In this article, we reflect on our contrasting experiences of using focus groups in two different empirical research projects, one that explored the attitudes of mature students in further education towards possible participation in higher education, the other that examined young women’s relationships to feminism. In particular, we analyse the ways in which our research questions and approaches were challenged, honed and sometimes transformed in the light of our participants’ responses to our chosen method of research. For, while the mature students of the former project - many of whom had previously experienced formal education as negative - felt discomfort at the atmosphere of collective examination that the group engendered, and resisted discussion on their thoughts and feelings, the young women of the latter study welcomed the legitimacy that the formal focus group lent to their desire to discuss the socially taboo subject of feminism. We thus seek to show how we gained knowledge and understanding about our research topics through our participants’ responses to the method we selected as well as through their direct contributions in the research moment.

This article seeks to further understandings of contemporary patterns of parental government. It explores the politicisation of family life by examining a pilot programme tasked with enhancing parental engagement in education amongst ‘hard‐to‐reach’ families within the white British community of a large inner‐London borough. Focusing on the programme's signature device—the deployment of community‐based ‘link workers’ to bridge home and school—‘governmentality’ is used as a theoretical lens through which to foreground the link workers’ role in governing parents. We draw on qualitative data collected from link workers, parents and school leaders, to argue that link workers represent a mode of governmentality that privileges the instrumental use of trust to achieve strategic objectives, rather than coercive authority. The aim is to produce responsible, self‐disciplined parents who act freely in accordance with normative expectations as to what constitutes ‘good’ parenting and effective parental support. As such, the article highlights the link workers’ role in (re)producing the ideal, neoliberal parent. However, governing through trust comes at the cost of being unable to firmly secure desired outcomes. We thereby conclude that this gentle art of parental government affords parents some latitude in resisting institutional agendas.

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