Types of parents and school strategies aimed at the creation of effective partnerships

Abstract

In order to expand parental participation in the education of their children, teachers should beequipped with some basic and possibly new skills for communication and cooperation purposes.Schools host a very diverse population of pupils, and the purpose of the present study wastherefore to attain a better understanding of what various groups of parents expect of educationand the school in order to develop a framework for school strategies to involve different types ofparents. The research included a review of the literature, consultation with three expert panels, aweb survey of 500 school leaders, an interactive focus group, 20 case studies to identifypromising practices and the identification of strategies to expand parental participation. Theresults showed parents in ‘white’ schools to support teachers during activities (parents assupporters). Non-minority parents and certainly those from higher social milieus wereaccustomed to having a say in school matters (parents as politicians). In schools with manydisadvantaged pupils, in contrast, little or no attention was paid to having parents have a say inschool matters. A bottleneck in ‘white’ schools was that parents do not have time to participatedue to their work (career parents). A bottleneck in ‘black’ schools is that parents do not perceivethemselves as qualified to participate (absentee parents). It is further shown that strategies whichparallel the different types of parents can be identified for school teams to realize effectivepartnership relations.