There are positive associations between parent-teacher collaboration and students’ well-being and achievement in school (Epstein, 2018; Borgonovi & Montt, 2012). Policies in many countries state that parental involvement should be an integral part of the school routine and teachers’ work. According to the Swedish curriculum, guardians and schools share responsibility for creating good conditions for students’ development and learning. However, parent-teacher relations are complex as teachers and parents often hold different views of the functions of parental involvement. Moreover, due to a lack of school routines and common guidelines, teachers are often left to develop their own strategies to manage parental involvement (Hedlin & Frank, 2022). This study addresses the question: How do teachers navigate their context with respect to the management of parental involvement? It explores teachers’ perspectives and experiences, drawing upon an ecological view of teacher agency (Priestley et al., 2015) that understands agency as achieved through the interplay of previous experience, aspirations, and available cultural, structural, and material resources.

Analysis of 17 interviews with teachers reveals that the best interests of their students typically guide teacher-parent relations. This results in substantial efforts from teachers to establish trustful collaborations and be readily available, especially to parents of children at risk of low achievement. However, experiences of sometimes being questioned and distrusted by parents make teachers spend significant time on demonstrating a solid foundation for professional judgments. The results also show that teachers prioritize among limited resources to meet parents’ demands regarding individual students while caring for the needs of all students. This can be understood in light of the undermining of school as a universal institution in Sweden, which has led to the possibility for resourceful parents to exert a large influence in school, at the expense of educational equity (Englund, 2009).

References

Borgonovi, F., & Montt, G. (2012). Parental involvement in selected PISA countries and economies. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 73. OECD Publishing.

Englund, T. (2009). The general school system as a universal or a particular institution and its role in the formation of social capital. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 53(1), 17-33.

Epstein, J. L. (2018). School, family, and community partnerships in teachers’ professional work. Journal of Education for Teaching, 44(3), 397-406.

Hedlin, M., & Frank, E. (2022). They want a reply immediately!: Teachers talk about contact between home and school. Journal of Teacher Education and Educators, 11(2), 271-289.

Priestley, M., Biesta, G., & Robinson, S. (2015). Teacher agency: what is it and why does it matter? In R. Kneyber & J. Evers (Eds.), Flip the System: Changing Education from the Bottom Up. Routledge.