English and Swedish teachers’ perspectives on the role of parents in year one children’s learning of number: manifestations of culturally-conditioned norms

Judy Sayers,Gosia Marschall,Jöran Petersson,Paul Andrews

doi:10.1080/03004430.2019.1646741

Judy Sayers, Gosia Marschall + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2019.1646741

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Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper presents an exploratory study of English and Swedish teachers' perspectives on the role of parents in year one children's learning of number. Drawing on the results of semi-structured interviews, data from each cohort were analysed independently to ensure the cultural integrity of any response categories and the results of this process compared. Two broad themes were identified concerning implicit and explicit forms of parental involvement. The former, manifested similarly across the two cohorts, concerned the importance of parents presenting children with positive attitudes towards mathematics. The latter, incorporating three comparable subthemes, focused on the creation of number-rich home environments, home–school communication and parents' role in the completion of homework. All three subthemes differentiated the cohorts in ways that highlighted teachers' culturally situated perspective on teaching and learning. Some implications are discussed, particularly with respect to the challenge this study poses for developers of cross-cultural survey instruments.

Highlights

In both England and Sweden, the sites of the research reported here, schools and parents are mandated to collaborate on the support of children’s learning
Acknowledging the issues raised above, we present a comparative exploratory interview study of English and Swedish teachers’ perspectives on parental involvement in the number-related learning of year one children
The analytical process described above yielded two dominant themes with respect to teachers’ perspectives on parental involvement, which we describe as implicit involvement and explicit involvement (Crozier & Davies, 2007)

Summary

Introduction

In both England and Sweden, the sites of the research reported here, schools and parents are mandated to collaborate on the support of children’s learning. The English expectation is that schools should attend to ‘positive relationships with parents, the quality of communications, reporting to parents on progress, and the mechanisms for helping parents to support their children’s learning’ 1578), Swedish schools should create collaborative partnerships between themselves and parents (Forsberg, 2007; Åkerström, Aytar & Brunnberg, 2015). The manifestations of these expectations, nominally at least, appear similar. Parents are expected to involve themselves with school advisory boards and volunteer to help with reading or other school-based activities (Wingard & Forsberg, 2009)

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