Parental collaboration in relation to children’s school lives – advanced regulation or an opportunity for solidarity?

Abstract

Parental collaboration is both promoted for enhancing children’s performance and criticized for reproducing educational inequality. The issue of parental collaboration, thus, presents an opportunity to discuss theoretical differences in current debates about education, notably the educational consequences of social background and governmentality. The article emphasizes the conflictual nature of children’s school lives and analyzes the social interplay between the involved subjects, who are connected through their engagement in common matters and concerns. Our analysis challenges approaches inspired by Bourdieu that analyze the social reproduction of inequality in terms of discrepancies between parental style and the culture of the school. It also raises questions about the Foucauldian perspective which regards policies and practices of parental collaboration as means to govern parents. Through a discussion of these analyses, the article shows how different ways of conceptualizing parental collaboration offer different opportunities for organizing collaboration and dealing with the historical problems of the school.

Keywords:

• Parental collaboration
• subjectivity
• participation
• situated inequality
• conflictual social practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 https://typo3.ruc.dk/en/departments/department-of-people-and-technology-dpt/research/projekter/childrens-inclusion-in-school-as-conflictual-collaboration-between-families-teachers-school-leaders-and-legislation/

2 ‘How to make a good school even better’. Agreement on improvement of standards in the Danish public school (primary- and lower-secondary education).

Additional information

Funding

This research is funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research | Culture and Communication.

Notes on contributors

Charlotte Højholt

Charlotte Højholt is Professor at the Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University. The focus of her research is children's everyday life across contexts as families, schools, kindergartens, leisure time institutions, and special help arrangements. She has published widely in the areas of development, learning, professionalism, interdisciplinary work and methodology.

Dorte Kousholt

Dorte Kousholt is Associate Professor at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University. Her research interest is children and families' everyday life,. She has done ethnographic research across various contexts of children's lives and published on children's life across contexts, transitions, children's communities, parental cooperation, family work, and collaborative methodology.