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Objectives: The current "Dad Craze" trend has changed the South Korean father figure and has increased the number of fathers participating in children's education. South Korean parents are known for placing a particularly high value on child education. Despite a significant body of research on fathers' involvement with their children, no research has investigated the factors affecting fathers' school involvement in South Korea. This study established an empirical framework for fathers' school involvement based on the Lamb-Pleck four factor model and explored factors that influence Korean fathers' school involvement.Methods: Using data derived from an internet survey of South Korean fathers with school-aged children (N  =  500), descriptive statistics analysis and a regression analysis were conducted to examine the level of fathers' school involvement and its determinants.Results: Regression analysis showed that fathers' parent efficacy (B  =  .367, p  =  .006) as a skill factor, wife's support (B  =  .430, p  <  .000) as a social support factor, and working flexibility (B  =  .280, p  =  .001) as an institutional factor had a statistically significant effect on father school involvement.Conclusions: This study revealed that skill (fathers' parental efficacy), social support (wife's support for fathering), and institutional factor (working flexibility) were key predictors of fathers' involvement in their children's schools. Father's gender role attitude did not have a significant effect on the fathers' school involvement. This study provides empirical evidence regarding determinants of fathers' school involvement in South Korea and suggests policy implications in order to promote fathers' school involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Parental self-efficacy as a protective factor for immigrant mothers. • Longitudinal mediation effect of parental self-efficacy. • Language barrier for immigrant mothers in school involvement. • Challenges among immigrant mothers in South Korea. In this study, the longitudinal relationships among language proficiency, parental self-efficacy, and parental school involvement for immigrant mothers in South Korea were examined. A data set comprised of a three-wave longitudinal sample from the Multicultural Adolescents Panel Data was analyzed; it consisted of 1,344 immigrant mothers (2011 to 2013). Language proficiency, parental self-efficacy, and parental school involvement were assessed by the self-reports of immigrant mothers. An autoregressive, cross-lagged model was used and the results pointed to longitudinal associations between language proficiency and parental school involvement as well as between parental self-efficacy and parental school involvement. Language proficiency had a longitudinal effect on parental self-efficacy, while parental self-efficacy had no longitudinal effect on language proficiency. Parental self-efficacy was a longitudinal mediator between language proficiency and parental school involvement. Results from this study support the idea that enhancing parental self-efficacy may reduce the negative effect of a language barrier and it may lead to promoting immigrant mothers' parental school involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the current school-parent support policy in South Korea is to revive the parental role as agent and partner in child education by strengthening parental efficacy through increasing parental knowledge about the child's school life. In this study, we tested this mediational model by comparing 743 employed mothers versus 540 stay-at-home mothers within each school level. School involvement among stay-at-home mothers of all children significantly predicted their parental efficacy and their knowledge about the child's school mediated this link completely for mothers of elementary and high school children and partially for mothers of middle school children. School involvement had no impact on parental efficacy among employed mothers. Policy implications of the findings were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While schools play a major role in promoting parental involvement in schooling in many countries, few comparative studies examined the level of school expectation for parental involvement and its effect on student achievement. Using the TIMSS 1999 dataset, this study examined the level of school expectation for various types of parental involvement in the US and South Korea and the relationship among school characteristics, expectations for parental involvement, and 8th grade students' mathematics achievement. The study showed that teacher collaboration and school disorder problems were two school factors associated with the level of school expectations for parental involvement in both countries. The study also found that school expectations for parental involvement were significantly associated with higher student achievement in mathematics in the US but not in South Korea. Policy implications for US schools and South Korean schools are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]