| Scope and method of study. The purpose of this study was to explore factors that affect the educational outcome of adolescents in today's society. Poor academic performance in school is one of the main contributors to many risk factors associated with adolescents from all ethnicities. However due to the history and cultural differences in parenting practices, the perception of parental behavior and how it affects adolescents can produce various outcomes. From a Human Ecological Theory perspective several factors such as ethnicity, income, family form, and parenting style were explored to determine if and any of these factors could predict academic competence. Participants in this study were 62 adolescents from two high schools in the Oklahoma City Metropolitan area. Each adolescent completed a Self-perception Profile, Demographic Information and a Parental Authority Questionnaire. Several hypothesis were examined by ANOVA and regression analysis.;Findings and conclusions. Cross culture comparisons were made between African American and Caucasian adolescents. Two of the variables, Level of Income and Family Form when entered as predictors for Academic Competence were not significant. Two of the parenting types, authoritarian and permissive parenting produced positive results. The higher the parents were in their levels of authoritarianism and permissiveness the lower the levels of academic competence for Caucasian adolescents; however no significance was found for African American adolescents. Authoritative parenting which was suspected to be a significant contribution to academic competence did not yield any significant results for this study. |
