From 'Adjuncts' to 'Subjects': Parental involvement in a working-class community

Abstract

This paper focuses on a project of parental involvement in a state primary school located in a predominantly working-class area in Malta. The authors are two of the project's coordinators. The paper reviews the international literature on parental participation in schools, gives an account of the socio-economic context of the school, and foregrounds, through empirical data culled from transcribed semi-structured interviews, the voices of parents, administrators, school-council members and teachers. The paper argues that, if this project is to develop into a genuine exercise in democratic participation, parents must begin to be conceived of not as 'adjuncts', but 'subjects'. The parents interviewed in this empirical work see themselves as such, and derive confidence from the fact that their claims and recommendations are translating into concrete developments.