[ 英文摘要 ]

This paper investigates the effects of elementary school children’s SES and parenting practices on their achievement. The children’s achievement is briefly defined as their academic performance, academic self-concept and social adaptation. The major findings of this research are as the follows: firstly, after controlling grade and gender, we find that both parental education and father’s occupation have a considerable positive effect on the students’ academic performance, but these effects are not found for the children’s social adaptation. However, a negative effect is found for the mothers’ career on the children’s social adaptation, yet this negative effect should be interpreted with care. Secondly, family factors, cultural capital, mother-child relationship and positive parenting style all reveal a very positive effect upon the children’s social adaptation. Moreover, the positive parenting style has also a positive impact on the children’s academic self-concept. Thirdly, using each dependent variable as the predictor variable of the other two, we found that social adaptation, academic performance and academic self-concept are mutually beneficial, i.e. each assumes a positive effect on the other two. Finally, the children of low level job mothers are found to have a relatively low academic performance, yet these children are also found to have higher academic self-concept. We suggest that this probably be due to their relatively low academic aspirations. The findings in this study bear important practical implications. The most important of all will be that the social inequality seems to have been reproduced in the elementary schools and the educators should be fully alert to this fact.