Parent involvement in children's homework in American and Swedish dual-earner families

Abstract

This study analyzes parent involvement by employing ethnographic methods and discourse analysis of parent–child talk about homework. We juxtapose what is often presented as a straightforward and unproblematic concept of parent involvement in education policy and research with actual instances of the day-to-day practices and reported experiences of parent involvement in children's homework in the U.S. and Sweden. Our analyses show that parent involvement may be either parent or child initiated, and varies widely according to how much homework the child is assigned, the child's orientation to homework and a number of other factors. Analyses demonstrate that parents become involved in two main ways: 1. through anticipating and planning the activity of homework and 2. by directly participating in the accomplishment of the homework task itself. We additionally highlight in the paper that there is an inherent tension between a parent's responsibility for homework and the child's responsibility for homework, and that parent involvement can cause tension in communication in the parent–child relationship.