Parents’ perception towards setting children’s academic goals

Abstract

Parents’ dreams and thoughts for their children are the common factors influencing children’s choices. Every parent wants the best for the children. The influence from parents can end up into multiple dimensions. The purpose of this study is to explore how the parents in Bangladeshi context think about their children’s academic future. It aims to understand the influence of parents’ decision in the future academic goals of the children. Using qualitative approach this study explains the patterns of thoughts from 19 parents of students across primary to secondary schools. The study uses FGD and interview as tools for finding the lenses from parents of an under-served low-income community. These findings are assessed against the Epstein’s parental involvement framework. Interestingly, the parents from low income community have minimal expectations while they expressed a big desire to see their children to the top of the educational process. The tradition of who decides and influence of elders on the Youngers of the families has been found to a key factor in the influence of how parental engagement takes place influencing the landmarks for the children’s education. This study definitely answers the questions on the assumptions, fear and beliefs that lead the pare4nts to decide their children’s academic future. Further studies are needed to develop gender based analysis of the context to find what gender-based and cultural factors might have been there influencing the parents’ decisions.