A parental voice: parents as equal and dependent – rhetoric about parents, teachers, and their conversations

Abstract

This study analyses texts from the National Parents’ Committee for Primary and Lower Secondary Education in Norway and addresses how parents describe their own role, the teachers’ role, and their conversations. The theoretical perspective employed is Koselleck’s conceptual theory. The findings show that, despite having formal legal rights, parents must constantly legitimize these rights in school. Parents are expected to assume a passive role, while the teachers’ role is held to be active. Furthermore, the diversity among parents is not discussed. Parents moreover resign their own involvement in their children’s education in spite of the fact that teachers and parents may have different perspectives on the matter. Even though the committee is dissatisfied with the conversations between teachers and parents, parents additionally seem to resign when it comes to elaborating on and affecting the conversation. Finally, argumentation concerning the need for role delineation by the authentic voices of the teachers, pupils, and parents is presented.

Keywords:

• parental involvement
• parental perspective
• conversation
• role