Presenting School Culture Findings

Abstract

This third and final findings and discussion chapter presents aspects of school culture in the Principal Leadership for Parent Engagement project. In Chap. 2 we described a positive school culture for parent engagement as focusing on those practices by schools/principals which encourage parents to engage in their child’s learning and wellbeing and feel welcome in the school and classroom (Karadag & Oztekin-Bayir, 2018; McDowall & Schaughency, 2017; Spence, 2018). In this chapter, the idea of a positive school culture for parent engagement is discussed using two of Schwab’s (1973) commonplaces for the planning of curriculum namely schools and communities. These commonplaces are associated with the broader settings and contexts within which schools, principals, and key players such as students, parents, and teachers operate. The chapter presents the project’s findings under the two headings of schools and communities and includes aspects of these dimensions/milieus not discussed in previous chapters. The concept of agency as achievement (Biesta & Tedder, 2007) is again used to simultaneously conceptualise what helped or hindered each principal’s effectiveness in parent engagement and describe and explain the qualities and strategies associated with their seeming success. The findings point to the strength of the principals’ projectivity for informing the strategies they used to engage parents. Conclusions from these findings relate to: the view of schools as playing a central role in the fabric and future of their communities; the value and importance of schoolwide and whole-school initiatives for enabling shared learning and celebrations and building cultural resources such as pride among those in the school and community; recognition of the connection between parent and community engagement and furthering broader education agendas in Australia such as reconciliation and multiculturalism; and limitations in material and structural resources with the potential to hinder successful parent engagement initiatives.