Increasing parental participation at school level: a ‘citizen to serve’ or a ‘customer to steer’?

Abstract

Collaboration between schools and parents has become increasingly prominent on the political agenda in Norway. Schools are obliged to promote parent-school cooperation in accordance with parents' rights as stakeholders in education. This article explores the governing strategies of seven primary or lower-secondary schools that have taken initiatives to improve parent-school collaboration. The main intention is to explore how New Public Management (NPM) measures (such as market values, decentralization, competition, and output control) and New Public Service (NPS) tools (including coalition building and citizens' involvement) are reproduced at the local level when parent-school collaboration is put on the agenda. The analysis shows that street-level discretion at school level implies considerable uncertainty around the achievement of policy objectives. Different opinions on parents as a target group seem prominent in explaining how frontline workers act and strategize. Two distinct collaboration strategies are identified: serving and steering. The serving strategy is based on a linear partnership by making use of local knowledge in order to reach parents and enable their participation. The steering strategy is characterized by non-linear relationships with parents and certain steering mechanisms by routinizing collaboration activities, modifying goals for parent-school collaboration and rationing school services to parents.

Chaos ruined the children’s sleep, diet and behaviour: Gendered discourses on family life in pandemic times

“…In this sense, maternal practices in Iceland, as well as in other affluent countries, have moved beyond ‘providing food, shelter, and love’ (Vincent, 2017, p. 543). The increased emphasis on parental educative work is an aspect of this development that has been documented throughout affluent countries in the world (Holloway & Pimlott‐Wilson, 2013; Vincent, 2017), including the Nordic countries (Helgøy & Homme, 2017; Jónsdóttir, 2013; Kristoffersson, 2009; Magnúsdóttir, 2013).…”

An investigation of parental perspective of Asnani School Oral Health Program in Qatar

“…Further studies on the program's effectiveness and acceptability by children and school administrations need to be evaluated. Job satisfaction of dental professionals in the Asnani school oral health program has recently been evaluated and published [38]. It revealed that the majority of the dental professionals expressed their satisfaction about being a part of the Asnani School Oral Health Program, and 81% reported a good work-life balance.…”

Cooperation Between Home and School in the Finnish Core Curriculum 2014

“…The terms used to describe this relationship, such as involvement, engagement, participation, collaboration and cooperation, vary widely, and precise definitions of these terms as well as the relationship between them are not delineated. Involvement is often used as an umbrella term (Baeck, 2010;Englund, Luckner, Whaley, & Egeland, 2004;Helgøy & Homme, 2017), but involvement is also arguably a term that describes what parents do (Barton, Drake, Perez, St. Louis, & George, 2004). In the Core Curriculum 2014 (CC14) the term involvement is used to describe pupils' active role in learning.…”

“…Other common suggestions for umbrella-terms are cooperation and collaboration (fe. Cox, 2005;Helgøy & Homme, 2017;Hirsto, 2010;Widding, 2013). In CC14 cooperation refers to something that is while collaboration refers to something that is done.…”

“…In its use of participation, CC14 also specifies ways that parents can take part or attend. It is understandable that even though researchers highlight the multiplicity of terms used to define the home-school relationship, in many cases they settle upon using these terms synonymously, or they focus on describing the relationship and pay less attention to the terminology used (Averill et al, 2016;Crozier, 1997;Englund et al, 2004;Helgøy & Homme, 2017;Hirsto, 2010;Räty, Kasanen, & Laine, 2009). Similar to international research, the terminology used in Finnish educational research is diverse and even debated (see Kekkonen, 2012;Lämsä, 2013).…”