Abstract:

The performance of College Entrance Examination is crucial for the most Asia adolescents to enter colleges, Gaokao of China is also a typical representative. In addition, the global urbanization process has left some parents and children living separately, the above phenomenon also exists in Chinese rural families working in cities. Number evidence has identified that parental involvement had effect on adolescents’ academic achievement. It is not only necessary to explore the process of parental involvement and adolescents' academic performance, but also to propose solutions to the hidden gap between urban and rural families in China.

However, relatively few is known about parental involvement and adolescents’ academic performance in different classes of families in China, especially comparing the gap between urban and rural families. This study focuses on 17-20 years-old adolescents in 18 senior high schools in an urban and rural area in a province of western China, and examines the relationship between parental emotional support involvement, adolescents' deep learning strategies, and National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) results.

The results show that parents’ emotional support involvement, under the mediating effect of adolescents’ deep learning strategies, enhance adolescents’ academic achievement in the college entrance examination. Further analysis shows that compared with urban families, rural families with low SES have a slightly higher effect on improving their children's academic performance in the college entrance examination with the lower average level of parental emotional support involvement. This research reveals the relationship between Parental Emotional Support Involvement (PESI), adolescents' deep learning strategies and academic achievement.

We suggest that the quality of parental emotional support involvement from low-SES families should be improved and pay attention to the deep learning strategies and academic competitiveness of rural adolescents’ during the critical period of their academic growth. More research is encouraged to further explore the deep learning behaviours of adolescents’ different periods and expand the diversified impact of parental emotional support involvement.

Keywords:

Parental emotional support involvement, Deep strategies of learning, NCEE, Advantages and adversity family.