Case Study of Relation Between Parental Encouragement and Self-Concept among Senior Secondary School Students

The aim of this study was twofold: firstly, to investigate the perceived parents involvement, and to examine the relationship among home environment variables (fathers’ educational level, mothers’ educational level, and perceived family involvement), motivation, gender and self-concept of Senior Secondary level students and gender effect on students’ self-concept. The data was collected from about 100 senior secondary students, 50 boys and 50 girls of class XI and XII of Vishwa Bharati Public School, Greater Noida. Their age ranged between 15 to 17 years. The results show how high or extremely high parental encouragement leads to a high self-concept of students. The overall self-concept includes Power self-concept, Social self-concept, Ability self-concept, Physical self-concept and Psychological self-concept of senior secondary students. Confidence of a student is determined to a great extent by the home environment. Therefore, parents must accompany their children through their crucial walk of life during class XI and XII, especially during these two years when they have to do stream selection and career choices, a positive parental support boosts the confidence, removes confusion, reduces fear of failure and provides clarity. It may be concluded from the study that there is a relationship between parental encouragement and self- concept of Senior Secondary students but the relationship is not very strong because parental encouragement is not the only criteria to develop self-concept. When we say self-concept, it includes self-concept of one’s academic ability, social image, physical ability, mental ability and psychological ability. One’s marks in examination, position and acceptance in the class, one’s idea about his or her looks and complexion, one’s knowledge of one’s stamina or skills, one’s notion about one’s strengths and weaknesses contribute to forming one’s self-concept. It cannot be purely pinned to the amount of parental encouragement received. Secondly, a parent may be judged as encouraging if he/she provides monetary support, physical accompaniment and moral boost to one’s children. But that is not enough. Parent’s own ability to help in academics, sports or learning other skills also contribute to building one’s self-concept. If parents lack education, experience and exposure they may not be able to be sufficiently involved in enabling the child to excel in different areas. Excellence and success is directly proportionate to high self-concept. Mothers play a major role in influencing and shaping the child. If a mother is not educated, they fail to make an impact on the children.  Children of educated mothers have a higher self-concept than the others. Most of the mothers of the Senior Secondary students of Vishwa Bharati Public School, Greater Noida are either Class XII pass or Undergraduates from villages or small towns. So, their influence does not really contribute to building or boosting the self-concept of the Senior Secondary level children. Greater Noida is away from the metropolitan city of Delhi and its advancement has not reached Greater Noida. Students are aware that they lag behind in many areas in comparision to students who study in Delhi. This awareness further affects the self-concept of the students. Social sites update us of the latest developments. Though not that developed, there is no student who does not have an access to internet today. Students of Greater Noida know how advanced the world is and how much more they are to achieve or attain to be at par with Senior Secondary students in cities or across the globe. Coming on to self-concept between boys and girls, there was a time when studies revealed that boys have a higher self-concept in comparison to girls because of the patriarchal structure of the society. But this mindset is changing even in villages and small towns. With widespread awareness, government schemes, parental encouragement and realisation, girls are given equal encouragement in homes. In fact, in many areas girls are seen to be performing better than boys. In CBSE Class XII girls outperform boys by 3.29% in 2022. Otherwise also, girls tend to achieve higher than boys as they pay more attention to coursework, take care to present their work neatly, following all compliances and are better at meeting deadlines. Eventually, they are favoured by teachers as they are more cooperative and obedient. These classroom experiences boost the confidence of girls. That is why the self-concept of girls was as good as that of boys.