Un/satisfactory encounters: communication, conflict and parent-school engagement

ABSTRACT

The policy and educational ideal of parent-school engagement rests on assumptions about effective communication with parents about children’s educational progress and well-being. Yet communication between school and home varies, and can be a source of parental satisfaction and frustration. Here we consider perspectives of Australian parents whose encounters with schools – both satisfactory and unsatisfactory – are shaped by the everyday communicative practices and conflict management strategies of teachers and principals. Our findings show that a wide range of parents of children in Australian schools report similar experiences, concerns and frustrations. Informed by cultural and post-structural theory, we consider how approaches to communication and conflict are implicated in disciplining the family and keeping parents ‘in their place’ outside schooling’s structures of power. Participants in our research reveal the intensity of affective investments in education as a ‘high stakes’ endeavour. We argue that the rationality of education policy that is being embedded in the everyday social configurations of schools and their interaction with parents is predicated on the neoliberal project of producing the autonomous, self-governing individual. The communication practices used in disciplining the family by conscripting parents into this project, we suggest, is a significant contributor to un/satisfactory parent-school encounters.

KEYWORDS:

• Parent engagement
• home-school communication
• conflict
• Michel de Certeau

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Acknowledgements – The researchers acknowledge with thanks the following collaborating organisations: Council of Catholic School Parents; Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth; NSW Parents' Council; Council of Catholic School Parents, NSW & ACT; NSW Federation of Parents' and Citizens Associations. We also thank parents, educators, and school principals who participated in the studies that inform this work.

2. University of Southern Queensland Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC approval number H16REA254P2); Australian Catholic University Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC approval number Q2010-49).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the NSW Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs, and the Australian Department of Education and Training, which the authors acknowledge with appreciation.

Notes on contributors

Sue Saltmarsh

Sue Saltmarsh is Professor of Early Childhood at the University of Southern Queensland. She is an interdisciplinary researcher with expertise in education, childhood and cultural studies, and theories of subjectivity, everyday life, consumption and violence. She has conducted extensive research on the issue of parent-school engagement within the Australian context.

Amy McPherson

Dr Amy McPherson is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Arts at the Australian Catholic University. She lectures in the Education Studies program. Her research is in the areas of philosophy of education and sociology of education and is interested in the relationship between the normative principles of justice and care and empirical educational research. Her research has focused on wellbeing in non-traditional educational spaces, parent engagement, and conceptions of ‘ability’ and the logics of educational inequality.