FAMILIES AND SCHOOLS NEED to gain a mutual understanding in order to provide a favourable learning environment for the school child, especially in a culturally diverse society. This paper explores the interrelationships between the family and school practices of two Hong Kong–Australian families from the parents' perspectives. The data presented is from a qualitative case study involving video observation and interviews to capture the family practices of the two families and the practices of their children's schools as perceived by the parents. The analysis of the data reveals three types of relationship between home and school; Concordance leads to harmonious continuity; constant dissonance breaks relations, and dialectical relations make positive changes. The outcomes of the study suggest the importance of the synergy between home and school values and practices, and the roles of effective communication and mutual accommodation of home–school practices to optimise children's development.

This article draws on a cultural-historical theorization of child development alongside the Chinese concept of learning in order to study children's development in the Hong Kong Australian community. In particular, it aims to understand in detail how a 9-year-old child develops a learning motive under highly structured family practices. The data analysed were selected from a larger set of data involving 80 hr of video observations generated from the recording of everyday practices in three Hong Kong immigrant families. The findings indicate that encouragement plays an important role in bridging the gap between parental demands and the child's wishes, which assists the child to appropriate family values, thus facilitating the development of a learning motive and learning itself.

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