Enhancing parent–teacher collaboration in rural schools: parents’ voices and implications for schools

Abstract

ABSTRACT There is general consensus that parents are invaluable partners in education of their children but, getting South African rural parents involved in education has remained difficult. This paper draws from parents’ voices to explore the question, what do parents in a rural South African school context see as the school’s role in enhancing parent–teacher collaboration? An interpretive qualitative approach was adopted to conduct the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data from 10 rural parents and the interpretive phenomenological analysis was used to analyze data. Findings suggest that parents understand the need for their involvement but believe that schools need to invest in their empowerment, consider modern communication methods, communicate with parents the school vision, and what is expected from parents. The findings further suggest the need to bring on board the traditional leaders because of their inherent influence in the community. While parents seem to have adopted the negative discourse in relation to their involvement, they present a different notion from scholarship that portrays rural parents inadequate. The findings suggest that we need to question the current dominant notion of what parental involvement is and consider roles that parents from different contexts can play when collaborating with teachers.