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The role of social capital at home and in school in academic achievement: The case of South Korea

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Abstract

Using data from the Korean Educational Longitudinal Study of 2005–2007, the current study investigated the role of family and school social capital in students’ academic achievement in South Korea. Results showed that while some forms of family and school social capital were associated with increased math achievement, the effect of family social capital was greater than that of school social capital. Results also suggested that similar to parents who play a key role in shaping social capital at home, teachers may play an important role in building ecological school social capital such as collective school norms, which was found to affect students’ academic achievement. In addition, results found some interaction effects between family social capital and school social capital. Specifically, collective school norms were found to compensate the deficiency of parental involvement in school, while student–teacher relationships and academic emphasis had boosting effects with parental educational expectation on students’ academic achievement. Features of Korean education related to the distinctive role of family and school social capital in students’ academic achievement and policy implications were discussed.

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Notes

  1. Examples of items in the PCA are: “During this school year, did you participate in parents’ association meetings at school?” (parental involvement in school); “How much do you disagree with the following statement: I check whether my 7th grader has completed all homework” (parental involvement at home); and “During the past year, how many times did you receive a favor from other parents?” (parents’ relationships with other parents).

  2. Examples of items in the PCA are: “How often do you discuss students’ academic issues at your school with your colleagues?” (work relationships among teachers) and “How much do you agree or disagree with the following statement: At this school, all teachers share a common vision and beliefs about education and schooling” (collective school norms). The PCA results and corresponding loadings are not provided herein because of space limitations.

  3. The three interaction terms used in Model 6 were chosen because they were the only statistically significant interactions of all the combinations of family and school social capital variables, which were tested in Model 5. They remained statistically significant in Model 6. Nevertheless, the statistical significance could be a chance result because the number of tested combinations was large.

  4. The correlation analysis is not provided herein because of space limitations.

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  1. Department of Education Policy Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, 300 Rackley Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Hyunwoo Yang

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Yang, H. The role of social capital at home and in school in academic achievement: The case of South Korea. Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. 18, 373–384 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-017-9492-7

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