Cultural Activities With Parents May Motivate Teenagers To Graduate

How do adolescents continue their education? Does it have anything to do with parents visiting zoos? You bet it does. Going on visits to the museum, the zoo or discussing books might enhance their chances of completing their high school education, says a new study by the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom.

Students aged 10 to 15 years are more likely to get influenced by cultural activities at home, rather than homework clubs or extracurricular activities in school. Once they cross 16 years, they continue to be drawn to higher education, if they keep up the cultural activities.

"Filial dynamics such as emotional closeness to parents and cultural capital were better predictors than more school-driven parent-child interactions," said Dimitra Hartas, lead researcher of the current study and an associate professor in the Center for Education Studies at the University of Warwick.

Information gathered from the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study, involving 10,931 adolescents by Hartas and her team showed that factors like "family emotional closeness, bullying, friendships, homework, extracurricular activities and parental education interest" played a significant role. Questions such as the frequency with which they visited art galleries, discussed books, did homework and conducted arguments with family members were also asked.

It was important to give credence to self-efficacy, or the ability to solve problems. Teenagers with low confidence levels about solving problems were 30 percent less likely to believe that graduating high school was important. Other teenagers reporting lower levels of general health tended to be 18 percent more likely to opt for not continuing their education.

While being close to parents was not directly linked to the desire to attend college, those who were not close to their parents tended to be twice as likely to consider graduation as "not important."

"These findings have significant implications for family and educational policy, especially with regard to 'raising aspirations' and reducing early school leaving," wrote Hartas and her team. "They also raise the issue of reconsidering the role of the home environment as the web of emotionally and intellectually charged relationships between parents and children rather than an extension of the school day.... Discussions on young people's educational aspirations should not be polarized but informed by notions of opportunity and what young people make of it."

The findings were published in the Journal of Youth Studies.