Increasing Parental Self-Efficacy in a Home-Tutoring Environment

Research suggests that parents with high levels of self-efficacy tend to make positive decisions about active engagement in the child's education, while parents with weak self-efficacy are often associated with less parental involvement. Therefore, endowing intelligent tutoring systems with the ability to adapt the level of support provided for the parent based on their self-efficacy may be of great benefit. Such a system might provide high levels of support for parents with low self-efficacy, while providing lower levels of support for parents with high self-efficacy. This paper explores the effect of using such an adaptive system in the home-tutoring context and, in particular, reports on two complementary empirical studies. In the first study, a dynamic self-efficacy model, learned from runtime self-report data is used to provide adaptive support for the parent. In the second empirical study, the dynamic self-efficacy model was expanded to allow parents to request for further support outside what is deemed necessary based on their self-efficacy model. Both studies comprised a control group which received full support regardless of their self-efficacy throughout the entire experiment. Results indicate clear increases in parental self-efficacy as a result of the provision of adaptive support throughout the home-tutoring process.