Help or hindrance? How socioeconomic status alters preservice teachers' perceptions of parental homework support

BACKGROUND: Parental homework support is considered a key aspect of how parents contribute to their children's academic success. However, it seems that certain forms of parental support are associated with teachers' rather negative perceptions of students' academic achievement and work habits. Such associations raise concerns that teachers may form biased assumptions about students on the basis of teachers' perceptions of parental homework support. AIMS: We aimed to investigate how information about parental homework support affects preservice teachers' judgements and attributions and whether the influence varies depending on students' SES. SAMPLES: The sample consisted of 106 preservice teachers in Study 1 and 316 preservice teachers in Study 2. METHOD: The preservice teachers judged a fictitious student's language and mathematical abilities on the basis of a vignette and indicated their perceived attributions of the student's academic achievement. Parental homework support (Studies 1 and 2) and students' SES (Study 2) were manipulated. RESULTS: Study 1 showed that academic achievement was rated lower for students who received frequent parental homework support than for those who received infrequent support. Study 2 showed that frequent parental homework support positively influenced preservice teachers' judgements of language proficiency for low-SES students, whereas it had no effect for high-SES students. Across the two studies, we consistently found that preservice teachers tended to attribute students' low performance to the parents when parents provided infrequent homework support. CONCLUSION: Parental homework support can affect preservice teachers' judgements and attributions and, especially regarding judgements, students' SES is a decisive factor.