“If we don’t adapt, we lose some parents”. Collaborations with migrant families in the context of student wellbeing

ABSTRACT

Based on focus group discussions with secondary school teachers in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, we investigated teachers’ views on home-school collaborations with migrant families in the context of student wellbeing. We asked 1) what roles and strategies constituted home-school collaborations in teachers’ views, 2) what norms of belonging characterized teachers’ perceptions on collaborations; and, 3) to what extent teachers’ perceptions of home-school collaborations reflected equity. The findings revealed two major themes: seeing parents in paradoxical roles and attempting to collaborate in a context of constraints. These themes were often underpinned by teachers’ perceived ‘ideals’ on the educational, cultural-linguistic, familial and psychosocial characteristics of a ‘family’ and a ‘parent’. These assemblages seemed to set belonging for migrant families on condition of meeting teacher-perceived ideals, and pointed to the necessity to enable plural belonging to a collaborative school community that fosters wellbeing.

KEYWORDS:

• Home-school collaboration
• migrant parents
• teachers
• wellbeing
• belonging

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to all participating schools and teachers for welcoming this project and sharing their views with us. We are also thankful to the entire RWS consortium for supporting our work. Natalie Durbeej, Riina Lepistö, Marianne Opaas, Emma Soye, and An Verelst, thank you for joining discussions related to this topic.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This article is part of the RefugeesWellSchool research project that received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 754849.