The Home-to-School Connection: Family Cohesion and How it Impacts Connection to School
Open Access
- Author:
- Horn, Caroline
- Area of Honors:
- Human Development and Family Studies
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Sunny Bai, Thesis Supervisor
Alyssa Ann Gamaldo, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- School
Connectedness
home cohesion
family
elementary school - Abstract:
- The spheres of home and school are the two most important environments in a child’s life. The connection between the two has been debated in human development research. This study aimed to dissect this relationship between children’s feelings of cohesion in the home and connectedness at school. This study also was interested in the influence of the potential moderating factors of gender, grade, family socioeconomic status, and parent education level on the connection between the home and school environments. The data for this study came from both the student and parent baseline measures of the Student Wellness Study. From this data we ran ten regression models, each building on the last, with gender, grade, family SES, and parent education as moderators in separate models. We hypothesized that that children who were more connected to their families would also feel more connected in school. Although we did not find significant results to support our hypothesis, there were trend-level findings that gave some support to our hypothesis. We also hypothesized the potential impact of covariates including gender, grade, socioeconomic status and parent education on the connection between the home and school environments. We also did not find any significant interactions with any of the moderators except for a marginally significant interaction with the moderator of parent education level. The homogeneity of the sample and the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic could be the reason we found these results.