting to their children's English lessons and they show effort to fulfill insufficient requirement. However, the parents, who are 18 years old and under, rarely consider self-improvement for their children home-based learning activities. On the other hand, the study revealed that as the parents' education levels increase, they become more aware the importance of the involvement process in their children English language education, they genuinely try to be a part of active involvement process and their realizations of inadequacy for the process of their children's English education increase. In addition, it was revealed that housewives and civil servants differentiate from each other significantly. Although housewives participate less actively than civil servants in their children's English education process, both parents indicate that they sometimes get involved to their children's home-based learning activities of English language actively. It is also surprising to revealed that while most of parents participate at sometimes level, the parents, who are soldiers (other(s)), show that they often participate in their children's English language learning activities. For parents' monthly income level factor, it was observed that as the monthly income levels of the parents increase, their active involvement levels increase, the inadequacy perception of the parents increase and the parents communicate and express themselves better with their children in terms of assisting in English language learning process of children as well. While the parents, who earn between 1.301TL and 1.999TL, indicate that they rarely have communication or self-expression problems when they assist their children in home-based English learning activities, the parents, who earn between 7.501 TL and over, sometimes have trouble when they supervise their children in home environment in terms of both knowledge and expressions of English language. Finally, in analysis performed to find out difference between the dimensions of PI-SHBScienceLAS and whether the parents' children take private courses or attend private institutions or get tutoring for English language, there is not observed any difference among the dimensions. All parents stated that they sometimes get involved in their children English education. They emphasized that they rarely communicate with their children's teachers and they stated that they believe in self-development. Besides, they are willing to improve themselves. The variables studied on parental involvement in home-based learning activities for English courses make us give these suggestions: To remove parents' insufficiency in parental involvement process, educational politics should be developed, family education programs should be organized and the bound between school and parents should be strengthened Keywords: Parental Involvement, English Education, Home-Based Learning