High-quality partnerships between families and schools can bring enormous benefits to the development, learning, and well-being of children. Although past literature has frequently identified the parenting self-efficacy element of parental self-regulation as a key determinant of the strength of the home-school partnership, this knowledge base relies heavily on cross-sectional studies. This paper follows on from an article in Family Process reporting the findings of a cluster randomized trial of an evidence-based parenting program designed to promote parental self-regulation, namely the seminar version of the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program. The trial found post-intervention improvements in two domains of the home-school partnership, namely parent-teacher communication and parent school-based involvement. Given that the home-school partnership was not a target of the intervention, the current study conducted a mechanism of change analysis to examine whether improvements in the home-school partnership could be attributed to post-intervention improvements in parental self-regulation. Data were collected from a sample of 912 parents of children attending 160 different primary schools across three Australian states. Following a Random Intercept Cross-lagged Panel Model (RI-CLPM) approach, bidirectional within-participant effects between parental self-regulation and parent-teacher communication were found, while unidirectional within-participant effects were found for parent school-based involvement. The findings provided support to the proposed theory of change where improvements in parental self-regulation are the underlying mechanism behind reported post-intervention improvements in the quality of the home-school partnership. The findings also support the potential spillover benefits of school-based delivery of evidence-based parenting programs. Trial Registration: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry: ACTRN12623000852651.
Ma et al. (Tue,) studied this question.