Home-school Interaction Research Articles

Parents—Partners or Clients? A Reconceptualization of Home–School Interactions

Increasingly, there is advocacy for parents to be included in partnership roles with schools. Indeed, the term ‘partnership’ seems to have acquired the connotation of an ideal form of parent–school relationship. This paper argues that the notion of partnership, with its accompanying suggestion of equality as a framework for the complementary sharing of responsibilities, is problematical. Based on the findings from an in‐depth study of teacher leadership in three Hong Kong schools that involved as participants parents, teachers, and students, it is proposed that a more reasonable understanding of this relationship is that of a professional and client association, where both parents and teachers are aware of their responsibilities and that these responsibilities are at once both demarcated and shared according to that understanding. At the same time there is also a need for teachers and parents to concentrate on building more concrete links for consistent and regular teacher–parent communication, as significant student learning now takes place informally at home, via the Internet.

Impact of a Cultural Self-Analysis Project: Increasing Early Childhood Preservice Teachers' Cultural Competency

This study explored the impact of a Cultural Self-Analysis (CSA) Project on early childhood undergraduate preservice teachers' cultural awareness and dispositions toward working with culturally diverse students and families. The project was based on the ABC's of Cultural Understanding and Communication, a model designed to facilitate the development of cultural competencies in preservice and inservice teachers. Participants reported that the CSA Project experience increased their cultural self-awareness, ability to identify and appreciate cultural differences, and ability to convey the importance of understanding different cultures to enhance home-school interactions and communication with students and families from diverse backgrounds.

Impact of a Cultural Self-Analysis Project: Increasing Early Childhood Preservice Teachers' Cultural Competency

This study explored the impact of a Cultural Self-Analysis (CSA) Project on early childhood undergraduate preservice teachers' cultural awareness and dispositions toward working with culturally diverse students and families. The project was based on the ABC's of Cultural Understanding and Communication, a model designed to facilitate the development of cultural competencies in preservice and inservice teachers. Participants reported that the CSA Project experience increased their cultural self-awareness, ability to identify and appreciate cultural differences, and ability to convey the importance of understanding different cultures to enhance home-school interactions and communication with students and families from diverse backgrounds.

Linguistic Capital and Home-School Relationships: Mothers' Interactions with their Children's Primary School Teachers

Talking to teachers is an important part of home-school relationships, and yet research into parental involvement rarely includes an analysis of home-school interaction. Drawing on a UK study of mothers' involvement in their children's primary schooling, this paper uses Bourdieu's concepts of linguistic and cultural capitals to explore the differences in both how mothers approach teaching staff and how they perceive the contact they have with their children's teachers. The paper examines some of the ways in which maternal involvement is mediated by power relations between mothers and teachers, and draws on empirical data, which suggest that social class positioning has a powerful influence on mothers' ability to get what they want for their children. Cultural capital, including linguistic capital, personal histories and mothers' own educational experiences all contribute to mothers' sense of efficacy in relation to home-school interaction.

Pronouns as positioning practices in home-school communications

This study explicates the discursive constitution of particular parent-teacher relationships in home-school communications. It focuses on examples of this type of communication originating from three Australian secondary schools. Analysis shows that these texts constitute particular domains of social action for teachers, parents and students. Certain textual devices are used which constitute the private everyday worlds of homes as school ordered versions of the world. A study of pronoun use in particular shows how parents, teachers and students are positioned and position each other in relation to such discursively constituted facts and knowledges which are produced according to official, public, school agenda. By using certain pronouns, and, at times, invoking other institutions as authorities, the Principals of the three schools are seen to textually colonize home space. The article concludes that home-school interactions thus enter into and enact the relations of ruling of the larger extra-local social world of which they are a part.

Expectations and ideas coming to school

As the school experience begins anew each year, parents and teachers bring with them ideas about the nature of education and their roles in the process. These expectations are developed socially and shape home-school interactions and the tenor of classroom experience. This article describes the social construction of parental expectations for kindergarten and first grade in a school community. It focuses on the ideas developed between home and school and between grade levels. These ideas include performance standards for students, expectations for parental involvement in schooling, and community evaluation of teacher effectiveness. Connections are made between these local ideas and the experiences of children as they begin their school careers.

Beauty in the eye of the beholder: How and why teachers involve parents

This study is based on the premise that attitudes and actions of teachers have a major influence on the quality of home-school interactions. Through in-depth repeated interviews, I set out to explore why, amidst common organizational, professional, and societal constraints and supports, elementary teachers interact in differing ways with parents. Much of what these teachers said about their relationships with parents revolved around the teachers' self-definition as a professional. ‘High involvement’ teachers equate professionalism with the ability to maintain a dialogue between the in- and out-of-school lives of both their students and themselves. For contrasting ‘low involvement’ teachers, being a professional means separating and protecting their work with students from thoughts, experiences, and people beyond the classroom walls.

Facilitating Home-School Relationships: A Family-Oriented Approach to Collaborative Consultation

Despite the literature supporting the value of teachers and parents working together, there has been a rather turbulent history of homeschool interactions. This article identifies sources of conflict between home and school and identifies a role for pupil services providers to play in facilitating home-school relationships.