Defining the ‘good mother’ and the ‘professional teacher’: parent–teacher relationships in an affluent school district

This article examines the challenges of parent–teacher relationships in an affluent school district, drawing on 30 in‐depth interviews of mothers and elementary school teachers in the USA. Professional women who have put their careers on hold to care for their children are apt to define being a good mother in terms of the academic achievement of their children. This results in extreme amounts of involvement and advocacy in their child's education, even when such actions have questionable effects on the larger school population. Enhancement of ‘good mothering’ was found to be done at the expense of teacher professionalism. A small number of entitled‐minded mothers were able to make a large impact not only on teacher job satisfaction but on the climate of the entire school due to their extensive networks, levels of advocacy, and critical examination of school processes.     

Creating a ‘third space’ in the context of a university–school partnership: supporting teacher action research and the research preparation of doctoral students

The focus of the Education Works Personalization Project was to facilitate teams of teacher action researchers whose goal was to personalize their teaching with the support of university partners including doctoral students in education. The subsequent apprentice-like research experience within this university–school partnership provided an opportunity to study the ways in which teacher action research could serve as a vehicle for bridging the culture gap between schools and universities. Both the research team experience and the development of the school–university inquiry/knowledge network were initially characterized by undefined roles accompanied by ambiguous expectations. Although the ambiguity proved difficult initially, those who persisted and engaged in new roles ultimately found these emerging inquiry communities generative and valuable. We have come to conceptualize these generative inquiry communities as third spaces and we describe how oppositional categories framed by the cultural differences between schools and universities can work together to generate new knowledge.     

Dyslexia‐friendly schools and parent partnership: inclusion and home–school relationships

This paper summarizes an action research project in five local areas in the south‐west of England which aimed to support parents of children with dyslexic difficulties who were experiencing problems in obtaining appropriate provision in mainstream schools. It was based on the importance of effective parental partnership and quality inclusive practice for children having dyslexic difficulties. A development officer worked over two years in the five participating LEAs that were selected to represent a range of professional practice with a mix of urban and rural populations. As part of the evaluation, the authors also examined longitudinally the educational experiences of a sample of parents. The paper includes a conceptual framework of parental agency in this field in terms of knowledge, identity and parental strategies, and the conditions under which parents escalate their strategies to secure appropriate provision for their children. The support provided by the development officer is analysed in terms of the kinds of support requests received, the kinds of support offered and qualitative evidence of the impact of this support. This research is theorized in terms of current ideas about parent‐partnership and theories about parent–teacher relations in terms of the diversity of parents. It highlights the significance of thinking about inclusive schooling and parent–school relations in terms of the interconnections between general systems for all, for those with special educational needs and those with specific difficulties. The policy and practice implications are interpreted in terms of the importance of a system of extended professionalism, which is inclusive of parents with learning difficulties and disabilities.     

Action research in the context of a school–university partnership: its value,problems, issues and benefits

The focus of the article is on action research in a school–university partnership, its problems, use and the value of the work from the viewpoint of a professor (university teacher-educator)[1] and two deans. The authors collaborate to first define a partnership. Secondly, they discuss the role and use of action research in the context of a partnership programme aimed at changing and improving kindergarten through 12th grade (K-12) schooling and teacher education. Thirdly, they identify the problems, issues and benefits associated with such work. A ‘tool,’ consisting of 10 questions is presented by the collaborators for university faculty and administrators to use to chart their initiation and institutional participation in action research in a school–university partnership. Selected problems and issues focused on university faculty productivity, and a college or university's reward system for tenure and promotion are discussed, together with the benefits and the ultimate value of the work.     

Community building of (student) teachers and a teacher educator in a school–university partnership

School?Cuniversity partnerships (SUPs) are considered a way of improving teacher education. For the successful implementation of such partnerships, cooperation between the different stakeholders is of crucial importance. Therefore, most partnerships are organised in short- and long-term teams, which are usually composed of teachers, student teachers and representatives of the university faculty. This study focused on the collaboration process of a team of modern language teachers who work and learn together in a teacher community. The aim of this study was to investigate how to design a learning environment that stimulates community development in these teams, applying the cooperative learning model of Johnson and Johnson in Learning together and alone: cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning. Allyn and Bacon, Boston, (1999). Based on this model, design principles were developed to stimulate community development in this group. Community development was measured through observations of the meetings of the group, using the community model of Admiraal, Lockhorst and van der Pol described in this issue. The five principles found relevant in this SUP team were profiling the group as an identity, equivalent cooperation, rotating the chairperson, reflecting on the collaboration and giving feedback on the products made in the group.     

The role of family literacy classes in demystifying school literacies and developing closer parent–school relations

This paper is based on a large study of family literacy provision in England, which was carried out between July 2013 and May 2015. It explored the impact of classes on parents’ relations with the school and their children, and their ability to support their children’s literacy development. The study involved 27 school-based programmes for pupils aged between five and seven, and their parents. It used mixed methods, which involved surveys of 118 parents and 20 family literacy tutors, telephone interviews with a sub-sample of 28 parents, analysis of teaching plans and observations of classes. Findings showed that parents wanted to learn the ways the school was teaching their child to read and write, and by demystifying school literacy pedagogies and processes the programmes developed greater connectivity between home and the school, and parents felt more able to support their children’s literacy development at home.     

The role of school-based research champions in a school–university partnership

The value of teachers’ engagement in and with research is long recognised and it is acknowledged that school–university research partnerships are one way of enabling such engagement. But we know little about how research-based knowledge is negotiated into school practices. Here we draw on data from nine ‘research champions’, who are teachers in schools which are part of the Oxford Education Deanery, a research partnership with a university department. Taking a cultural/historical approach, the study examined the strategic intentions and actions in the activities of the champions as they negotiated research-based knowledge into their schools. Data comprised 59 completed templates that described what they did and why. Findings revealed differences between those with close links with senior leaders—who could take a whole-school approach—and those whose reach was restricted by their position in school practices. Nonetheless, all the champions carefully selected and targeted research in ways that reflected their knowledge of local contexts. The findings point to the need to incorporate the champion role into school systems and for universities to value the role as they develop their own research agenda.     

An evaluation of Learning Contracts within the context of partnership in school‐based training: implications for school based mentoring

This paper explores parents' expectations and perceptions of effective induction and formative partnership with their child's school during the transition to full‐time statutory education.

Based on fifty case study children from two schools of similar size and catchment area but with different induction practices, it looks at a range of issues including parents' perceptions of home visiting, pre‐entry visits to school and pre‐entry profiles, as well as parents' knowledge about school and their notions of partner ship.

The paper outlines the implications for schools' partnerships with parents, exploring: ways in which schools and parents can begin to understand one another; how schools can help parents to support their children's learning; and ways in which effective schools can create opportunities for parental involvement.     

Intercultural communication in the context of a Canada−China Sister School partnership: The experience of one New Basic Education school

This paper presents the case of one Sister School in the Canada–China Reciprocal Learning Project based on a belief that practice has significant value for the development of teachers’ intercultural awareness and schools’ intercultural communication experience. This paper focuses on one Shanghai school’s reciprocal learning experience, highlighting the content of intercultural communication, the areas of collaboration, the characteristics of collaboration, and the attitudes towards collaboration in the intercultural context. Against the backdrop of New Basic Education reform in China, I try to depict how a Sister School partnership guided by the principle of reciprocal learning motivates Chinese and Canadian teachers to work together across cultural differences in order to learn and develop in terms of theory and practice. I also discuss difficulties and challenges that have occurred in the process of intercultural communication. In the process, reciprocal learning is re-conceptualized and relived as part of our research endeavor.     

Bridging the gap: needs assessment of science teacher in‐service education in Turkey and the effects of teacher and school demographics

Turkish science teachers' in‐service needs and the effects of teacher and school demographic variables on these needs are examined in this study. In addition, major barriers that prevented science teachers from attending in‐service programmes are investigated. The data for the research were gathered through a survey. This study shows that Turkish science teachers require more instructional materials, laboratory equipment, computers, and software and need in‐service education to integrate these instructional facilities into their lessons. This study also indicates that teacher and school demographic variables have little significance in predicting science teachers' needs.     

Adult education in a workplace context: recognising production workers’ responses and partnership challenges

Abstract

This article is about a larger regional Swedish partnership programme that was established to develop site-based education for production workers. A partnership is seen as composed of different practice architectures. The actors involved represented larger transnational as well as smaller manufacturing companies, employers, the metal workers’ trade union, educational organizations, university researchers and public labour market authorities. Adult education teachers were engaged to act as leading action researchers on company-specific projects. The partnership programme is used here to illustrate the problem of supporting recognition under shifting partnership circumstances. The aim is to analyse enabling and constraining conditions affecting the teachers’ efforts as well as new possibilities that appeared as the partnership evolved over time. The article illustrates how the development of site-based education within a partnership framework means to develop a new practice that is very sensitive to local circumstances. It also shows how local meetings between people both enable and constrain, but also may open up a space for mutual recognition. A normative argument is that local spaces for mutual recognition need to be supported in a respectful way. Recognition of the particularities of each site is vital for this to happen.     

“Spitting in the wind?”: the demise of a school–business partnership

This paper begins from the premise that school–business partnerships are part of marketization and privatization trends within education and the broader public sphere in several western industrialized countries. In contrast to a dominant construction of partnerships as necessary, benevolent, and unproblematic, I consider the idea that they represent a potential threat to democratic participation. I do this through a case analysis of a partnership between a high school and corporation in Alberta, Canada that was dissolved in 1996. Through interviews, I reconstruct some of the events leading to the dissolution and provide insights into the social processes that are revealed in the case. I conclude by arguing that while the case highlights the problematic aspects of this particular partnership, it also raises more general questions about the goal congruence of private and public institutions and about the implications of such generally lop-sided relationships for schools as public institutions.     

Questioning honor: a parent–teacher conflict over excellence and diversity in a USA urban high school

Parent–teacher relations are often characterized as highly conflictual in the educational literature, with scant empirical evidence of how the disagreements occur in everyday talk. Close analysis of a teacher's account of an intense conflict with a student's mother over the National Honor Society grounds the abstract discourses of merit and difference in the worlds of parents, teachers and students. Narrating primarily through reported speech, in a ‘she said, I said’ fashion, the teacher recreates her conversations about the National Honor Society and the graduation ceremony. Creating the social milieu through reported speech and the inner reality by telling what she left unspoken, she captures the derision between parents and teachers. Moreover, the adult struggles obscure the adolescents' initial concerns about elitism. Exposed to reform debates, the teacher reveals her consciousness about diversity and privilege. The mother's understanding reflects traditions of individualism and meritocracy without regard to barriers created by race, sex, class and disability. The encounter ends without opportunity for fuller articulation. Notwithstanding these tendencies, the individual parent–teacher conference remains the most widely employed format in US schools, emblematic of an extremely privatized notion of that relationship. The author frames the conflict in terms of school community and public education at large to identify possibilities for more generative communication.     

The politics of collaboration: discourse,identities, and power in a school–university partnership in Hong Kong

This article reports on how teacher educators from a university, acting as facilitators, supported teachers in conducting a school-based action research project as a practice of professional development in the context of reform in language assessment in Hong Kong. In particular, the article problematises how the facilitators and teachers negotiated and managed identities whilst being engaged in a collaborative action research project. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews. Critical discourse analysis was used to examine the textual data. A key finding was that identities were neither fixed nor finite in the context of collaboration, but were negotiated within and against a range of contextually salient discourses. A major contribution of the article lies in its examination of the complexities of negotiating identities when educators from two different institutional cultures collaborate. The article suggests that collaboration has to be understood within broader sociocultural contexts to identify the interplay of forces that shape relations, identities, and practices constructed.     

The space between: building liberatory capital in a school–community partnership

Even before withstanding one of the most devastating economic crises in American history, families living in poverty have battled a dominant discourse that labels them as lacking personal responsibility, initiative, and the ability to make “good” choices. This discourse is reflected in the parent-involvement mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act, where parents living in poverty are expected to sign contracts promising to take a more active role in the education of their children. This study describes what it looked like when a grassroots, Community Based Organization (CBO) dedicated to speaking back to this dominant discourse partnered with an urban public school system to simultaneously help families leave poverty and improve the academic success of their children. This paper illustrates what it looks like when families living in poverty speak back to the dominant discourse, seek validation for their non-dominant discourses, and enter a potentially liberating Third Space between.     

Building strong parent–teacher relationships in primary education: the challenge of two-way communication

This study investigates which subjects teachers talk about with parents in parent–teacher conferences and other contact moments, and how they communicate with regard to these subjects. Fifty-five in-depth interviews were carried out with teachers from special education schools, at-risk schools serving low socio-economic status children and mainstream primary education schools in the southern part of the Netherlands. The results illustrate that (1) two-way communication is used the most in at-risk schools, (2) teachers find it difficult to involve parents in the decision-making process concerning special care for the child, and (3) the teachers’ attitude towards parents is best when it comes to difficult discussion topics. When situations are really difficult, teachers stand alongside the parents instead of addressing them from their expert role, asking them ‘How can we solve this together?’. Teachers should be more aware of this quality, and not be afraid to address difficult subjects or conflicts.     

Understanding silence: an investigation of the processes of silencing in parent–teacher conferences with Somali diaspora parents in Danish public schools

This article questions the dominant understanding that immigrant and refugee parents in parent–teacher conferences are silent because they come from a culture where one does not question the authority of the teacher. Instead, it is argued that they become silent through certain interactional processes. Building on material from an explorative case study of the home–school relations of Somali diaspora families in Danish public schools, the article argues that while these parents have many opinions about their children’s education that they wish to convey, there are institutional and interactional processes in the parent–teacher conference that systematically silence their voices. The understanding of culture as a stable structure that persons are situated within in a top-down manner is thus challenged, arguing that dynamic here-and-now interactions unfolding in a specific practice result in persons becoming, rather than being, silent.     

Estimating the quality of performance assessments: The case of an ‘interactive examination’ for teacher competencies

Professional schools prepare students to become competent professionals. Consequently, there is a need for assessments that can determine the acquisition of the relevant professional competencies. Although using performance assessment to replace traditional paper-and-pencil tests might provide one way to move forward, the use of performance assessments for summative purposes has been shown to be problematic (e.g. marker consistency and construct representation). With the aid of a comprehensive framework of quality criteria for competence assessments, this article considers if one particular existing competence assessment methodology is suitable for summative as well as formative use. It is argued that the comprehensive quality estimation of the examination procedure aids in identifying strengths and weaknesses in the assessment methodology, and that this information can be used to facilitate the inclusion of performance assessment in higher education, both for summative and formative use.