The functioning of many education systems around the world was disrupted during the Covid-19 crisis. Even the idyllic atolls of French Polynesia – although far from the main centers of contagion – have not been spared, so the school and families were induced to adapt and to find new strategies of collaboration. This paper is based on the study of 19 families living in Tahiti, and it analyse the discourses of Polynesian parents charged with new responsibilities associated with school support during the crisis. The results obtained reveal that attitudes linked with such new tasks are closely correlated with the socio-economic status, and that the educational style of parents, during confinement, favoured directive and empowering traits. Finally, the study shows that Polynesian parents maintained a conflicting relationship with pedagogical continuity, confirming an overall trend, observed in other postcolonial contexts.

This article presents the results of an exploratory study aimed at establishing an inventory of parental involvement in two primary schools on the island of Tahiti. After a semantic clarification of the concept of kinship in the French Polynesian context, the theoretical part presents the concept of parental involvement in the relevant literature and its relation to academic performance. The problematic of the study questions the degree of involvement of Polynesian families in the schooling of their children and the specificities of this involvement according to their socioeconomic situation. The collection of data was based on a questionnaire already tested in a French-speaking context and adapted to the Polynesian context. The participants were from two schools, which were situated in contrasting socioeconomic environments. Out of 46 questionnaires distributed, 33 were returned. The analysis of the data was based on the typologies proposed by Epstein in 2002 and Larivée in 2011. The discussion highlighted, on the one hand the results specific to French Polynesia namely the involvement of parents from disadvantaged families from an (1) institutional perspective and (2) individual perspective (e.g. time allocated to homework support, involvement in school projects and school meetings); and, on the other hand, the similarities with the existing literature with regard to (1) collective involvement and (2) other aspects of the individual involvement (the perceptions, the school furniture and the out-of-school activities).

The paper presents the results of an exploratory research on parental practices and attitudes in three peripheral archipelagos of French Polynesia: the Marquesas, the Australs, and the Tuamotus Islands. Its aim was to identify parenting typologies in isolated contexts using the Parenting Skills Evaluation Scale (Échelle des Compétences Éducatives Parentales, ECEP) with 120 parents living in remote islands. The data analysis indicates that families living in such isolated contexts are in a rather vulnerable situation in relation to schooling. Parental attitude is in most cases normative, attributing a significant importance to school success, but domestic practices appear mostly liberal, characterized by unsupervised autonomy combined with moments of strictness, as observed in other postcolonial and marginalized contexts. Finally, the article discusses the efficacy of the ECEP as a valid measurement tool in family studies, confirming its effectiveness.

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