Date of Award

1-1-2018

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctorate of Education, Ed.D.

College

College of Education

Department

Education

First Advisor

K. Candis Best, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Mary Sanford, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Damara Richen, Ed.D.

Abstract

Raising children in today’s world is no easy feat, especially when researchers closely scrutinize parents and their parenting styles. Since the early 1960’s, studying parenting styles reveals how each different style can affect children as they grow up. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the relationship between parenting styles and how they can influence adult children’s attitudes towards academic entitlement. The development of academic entitlement has been extensively studied, but not from the viewpoint of how parenting styles may have shaped these attitudes. This study utilized freshmen college students from a Northern California Community College, and gathered triangulated data from classroom observations, online surveys, and in person interviews. The data were analyzed using observation notes, online survey data collection using Qualtrics, and interview notes. The two key findings from this study are: first, data indicated that there is no direct link between any one of the three identified parenting styles, and second, there were no students who identified with permissive parents. The significance of this study is to demonstrate that attitudes of academic entitlement could be identified to provide students and educators an avenue to eliminate barriers that impede students’ ability to reach academic success due their heightened sense of academic entitlement. This study illustrates the need for further research on the correlation between parenting styles and academic entitlement in college students.

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