Rethinking Parental Involvement in Developing Countries: Toward Inclusive and Culturally Responsive Education

This study looks at how parental participation in their children's education has changed over time in emerging nations. It achieves this by gathering 24 real-life studies from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East conducted between 2001 and 2024. The results fell into four broad categories: disparities across regions, factors that make it impossible to engage, things that make it easier to participate, and effects on schooling. We accomplished this by applying PRISMA 2020-based Boolean search techniques across Google Scholar, ERIC, and Scopus. We also used the CASP Qualitative Checklist to assess quality. Parents cannot get active because they do not have enough money, cannot read or write, or do not follow cultural customs. Parents find it easier to do that when the school speaks to them kindly, the teachers are kind, and everyone follows the regulations. It is recognized that when families are involved, students are more motivated, more likely to go to school, and healthier emotionally and socially. Nonetheless, its direct impact on academic achievement remains ambiguous. Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory and Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler's parental involvement model guided the study. This highlights how vital it is to learn about various cultures and think about how families may support one another when they are not in school. Some factors that spring to mind include parental participation, academic performance, developing nations, education policy, meta-synthesis, and family engagement.