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School is an institution that provides an opportunity to improve children’s equity and wellbeing and to bridge the potential disadvantage related to ethnic- or language-minority backgrounds. Information sharing between immigrant homes and school can enhance school achievement, support positive identity formation and provide early support when needed. In this paper, the perspectives of immigrant parents, school welfare personnel and school-going adolescents are analysed in order to understand how they see their respective roles in information flows between home and school. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The data consist of qualitative group and individual interviews of 34 representatives of school personnel, 13 immigrant parents and 81 young people who have experienced immigration, in the metropolitan area of Helsinki, Finland.

Despite general goodwill, school personnel may fail to secure the flow of information. Due to structural power imbalance, school personnel are often incapable of engaging the parents in dialogical discourse. Young people of immigrant background in turn try to manipulate the information flow in order to protect their family and ethnic group and to cope with pressures from parents. The patterns of information flows in school as a social field reproduce immigrant homes as subaltern. Adolescents act in a strategically important juncture of information flows between immigrant home and school, which indicates that home-school interaction is actually a triad.

Awareness building among school personnel is vital for equity and wellbeing of children of immigrant families.

This triangulated analysis of patterned information flows in school as a social field provides a fresh perspective to those working with children of immigrant families.

Over the twentieth century, the relationships between the home and the school have been considered from a number of perspectives. These include social class and children’s education (David, 1993; Halsey et al., 1980; Utting, 1995); the language of the home and school (Bernstein, 1971); involving parents in their children’s learning (David, 1993; Mortimore & Mortimore, 1984; Sylva, 1987; Wolfendale, 1983); parents’ political participation in their children’s education (Ball, 1990; David, 1993; Deem, 1989; Golby, 1989; Macleod, 1989); home-school relations and minority ethnic families (Tomlinson, 1984); gender and home-school issues (David, 1993); family structure and children’s education (Cockett & Tripp, 1994; Utting, 1995); the treatment of family in the school curriculum (Cockett & Tripp, 1994; DfEE, 2000; OFSTED, 2002; Utting, 1995); the role of school in addressing students’ family problems (Cockett & Tripp, 1994; Rodgers & Pryor, 1998); and home-school contracts (Bastiani, 1991; David, 1993; Macbeth, 1989). The range of areas outlined above alone highlights the complexities of the issues surrounding home and school.

The purpose of this paper is to report a qualitative study exploring how parents have been included in school governance in Hong Kong and in what ways their roles have been evolving in state education.

The qualitative method was adopted in this exploratory study, the findings of which help provide insights for conceptualization of phases of progression of the development of how parents have been included in state education in Hong Kong. The method of exploration is two‐fold. First, evidence was obtained through examining Hong Kong's educational policy documents with regard to parent‐school relations in the last two decades and taking reference to the literature and research studies on parent involvement in Hong Kong. Second, two focus group interviews were conducted with parents and teachers respectively, in order to obtain data of development of the relationship between home and school in times of reforms.

Derived from the findings, four phases of development of how parents are included in school governance are conceptualized. They are: parents as unwelcome guests – separate responsibilities; parents as volunteers – encouraging participation; parents as clients: accountability approach; and parents as school governors – shared responsibilities. The issue of whether including parents in school governance is reality or rhetoric emerging from the data was discussed.

The findings of this study contribute to the international studies on parent involvement in school governance, so as to formulate an effective policy that helps facilitate parents as “real” but not “rhetorical” school governors.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a case study of 93 parents’ attitude toward their involvement at various levels of school education in a special school. It also examines the relations between parents’ education backgrounds and different levels of parental involvement.

This study adopted quantitative research approach. A questionnaire composed of 30 items under six scales was developed with reference to Ng’s (1999) six-level Model of Home-School Cooperation which was adopted to frame the study.

The study indicates that parents’ inclined to be involved more outside the school including “two-way communication,” “supervision of children at home” and “participation in parent organizations and activities” than that inside the school such as “volunteering,” “providing advice on school policies” and “participating in decision making.”

In spite of its small scale in a case-study special school, the paper does not aim at generalization but illuminates how parental involvement was carried out.

The study carries implications for school management and policy makers when promoting and implementing parental involvement in special schools.

For the school personnel, a total and positive relationship could help enhance efficient and effective management of education. Second, more resources should be provided by the Education Bureau for special schools to educate parents and subsidize their involvement. Third, more training opportunities regarding knowledge and skills of parental involvement should be provided for frontline teachers.

This conceptual paper explores the relationship between school structure, organisation, and home–school collaboration. It argues that the traditional and dominant secondary school model based on same-age organisation acts in ways that constrain home–school collaboration while claiming to value it. The paper proposes an alternative model (vertical tutoring), one that relies on home–school collaboration and developing the capacity to absorb the complexity that collaboration creates

Models of home–school collaboration abstracted from the research literature are set within a framework of organisational studies, complexity science, and systemic thinking, revealing incongruities between claimed values and operational practices. The paper contrasts the frailties endemic to same-age organisation with the advantages claimed by schools that have adopted a vertical tutoring (VT) system

The choice of organisational structure is a major influence on a school's capacity to develop the home–school collaboration needed to liberate individual and organisational learning. Same-age organisational structure has a reduced capacity for building the collaborative partnerships needed to engage parents in their child's learning process. Multi-age organisation matches capacity with learning demand, enabling agency and liberating management.

Current approaches to modelling rarely consider same-age operative structure and so are destined to restrict rather than enable home–school collaboration. The adoption of VT by schools broadens the scope of organisational analysis, positing a need for multi-disciplinary research able to link the form of school organisation to individual and organisational learning.

VT is rarely mentioned in the research literature as an alternative to same-age structuration. This paper addresses this issue and draws upon complexity science, autopoietic theory, and systemic thinking to explain why current models of home–school collaboration are insufficiently situated in organisational practice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between social and gender inequalities and how they have been studied over the last 30 years. What have we learned, as academic sociologists in higher education, about how the socio‐cultural context, policies and global social transformations in the UK, and North America influence social stratification? The key focus is on how gender differences influence forms of social stratification through complex relations between “work”, family and education.

The paper reflects on changing research methodologies from their origins in sociology and second wave feminism by addressing three international studies about the troubled question of mothers’ work. All three studies reflexively address the question of changing knowledge and methodologies about social inequality or stratification.

The paper finds that while all three studies are from a feminist perspective and consider methodologies in the light of the so‐called “neo‐liberal project” and the knowledge economy, they come to rather divergent conclusions. The three studies illustrate the complexities of knowledge and methodologies about social stratification and gender inequalities.

The paper demonstrates how alternative methods contribute to our knowledge and the rich diversity of sociological work as an academic practice.

The purpose of this exploratory study is to explore parent and school administrator perspectives on the value and nature of parent involvement in the city of Abu Dhabi through their perceptions of roles and responsibilities.

The study is conducted in a random purposive sample of Public–Private Partnership schools during Abu Dhabi Education Council’s school reform.

Findings show that while both administrators and parents agree on the value of parental involvement, the perceptions of their own and each others’ roles and responsibilities means that parent involvement is characterized by unfulfilled expectations.

Recommendations are made to arrive at realistic roles and responsibilities for parent involvement and recommendations for a model of mutually responsive practice to evolve within a policy framework, with the support of ADEC, and informed by international and locally based research.

The paper sheds light on a new educational dimension beyond curricula and instruction.

The purpose of this article is to report an exploratory study which was designed to illuminate how school cultures and teachers' value orientations are affected by the educational change of parental involvement.

The qualitative research that informs this paper is conceptualized within the interpretive paradigm. Two schools were selected purposefully for the study. In‐depth interviews with 12 teachers and their principal were conducted in each school where observation took place for half a year. Eventually themes and dimensions of teachers' value demarcations emerged in times of change.

The study demonstrates that three balkanized factions of teachers were wrestling at school. The first balkanized teacher group welcomed the innovation of parental involvement. The second faction of teachers who disbelieved such innovation was found diffident and conservative, and demonstrated resistance to change. The third type of teachers was of a majority who might or might not take part in implementing change. However, once incentives were imposed from the management, they would probably be assimilated.

The study aims at illuminating teachers' responses to change. It does not attempt to make generalization.

The study reveals that managing teacher balkanization in times of change, school leaders' personal beliefs and their early intervention, are of paramount importance.

The basic legislative frameworks determining the cooperation between school and parents at the elementary school level in Slovenia are presented in this chapter. Parents have a special role in the school council and the parents’ council where they are involved in (co)decision-making in the organization and the content of the elementary school programme. The organization of parents’ meetings and individual consultation hours which enable a direct formal form of the cooperation between school and parents is of outmost importance besides the legislative provisions which manage the informing of parents about school achievements and the behaviour of children, the inclusion of parents in the formation of school education plan and school regulations. The partnership model of cooperation between teachers’ and parents’ is perceived as the most productive model for developing constructive involvement of parents. Teachers should have appropriate attitudes towards cooperation with parents and possess suitably developed interpersonal communicative, cooperative and organizational skills, all of which are prerequisite to establishing and maintaining quality cooperation between teachers and parents. The results of the empirical research on the cooperation between schools and parents, based on representative sampling of both teachers and parents, showed the basic advantages and obstacles related to this cooperation, along with challenges facing more high-quality cooperation in the future.

Te Kotahitanga is a New Zealand school reform project aimed at improving the educational achievement of indigenous Māori students and intended to reduce the disparities of this traditionally marginalized group of students. In these schools, an iterative, research, and development model is used to implement an Effective Teaching Profile. This profile, constructed from the experiences and discourses of Māori students, calls for teachers to implement a culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. This chapter briefly backgrounds the Te Kotahitanga reform, introduces the elements of the Effective Teaching Profile and the implementation model, and then provides an in-depth look at the pedagogical theorizing and practice of three, quite diverse teachers in one Te Kotahitanga school. Through on-going in-school implementation processes, these teachers now stand out as pedagogic leaders in this school. One teacher participates as a colearner, carefully crafting lessons toward students’ prior knowledge and experiences and maximizing students’ culture and love of music in the teaching of social studies. Another uses the physical environment and daily circle talk to access students’ voices, thus creating a community of learners. The third teacher establishes clear routines and high expectations of learners who contribute as both learners and teachers. Pedagogical leadership such as this is modeling school reform at the classroom level, promoting staff collaboration, and contributing to marked changes in Māori student participation and achievement.