06_Parenting+-+different+perspectives+in+education

=Parenting from different perspectives in education=

The parents’ evening: achieving shared meaning in home –school interaction?
Three different stakeholders or players come together around the small square table at the parents’ evening – the subject teacher, the student or pupil, and the parent. Each of these players moves within a highly developed and complex landscape of players and practices. Each player understands something of the landscape of the other – or thinks they do. But the exchange of the parents’ evening suggests that each is skilled at withholding information about their familiar landscape when it suits them. We can understand the home –school relationship as a set of boundary management practices by which the three players attempt to work together to understand each other’s landscape of practice, leading to greater mutual respect and shared engagement in taking responsibility for different aspects of the education and development of the student. Above all, the home school relationship needs to be a place where the student’s progress can be discussed sympathetically and issues addressed in a collaborative manner, taking into account a broad range of influences.

The parents evening often functions inadequately as this kind of boundary management practice. Its tends to be a place of great time pressure, where prejudices about each other’s landscapes are simply rehearsed and confirmed, and issues discussed superficially and defensively. The consequence is that boundaries between the players are thickened rather than worked across.