Parental Involvement in Raising the Achievement of Primary School Pupils: Why Bother? Anne Edwards; Jo Wari Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 25, No. 3. (Sep., 1999), pp. 325-341. Stable URL: hitp://links,jstor.org/siei?sici=030S-4985% 28 199900% 2025%3A3% 3C325%3APIIRTA%3E2,0,CO%3B2-6 Oxford Review of Education is currently published by Taylor & Francis, Ltd. ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hhup//uk,jstor.org/abouvterms.himl, JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you ‘may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hup://uk,jstor.org/joumals/taylorfrancis.h, Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @jstor.org. hup://uk.jstororg! "Tue May 23 08:58:08 2006Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 25, No. 3, 1999 4 Parental Involvement in Raising the Achievement of Primary School Pupils: why bother? ANNE EDWARDS & JO WARIN asstRact Reasons for investing in parental involvement activities aimed at improving the performance of primary school children in either numeracy or literacy are analysed. Data are then discussed in relation firstly to sociocultural understandings of how teachers support children’s learning and secondly to conceptions of identity and self-esteem ‘apparently held by pantcipating teachers. We suggest that primary schools are currenly being obliged t0 use parents as asitants in the delivery of an overloaded curriculum in ‘ways which do not draw on understandings of what parents do have to afer. INTRODUCTION ‘The importance of parental involvement in their children’s education, particularly ‘when pupil underachievement is likely, appears largely uncontested in schools. Mert- tens, for example, describes parental involvement as ‘the flag we salute whenever it is hoisted” (Merttens, 1993). Similarly Vincent and Tomlinson note that the ‘soft rhetoric’ of parental involvement ‘still dominates at school level” (Vincent & Tomi son, 1997). Yer Macleod’s review of research on parental involvement in reading (Macleod, 1996) suggests the effort involved in such schemes may not always be worthwhile Given current emphases on harnessing parents to the educational enterprise (DIEE, 1997), it might be timely to consider the premises and purposes of parental involve- ‘ment in assisting children to meet the educational targets being set for them. In attempting to tease out how parents are being used to combat the underachievement of their children we shall examine the rationales for parental involvement in children’s learning provided by schools which took part in a five-year funded development project aimed at the raising of pupil achievement in numeracy and literacy. We shall then relate the rationales offered by the schools to current conditions of schooling and understand- ings of how children learn, PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT: FROM DEFICIT TO DIFFEREN cE Attention to children’s learning was arguably the starting point for current interest in parental involvement in UK primary schools. The origins can be found in two sources. ‘The first of these were beliefs about children’s learning evident in the 1960s and 1970s. ‘Tizard er al., for example, traced the interest in parental involvement in the early 1980s, to 1970s" understandings of social influences on child development. The second source they discemed was the then prevalent view of working-class homes as contexts which ISSN 0305-4985 (printVISSN 1465-3915 (online)/99I030325-17 © 1999 Taylor & Francis Lid326 Oxford Review of Education were deficient and less effective in the preparation of children for academic success (Tizard er al, 1981). Tizard’s later work (Tizard & Hughes, 1984), however, success fully debunked the notion of working-class homes as areas of cognitive deprivation and showed that the girls who formed the focus of the study received more cognitive challenge at home than they did at nursery school. ‘The Tizard and Hughes study meshed with the 1980s Zeitgeis of parents as partners in the education of children. ‘This was the period of parental involvement in structured programmes in reading, usually designed by educational psychologists (e.g. Topping & ‘Wolfendale, 1986), Partnerships which focused on mathematics occurred less often and ‘were the product of collaborations led by mathematics educators (e.g. Merttens & Vass, 1990). Yet behind these curricular intentions one could still perceive a deficit model of parents. Parents had to be hamessed to programme aims and monitored through chatty ‘written feedback mechanisms established by teachers. Simultancously evaluations of parental involvement often gave considerable attention to participation rates and were frequently based on the assumption that parents were unwilling educators. For exam- ple, Hancock and Gale emphasise the need to boost parental interest in existing initiatives and discuss the ‘packaging’ of the Hackney PACT programme (Hancock & Gale, 1996). ‘The 1990s has pethaps seen a shift from overtly deficit models to a framework which js attempting to address differences between families and between home and school. Here one can see several themes at work, all of which impinge on ‘why bother with parental involvement? as a pedagogical question related directly to the standards of children’s performance. The first theme is the attempt to homogenise British society through a National Curriculum which aims at creating citizens who share common understandings of, for example, the English canon and British history. This theme has Jed to an emphasis in schools on subject matter knowledge at the expense of examining how children best learn and use the information and skills necessary for economic and social well-being. The way that subject knowledge is constructed in this rhetoric allows knowledge to be seen as a commodity to be delivered rather than a discourse into which a learner needs to be skilfully led towards mastery. Such an emphasis rested happily alongside the Tory Government's ‘Back to Basics? rallying cry which emphasised again a body of knowledge that should be provided rather than recognising, for example, the motivational problems that can be derived from a seemingly irrelevant curriculum (The Guardian, 20 August, 1997). ‘Back to Basics’ also rested on the notion of the responsible family which was based on a middle-England, middle-class ideal. The importance of the responsible family to the social stability of the nation has been long documented as a 20th-century policy premise providing a bedrock of social stability (Lewis, 1986). Thanks to parental choice in education, responsible parents would, as clients of a school, check the activities of ‘trendy’ teachers and in addition would provide the home background which created the willing pupil who was ready and able to receive the knowledge delivered by the teacher ‘These interlinking themes have a number of implications, not the least of which are attempts to use parental involvement to normalise families and so erode differences between families and differences between home and school. Teachers, beset by league table evaluations which focus on pupil performance and pupil attendance, are under- standably enticed by a view which places responsibility for poor performance on differences in values between homes and school and which provides a solution in terms of ensuring that the school’s values are shared by the home, At the same time,Parental Involvement in Primary Schools 327 ‘trammelled by a National Curriculum which has little room for the socioemotional development of pupils, arguably they are obliged to frame any consideration of parental involvement in the parameters offered by the subject matter knowledge of the curricu- lum. As subject knowledge becomes increasingly a commodity to be delivered in a ‘curriculum which has to be ‘covered’, the complexities of teaching and learning may seem a luxury for teachers. Of the two themes identified by Tizard al. in 1981, the deficit model of parenting remains, though presented in terms of difference, while the concern with how best to support children as leamers appears to have disappeared. Its absence is perhaps best marked in a cri de cocur from Pollard which also highlights the extent to which the National Curriculum is a political product. He starts a long list of common-sense suggestions of how parents and schools could, with appropriate policy backing, work more closely together to support children's learning with the following declaration. Is it possible, for instance, that policy-makers might understand how early learning is supported through experience, discussion and instruction and see the significance of the social contexts and webs of relationships within which children learn? (Pollard, 1996, p. 308) Pollard is usefully emphasising the complexity and interrelationship of the contexts in which children learn shown, for example, in Bronfenbrenner’s seminal work on the ecology of human development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Pollard’s analysis is echoed by Bastiani who introduced his report on parental involvement for the Royal Society of Arts" Learning Society initiative with the suggestion that partnership had ‘come to the end of its useful shelf life”. He went on to argue that parental involvement requires ‘new thinking and new ways of working’ (Bastiani, 1995). ‘The sterility of thinking and paucity of research in the field of parental involvement has been noted by Vincent and Tomlinson who describe areas of the field as ‘under analysed and undertheorised’ (Vincent & Tomlinson, 1997). We would certainly ‘concur. The soft rhetoric of parental involvement they suggest dominates at school level arguably operates also at the level of policy and policy advice. In 1992 the DIE gave ‘a high level of parental and community involvement’ as one of four conditions for school success. This view was echoed in the report of the National Commission on Education in 1993 where parental involvement in children’s education and in supporting the aims of the school was one of ten characteristics of schools associated with improving pupil performance. Nevertheless a probing of the school effectiveness and school improve ‘ment literature for evidence of the effectiveness of forms of parental involvement disappoints. For example, neither Mortimore et al. (1988) nor Barber and Dann (1996) provide more than general statements of good intent with regard to the nature and efficacy of parental involvement. ‘While the complexity of parental involvement is underplayed in the school improve- ‘ment literature there are those elsewhere who are usefully unpacking its many layers. Firstly the idea of the typical parent is under attack, Pugh, writing in 1987 of the pre-school phase, undermined any notion of the homogenous parent group by produc ing five general categories of parental involvement based on the parents perspectives on their possible roles. These ranged from non-participation to parental control of, the provision. Some of these categories were sub-divided so that, for example, non- participation could be seen as active as a result of other priorities such as career, or as Passive as a result of lack of confidence. Reay’s analysis, nine years later, of how328 Oxford Review of Education ‘working-class and middle-class parents perceive their and their children’s positions in the education marketplace (Reay, 1996, 1998), reminds us of the need for any form of parental involvement to work closely with the motivations and self-positioning of parents. Reay’s recommendations find support in Walkerdine and Lucey’s observation in their study of working-class mothers and schools that ‘the whole discourse of parental involvement assumes that teachers must teach parents? (Walkerdine & Lucey, 1989, p. 181). That parental involvement has to be more than a one way linear process of informing oF instructing parents but has to attend to parental dispositions was also evident in Brown’s analysis of how parents may be disempowered by the assumptions about parents and the documentation for parents found at the core of partnership schemes (Brown, 1993). How involvement might be enacted has also received some analysis. Based on her US research Epstein has also outlined levels of parental involvement. The six levels start at parenting (i.e. providing for basic needs and sound discipline) and move on through communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making and finally to collab- oration with the community (Epstein, 1995). Epstein’s lst is the product of analysis of US data and interestingly marks differences from the situation in England and Wales Casanova argues that Epstein’s research indicates the dangers of an unquestioning allegiance to parental involvement if the outcome is to be parental decision making and, the tying of schools to0 closely into the resources available within particular communi- ties (Casanova, 1996). Such, however, is the restricted nature of school curricula in England and Wales and the lack of attention to community involvement in models of, teacher development from inital training to headship that these two levels are currently unlikely to be observed. However, none of these analyses appears to be addressing how parental involvement ‘may in different ways assist children’s performance as learners. All too often rationales, operate at a level of generality which echo that provided by Bastiani when he lists the advantages of parental involvement as follows. + Practical co-operation brings important benefits to all involved—teachers, parents and pupils. *# Good home school relations are a major feature of educational institutions that are effective, accountable, and responsive to the needs of those that use them, ‘+ Effective family-school relations recognise the importance of parents’ own learning and development. ‘ Strong home-school links are a vital ingredient in the educational life of communi- ties. (Bastiani, 1995) We are faced here with a wish-list which appears to be premised on the normalising of families as consumers of what schools have to offer. Educating the client is, after all, a feature of the market. Furthermore, rigorous evaluation against these forms of rationale becomes extremely difficult. Topping is accurate in his depiction of evaluation of parental involvement programmes as ‘a quagmire’ (Topping, 1996). ‘What appears to be missing from analyses so far is just how parental involvement may bbe justified in terms of currently established understandings of how children learn. Without such a rationale strategies for parental involvement appear at worst to be strategies for asserting school values over those of parents and at best concerted efforts, at whistling in the dark, If it is the latter, why do schools bother?Parental Involvement in Primary Schools 329 THE STUDY ‘The data are drawn from a five-year examination of a funded initiative which aimed at raising pupil achievement in numeracy and literacy through parental involvement across 70 schools in one Local Education Authority (LEA). It is important to note that the initiative was targeted at areas of social deprivation and poor pupil performance. ‘The aims of the initiative were as follows: 1, To raise levels of achievement in literacy and numeracy through further develop- ‘ment of home/schooV/community links. 2. Through collaborative team-work to identify barriers to raising levels of achieve- ment. 3. To disseminate successful strategies and processes for overcoming and removing. those barriers, ‘The involvement of individual schools lasted, for reasons associated with funding, either two or three years. Six of the schools were secondary schools linked to participat- ing primary schools and five were special schools. Data were gathered at least annually from all participating schools using postal questionnaires. The return rate from those ‘currently participating was always 100%. In addition, case study data were collected on different aspects of the study in each year. Case study data were gathered using interviews, field notes and the analysis of documentation. This paper will focus largely ‘on data gathered using a postal questionnaire to 60 past and present participants sent at the end of the fourth year of the initiative in July 1996. The ten schools which had joined the initiative in April 1996 were not included in the survey as they were still in the early planning stages of their engagement with parental involvement. The return rate was 77% (n= 46). Although we shall draw primarily on data from the 1996 questionnaire we shall develop our analyses using information from previous postal questionnaires (n= 3 in 1993, 1994 and 1995) and from case studies of participating schools compiled using interviews, field notes and documentary analyses between 1992 and 1997. The ques- tionnaires used during this period were designed to provide some indication of the level of parental involvement and pupil performance data across the initiative to contribute to end of year summative evaluations. The case studies involved 42 schools over four years (for example, 12 schools in 1995-1996) and were designed to provide data which would formatively support the effectiveness of the initiative in specific aspects of its development. For example, in 1996-1997 the focus of the three case studies under taken was the management of the initiative within the schools. Compilation of the 1096-1997 three case studies involved 12 visits to each school, between eight and 12 interviews in each school, field notes made on each visit and cross-referencing between the two researchers. ‘The LEA initiative was designed to enable individual schools to work appropriately With priorities they identified in either numeracy or literacy. The only condition was that parental involvement of some kind should be evident. In order to participate in the initiative selected schools prepared separate submissions which indicated how they would involve parents in activities which aimed at improving the performance of targeted groups of children, Resource requirements were therefore tailored to school needs. Funding to schools became available on receipt of carefully costed submissions with acceptable strategies for work with parents. Schools were then assisted in their individual development work by a small team of LEA-funded project workers330 Oxford Review of Education As evaluators we have, from the outset, been intrigued by many schools’ lack of interest in the distinct purpose of parental involvement beyond that of, for instance, generally helping the children to read or playing number games at home. We observed “che flag of parental involvement being saluted’ and gleaned that some schools had been by the prospect of additional funding rather than a belief in the value of working more closely with parents. But most strikingly we observed a considerable degree of busyness in, for example, distributing number games, training parents to use games at home, or establishing libraries. What we could not discern was what exactly the schools wanted the parents to contribute to a child’s leaning. Were parents to model desired reading behaviour? Were they to engage in the highly skilled task of teaching reading, for which, we are told, even a four year BEd is inadequate training? Were they to reinforce numeracy activities that the child had undertaken that day in school? We found it hard to imagine that any business enterprise would devote as much of its resources to a set of activities with such a fuzzy rationale. We also shared Brown's concern that by giving parents roles as teachers they were merely being asked to act as agent ofthe teacher in the home (Brown, 1993) rather than drawing on the power that parents have as role models and motivaters. To this concern wwe added another. How could teachers believe that the complex, highly focused and interactive support that pupils need as they are inducted into mastery of the curriculum (Tochon & Munby, 1993) could be provided by parents who had experienced at most 2 few hours of workshop training from teachers? But we also failed 10 see the curriculum as a set of commodities that could merely be covered or delivered, Our question, after four years of interviews, observations and the collection of outcome data, was what are the rationales offered by schools for the time they have invested in parental involvement through the LEA initiative? Our postal questionnaire 10 60 past and present participants asked that simple question, Our content analysis of their responses started with the six levels of parental involvement provided by Epstein’s study (Epstein, 1995). These rapidly became defunct because they included an empha- sis on community control of provision, which was unsurprising in a set of categories developed in a US context but not found in our data; and paid insufficient attention to the pedagogic role of parents in relation to the school curriculum evident in the responses made by teachers to our questionnaire. ‘We subsequently developed the 11 data-driven categories shown in Appendix A in the following way. The written rationales provided by the teachers were first divided into units of analysis we termed meaning units, A meaning unit is a string of words that carry one meaning (Edwards, 1997). For example, ‘It prevents the children playing us off against the parents’ is one unit while ‘We want the parents to like coming into school/and to give us a hand when we have to ask for it? comprises two meaning units. ‘These meaning units were all allocated to tentative categories by the first author and. category descriptors produced. The second author used the category descriptors to ‘carry out a blind allocation of the meaning units to the tentative categories. As a result ‘ofthat allocation the category descriptors were clarified and agreement was reached on the allocation of all 177 reasons given by the 46 schools. The categories also included ‘one for unusable data. This gathered together all the statements which were too vague to place elsewhere, for instance, ‘it is good for the children’ and comprised 26 statements, i. 15% of the total meaning units ‘We have used the questionnaire data to help us examine, a little more broadly across the wider set of participating schools, some of the issues about schools? rationales thatParental Involvement in Primary Schools 331 “Tance I. Themati responses in schoo tonales for involvement ‘Themes Categories No of Statements 1. Schooled: parent as agent of schoo. ta 2alt 3b + 7 10 “Total no. of statements 2 Raising the sefestem of parents ab educators and of children as pupil 5a “ 5b " 6 6 ‘Total no. of staerments 372%) 5. Parents have alot to fer because of their special poston ° 3a n “Total no, of statements 20 (119%) 4. The school will become more embedded in the community Ba 6 ab 5 ° 4 “Total no, of statements 15.0% intrigued us when gathering both the evaluation outcome data and pursuing the more Focused questions that drove our case studies over the five years of the initiative. Our analysis of parental involvement therefore draws on these data sources as well as on the questionnaire findings. ‘THE FINDINGS Having categorised the statements from the questionnaire responses we rank ordered. the categories. The most used category was number two (Appendix A) which accumu lated 36 statements (20%). This related to one-way communication from the school to parents so that parents could better understand what the school was trying to do. Of these, eight statements specifically related to informing parents from the relatively recently arrived Pakistani community who were unfamiliar with English schooling. The second ranked category accounted for 17 statements (10%). This referred to develop- ing the confidence of parents as educators of their children (category 5b). This set of statements was followed closely in the ranking by the 14 statements (8%) placed in ‘category 5a which mentioned raising pupil self-esteem. ‘We grouped the categories together into four broadly cognate thematic responses shown in Table I. The only statement not included in the themes shown in Table I and not placed in the unclassifiable category was from one teacher who regretted the need to depend on parent volunteers to undertake the work they did in schools.332 Oxford Review of Education DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS ‘The first theme seems to endorse Brown's suggestion that parental involvement schemes operate to enlist parents as agents of schools (Brown, 1993), while the second, theme, with its emphasis on changing the parents, appears to connect to the redefinition of working-class mothers as pupils to be educated, noted by Walkerdine and Lucey (Walkerdine & Lucey, 1989). Along the same lines Vincent comments that schools’ models of good practice ‘contain culturally-bound assumptions about good, parenting’ (Vincent, 1996, p. 47) and therefore direct attention at changing parental behaviour. Only one of our data-driven categories collected statements which whole- heartedly eschewed the need to change parental behaviour. This was category 3a (Appendix A) which accrued 11 statements about how much parents had to offer the children, as they knew them so much better than the teachers could. Evaluation data collected over the five years of the project confirmed that a form of colonisation rather than collaboration was at work. As one infant school teacher put it, with enormous enthusiasm: ‘The gains have been a commonality of aims and shared objectives. The interest has been great for the children. We've had much parental support for what we are doing. This is the way forward, Given the statutory basis of schooling one should perhaps not be critical of this statement. However, the teacher concerned had operated what had been described by all involved in the LEA initiative as a “model” home loan scheme. Story books at appropriate reading levels were sent home in book bags and parents listened to their children as they read. The majority of the parents spoke English as a second language and a bilingual classroom assistant administered the scheme. The scheme was deemed successful on the basis of the number of parents who collected bags and hence the number of loans made. No information on improvement in reading performance was ever forthcoming from the school. Indeed, with very few exceptions schools exhibited considerable reluctance to gather assessment data which allowed valid examination of, pupil performance and evaluation of the impact of the initiative on pupil achievement. ‘The invisibility of pupil performance stood in stark contrast to the visibility of the ‘number of parents who were touched by the initiative. ‘Getting the parents in’ became an over-riding concern for most of the schools. This was not easily achieved and most schools understandably camouflaged their lack of success. Our 1995 Evaluation Report states: Because so many of the data returns made by schools gave figures for parental attendance as percentages rather than numbers it has been impossible to give figures for parental attendance at workshops across the initiative ‘When parents did attend workshops they were often trained in forms of teacherly ways of playing the number games or reading the books that were to be sent home from the schools. ‘The long arm of the schools reached into the homes through these home-loan systems. In terms of take-up these systems were very successful. The 1995 evaluation report notes that in 35 schools 1420 children borrowed material for use at home between April 1994 and February 1995. The extent of the loan varied. For example in three schools, 700 loans were made by 28 children; 1680 loans were made by 140 children; and 561 loans were made by 100 children. These figures represent a lot of teacher and parent time. They also represent a one-way traffic in which school-basedParental Involvement in Primary Schools 333 material was employed to influence the home environment. The following comment from a teacher in one case study sums up the one-way flow of information and material We want to inform parents about what is happening in school, get them more interested at home, make contact, get the material into the home—especially the books. It makes the children realise it is more important, the fact that the parent attaches importance to it, It makes it more valid in school. ‘The teachers’ emphasis on the esteem associated with schoolwork was interesting in this context. Al references in the rationales referred only to self-esteem and not to, for example, academic self-esteem. However, statements about self-esteem were placed in lists of reasons for engagement with the schools’ attempts to raise standards and most ‘made some reference to children’s performance or engagement with school work. We therefore have some confidence in inferring that the self-esteem referred to was in ‘elation to children valuing their own success at school and parents feeling @ growing sense of self-worth as they support their children in that endeavour, It did not seem to allude to their general feelings of self-worth within their own communities and the values which obtained there, Here we again see the normalising intentions of the schools. The management of domain specific self-esteem, for example as literate or numerate person, can be a powerful way of changing behaviour (Edwards & Knight, 1994). However, its power does depend on the extent to which the person whose behaviour is to be changed values the judgements of those who are providing evaluative feedback on the behaviour. She or he also needs to able to see the new evaluations to be more valid than those received from previous sources of feedback. In other words, the parents involved in the initiative ‘we were tracking would have to learn to value the feedback from their children’s teachers more highly than feedback from family and friends if ever these evaluations of the importance of their involvement with the school were in conflict. Arguably, attention to self-esteem is a gross over-simplification of the complexity of the processes of identity construction (Luckmann, 1982; Harré, 1982; Hones & Yardley, 1987). Before considering the manipulations associated with the management of self-esteem, attention has to be paid to how selves are positioned in their social worlds and their individual agency or capacity to be self-positioning. Reay's study, of ‘working-and middle-class parents’ interpretations of where they and their children are positioned in the education market place (Reay, 1996, 1998), illustrates the difficulties involved in shifting self-concept and self-evaluations of it and the need to consider how the identity projects of parents and children are constructed in the worlds in which they function, Our field note data indicate that the poor rate of parental attendance at workshops in some schools could certainly be attributed to parents’ unease at being told how to work in teacherly ways with their children. Those schools that had good take up of, in-school provision, for example, recognised that some parents had loathed their own schooling and that some of the recent immigrants had never been to school. These schools adapted their provision accordingly. The whole thing depends so crucially on mecting and knowing your parents, A lot of our parents have had bad experiences in school. They have real chips fon their shoulders about authority. Yes we have a bunch of disaffected parents. So itis all about being there for the parents and showing that you value them. (Head teacher of a school which was pacing parental involvement to parental interest and current capability)334 Oxford Review of Education In addition to asking schools to indicate their rationales for parental involvement we asked them to identify what parents did as they became more involved in their children’s education. However, despite 11 statements about valuing parents’ special understanding of their own children, there was litte indication, when we looked at the parents’ activities identified by the teachers, that teachers were attending to the dispositions of parents and regarding them as valid (Reay, 1996, 1998). Neither were they attempting to learn more about the social worlds of the children (Pollard, 1996). Instead, what seemed to be happening was that these hard-pressed primary school teachers, working with an over-loaded curriculum (Alexander, 1997; Pollard, 1997), ‘were trying to turn parents into teachers who could provide additional pedagogic assistance. Interview data from teachers in case studies of the work of schools would support this analysis. Because we have such large classes you can’t do all the things you want to do with the children. I want them to hear their children read every night. I want the children to do more than I have time for; because the base level start is so low. ‘The main aim is that children will be able to have more individual help. We hope that the children will be pushed further along. ‘When material was sent into the homes parents (.e. usually mothers) were asked 10 undertake one of two highly skilled activities. They had to support children either as they read or as they engaged in number games which were designed to enhance children’s numeracy. But the kind of responsive and informed interaction demanded by these activities is one of the most difficult aspects of inducting young learners into the public knowledge which comprises the curriculum. If we think of a teaching and learning cycle in sociocultural terms as a three-stage process in which the leamer is first introduced to new knowledge and ways of understanding, is then provided with activities in which she or he has to try to use the recently introduced understandings and in the final stage is able to demonstrate that understanding by applying it in fresh situations (Edwards, 1994), we can sce that the first two stages demand considerable pedagogic skills. The first stage requires a teacher to be able to organise the new information in ways which allow children to make connections to previous understandings and to begin to engage with the fresh ideas. The second stage requires careful monitoring of children as they begin to internalise new conceptualisations together with carefully paced responsive support and feedback (Wood, 1986). The activities we observed being passed to parents to carry out were frequently activities which would be situated in the second stage of teaching and learning. ‘Some teachers felt some parents could be trained quickly to teach their children, ‘They'd had some input on miscue analysis and one of the parents heard a child read after that. She described that, saying ‘T spotted things I'd never have spotted before’ When children first start in reception the parents are shown a video of the right and wrong way to teach children. The catchment is very mixed so the quality and degree of parental help varies hugely What seemed to be happening here was something more than Vincent's notion of acceptable forms of practice demanding acceptable forms of good parenting (Vincent, 1996). The model of practice with which teachers appeared to operate was one inParental Involvement in Primary Schools 335 which the stresses of curriculum coverage and pupil performance dominated. It conse- quently required the back-up of good teaching at home or from parent helpers in school. However, those schools where it was most needed because of the low ‘base level start’ were often the most frustrated in that endeavour. It was also usually these schools which were the most concerned by the visibly poor attendance of parents at training workshops. It was therefore hardly surprising that the emphasis in the schools’ rationales was on breaking down barriers between home and school to ease the one-way flow of infor- ‘mation and materials which carried school values into pupils’ homes, Interestingly, for some schools the eroding of barriers also helped with discipline. Interview data revealed that some schools felt that parental involvement demonstrated to the children that school and parents ‘were on the same side’ and dissuaded pupils from ‘playing school off against home’. ‘The emphasis on passing school values to pupils’ homes makes it also unsurprising that the schools paid relatively little attention to the community links which were given equal weighting with home links in the aims of the initiative. Interview data revealed the ‘curricular concerns of the schools and the need to be ready for school inspections of the standards of pupil performance. Engaging with the complex social forces at work in the local communities in which the schools were located would have diverted schools from. their aims of delivering the homogeneous National Curriculum. In addition a closer ‘understanding of local community values would have made attention to school-based judgements on the self-concepts of pupil and parents more difficult to sustain and may well have required that the values and practices in some schools also changed. ‘The flow of influence may have become two-directional. So why did the schools we tracked bother with parental involvement? We should consider that question in the context of educational provision in the 1990s, The initiative we followed was a product of current emphases on educational standards and started at a time when the role of LEAs was under considerable threat. In addition the teachers were working in schools which were undergoing inspections that examined their curriculum coverage. They were also entering an educational market place where league tables were in operation for participating secondary schools and immanent for all the primary schools, Public accountability was unavoidable and shaped much of the initiative, for example, in attention to highly visible formative data on home loans and parental attendance at school-based workshops. Market forces and, of course, league tables appeared to impinge more on the secondary schools. The parents of primary-age children in the neighbourhoods of the participating schools were not able to exercise parental choice. What appeared to be happening in the primary schools was that teachers were looking on parents as possible sources of additional help in the difficult task of delivering aspects of the overloaded primary curriculum. If parents could be home tutors the effort of teachers in encourag- ing parental involvement would be worthwhile. If that expectation was unrealistic, at least barriers between home and school could be croded to the extent that parents ‘could value the efforts of the school, ensure attendance and demonstrate their support of the school to their children so that pressure on hard-pressed teachers could be eased. Indeed the latter aim lies behind the possible national introduction of home-school contracts, If this reasoning has some validity then the primary schools in question were contributing to placing children from the most disadvantaged homes in a double bind. ‘Those children whose parents were able to operate in ways advocated by the schools336 Oxford Review of Education ‘were children who were arguably the least in need of additional help. Yet they were ‘most likely to benefit from the strategies being employed. The double deprivation of children from the most educationally deprived homes resonates to some extent with ‘Mortimore and Whitty's review of the relationship between the effects of school improvement and socio-economic disadvantage (Mortimore & Whitty, 1997). A mess- age to be taken from their review is that educational policy should not be seen in isolation from social policy. In terms of the present study it would appear that parental involvement should be seen as more than simply a curriculum issue. In addition, the schools’ expectations that parents could teach their children demon- strate a curious denial of the complexity of primary school teaching and the professional skills required by primary teachers. The activities in mathematics and literacy sent home by teachers frequently required parents to operate in the second stage of the sociocultural learning cycle we outlined earlier. Teaching at that interactive stage demands an understanding of the subject, ie. reading or number, an understanding of hhow children learn the subject and an understanding of how to support that learning responsively (Edwards et al., 1997). Tharp and Gallimore comment on the differences between parents and teachers when assisting the performance of young learners. . we mean that teachers cannot rely on lay skills that are sufficient for parental socialisation of their offspring. Lay or parental skills provide a foundation but they are not enough. Teachers need a more elaborate set of skills in assistance, and they need to be more conscious of their application. (Tharp and Gallimore, 1988, p. 43) Loenen came to a similar conclusion in her evaluation of a school-based volunteer programme with junior school children. She reported considerable discrepancies be- tween approaches recommended to volunteers and their actual practice. This was particularly the case in the areas of reading for meaning and talking with children (Loenen, 1989). Another angle has recently been provided by the tentative outcomes of initial analyses ‘of how parents work with their primary school-age children on activities sent home by their schools. These findings are beginning to indicate that parents work in quite teacherly and formal ways with their children on the tasks and do not display their expertise as parents (Hughes & Greenhough, 1997). That study clearly raises questions about how schools might make best use of parents as supporters of their children’s learning, It appears, however, that the teachers in the present study were possibly so con- strained by current emphases on curriculum coverage in often large classes that they felt they had insufficient time to cope with either the intricacies of what Tharp and Gallimore describe as ‘conversational’ pedagogy (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988), or indeed with focusing as much attention on basic numeracy and literacy as they might wish to. Another interpretation of the choices made by teachers as they allocated their time ‘might be that they were simply unaware of the demanding nature of the tasks they were hhanding on, after minimal training, to parents. It is certainly true that pedagogy at the ‘conceptual level outlined in the three-phase process we have alluded to is not currently part of any required curriculum for student teachers. It may be that some of the teachers in the study were so uncertain of what comprises the professional expertise of teaching that they felt that parents might easily acquire it. However, the pedagogical underpinnings of the work of the teacher and parents wasParental Involvement in Primary Schools 337 not the only aspect of the initiative which was under-theorised. The attention to what ‘was described as self-esteem in the schools’ rationales for parental involvement has a ‘great deal in common with other initiatives aimed at enhancing the life opportunities of ‘underprivileged groups. Kahne, for example, examines the ubiquity of the concept in US education policy documentation and notes that the concept of self-esteem is rarely examined at the levels of either policy or practice. He argues that all too frequently policy makers and practitioners ignore the detailed work of social scientists in this field, most of which suggests that the link between high global self-esteem and prosocial behaviour is unproved (Kahne, 1996). ‘As we indicated earlier it was evident in the data we collected that the self-esteem referred to in the schools’ rationales was in fact a form of academic self-esteem which ‘would be derived from both valuing and meeting the academic goals set by the school. Furthermore it appeared that the schools felt thar differences between home and school could be overcome if parents could be taught to assume the values of the school. It seemed that the teachers had a second curriculum to deliver. This curriculum con- tained the values of the school and was to be delivered to parents. Eroding barriers between home and school facilitated transmission of the curriculum, However, such activities are premised on a particularly naive view of how self-concepts are formed, personal identities constructed and selves situated in their social worlds. The relative lack of attention to the position of the schools in their communities is interesting in this regard. Trying to change parents in order to create responsible families meant that teachers could not be sensitive to parents’ own identity projects and to their disposi- tions within their communities. Bastiani appears to be correct in his conclusion that partnership in parental involve ‘ment has passed its sell-by date (Bastiani, 1995). Our study suggests that collaboration between school and home seems to have been superseded by the colonisation of the home by the school. Any study of colonialism provides warnings to be heeded if such an analysis is more generally valid. Even the best intentioned colonials are eventually rejected. Bastiani’s response to the recent White Paper on education (DIEE, 1997) would seem to support our analysis, He argues that parents are still seen as external props to ‘education and not as an integral part of it. Relationships between home and school, he suggests, need to be based on ‘mutual trust and growing confidence, in which teachers genuinely attempt to ‘work out what each can reasonably expect from the others and how they will ‘work together. (Bastiani, 1997) Attention to the joint construction of parental roles in parental involvement is also a ‘major recommendation emanating from the review of US literature on parental involve ment compiled by Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler, who argue that funding should be made available to enable teachers to work with parents to create feasible ‘mutually constructed sets of expectations’ (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1997). ‘We would recommend, however, that before teachers are ready to engage in negoti- ations of the kind implied here, a number of conditions in their initial training, professional development and working contexts should perhaps be met. ‘+ Teachers’ conceptual understandings of the demands and complexities of peda- gogy in literacy and numeracy may need to be updated so that their expectations of parents build on what they can offer as parents. ‘+ Teachers’ understandings of the limits of self-esteem and the importance of the338 Oxford Review of Education social conditions of identity construction may need to be addressed. Teachers may then be assisted in enabling parents as encouragers of their children by working ‘with parents’ current dispositions. They may consequently discover the confidence to state loudly as a professional body that schools cannot single-handedly compen- sate for the impact of poverty on families. ‘+ The curriculum delivery demands on primary school teachers have to be reduced dramatically so that teachers can adapt curriculum priorities flexibly to meet the needs of their local communities. Teachers need time for teaching the basic skills and additional consolidation activities so that they do not have to rely on the efforts of responsible families to fill the gaps. ‘We are aware that we have created yet another wish-list. But we agree wholeheartedly ‘with Vincent and Tomlinson’s analysis of the field of parental involvement as under~ analysed and undertheorised (Vincent & Tomlinson, 1997). Parental involvement is also expensive. Teachers are the most costly resource in schools and undoubtedly the ‘most important resource for children as learners in school (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). We would therefore suggest that any response to the question ‘Why bother with parental involvement?” has, at least in part, to be a pedagogic one which is based on analysis of how children learn and is informed by current pedagogic theory. We are not sure that we found such an answer in the study presented here, REFERENCES ALEXANDER, R, (1997) The New Primary Curriculum: basics core or margins? (SCAA Conference on Developing the primary Curriculum: The Next Steps, London), BaRnER, M. & Daxs, R. (1996) (Eds) Raising Educational Standards in the Inmer Cities (London, Cassel). Bastiant, J. (1995) Taking a Few Risks (London, RSA). Bastian, J. (1997) Poor relations, Times Educational Supplement, 22 August 1997, p. 3B. BRONFENBRENNER, U. (1979) The Ecology of Human Development (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press) Brown, A. (1993) Participation, dialogue and the reproduction of social equalities, in: R. MERTENS & J. Vass (Eds) Partnership in Maths: parents and schools (London, Falmer). Casanova, U. (1996) Parent involvement: a call for prudence, Educational Researcher, 25 8, pp. 30-32, 46. DE (1992) Choice and Diversity (London, HMSO). DFEE (1997) Excellence in Schools (London, HMSO). Epwanps, A. (1994) The curricular application of classroom groups, in: P. KUTNICK ‘& C. RocERs (Eds) Groups in Schools (London, Cassell). WARDS, A. (1997) Guests bearing gifts: the position of student teachers in primary school classrooms, British Educational Research Jounal, 23, 1, pp. 27-37. Epwaxps, A. & KNIGHT, P. (1994) Effective Early Years Education (Buckingham, Open University Press). EDWARDS, A., TWISELTON, S. & OGDEN, L. (1997) Pedagogy: the missing ingredient in initial teacher training for primary school teaching? (EARLI Conference, Athens). Epsreix, J. (1995) School, family, community partnerships: caring for the children we share, Phi Delta Kappan, 76, pp. 701-712.Parental Involvement in Primary Schools 339 ‘Tae GuaRDIAN (20 August 1997) Too much too young, by Sarah Boseley, G2 pp. 6-7. Hancock, R. & GALE, S. (1996) Hackney PACT: reflecting on the experience of promoting home reading programmes, in: S. WoLFENDALE & K. ToPPiNG (Eds) Family Involvement in Literacy (London, Cassel). Hanré, R. (1982) Personal Being (Oxford, Blackwell. Honess, T. & YaRDLEY, K. (1987) (Eds) Self and Identity: perspectives across the lifespan (London, Routledge). Hoover: Dempsey, K.V. & SANDLER, H.M. (1997) Why do parents become involved in their children’s education? Review of Educational Research, 67, 1, pp. 3-42. HUGHES, M. & GREENHOUGH, P. (1997) Adults’ knowledge and children’s learning (BERA Annual Conference, York) Kanne, J. (1996) The politics of self-esteem, American Educational Research Journal, 33, 1, pp. 3-22. Lewts, J. (1986) Ansieties about the family and the relationships between parents, children and the state in twentieth century England, in: M. RICHARDS & P. Laci (Eds) Chiliren of Social Worlds (Cambridge, Polity Press). LoENEN, A. (1989) The effectiveness of volunteer reading help and the nature of reading help provided in practice, British Journal of Educational Research, 15, 3, pp. 297-316. LuckMmanx, T. (1982) Individual action and social knowledge, in: M. Vox CRANACH SR, Harré (Eds) The Analysis of Action (Cambridge, CUP). ‘Macteop, F. (1996) Does British research support claims about the benefits of parents hearing their children read regularly at home? Research Papers in Education, 11, 2, pp. 173-199. ‘Mexrrexs, R. (1993) Impact: pride, prejudice and pedagogy: one director's personal story, in: R. MERTTENS & J. Vass (Eds) Parmership in Maths: parents and schools (London, Falmer). MerTENS, R. & VAsS, J. (1990) Bringing School Home: children and parents leaming together (London, Hodder & Stoughton). Morrimore, P., SAMMONS, P., STOLE, L., Lewis, D. & Ecos, R. (1988) Schoo! Mater the junior years (Wells, Open Books). Morrimore, P. & WHETTY, G. (1997) Can Schoo! Improvement Overcome the Effects of Disadvantage? (London, Institute of Education). NATIONAL Commission ox EDUCATION (1993) Learning to Succeed (London, Heine~ mann). PoLtanD, A. (1996) The Social World of Children’s Leaming (London, Cassel) Poutakp, A. (1997) The basics and an eagerness to learn: a new curriculum for primary schooling (SCAA Conference on Developing the Primary Curriculum: ‘The Next Steps, London). Pucu, G. (1987) Introduction, in: G. Puct E. De’arit & M. Moxon (Eds) Partnership in Action, Vol. I (London, National Children’s Bureau), Reay, D. (1996) Contextualising choice: social power and parental involvement, British Educational Research Journal, 22, 5, pp. 581-596. Reay, D. (1998) Class Work, Mothers’ Involvement in their Children’s Primary Schooling (London, UCL), ‘Taare, R. & GALLIMORE, R. (1988) Rousing Minds to Life (Cambridge, CUP). ‘TizarD, B., MorriMore, J. & BURCHELL, B, (1981) Involving Parents in Nursery and Infant Schools (London, Grant MeIntyre).. ‘TwzaRD, B. & HUGHES, M. (1984) Young Children Learning (London, Fontana).340 Oxford Review of Education Tochox, F. & Muxsy, H. (1993) Novice and expert teachers’ time epistemology: a wave function from didactics to pedagogy, Teaching and Teacher Education, 9, 2, pp. 205-218. ‘TorPiNc, K. (1996) The effectiveness of family literacy, in: S. WoLFENDALE & K. ‘TopPixG (Eds) Family Involvement in Literacy (London, Cassell). ‘TorPiNc, K. & WOLFENDALE, S. (Eds) (1986) Parental Involvement in Children’s Read- ing (Beckenham, Croom Helm). Vincenr, C. (1996) Parents and Teachers: power and participation (London, Falmer). VINCENT, C. & TOMLINSON; S. (1997) Home-school relationships: the swarming of disciplinary mechanisms? British Educational Research Journal, 23, 3, pp. 361-377. Waxenpine, V. & Lucey, H. (1989) Democracy in the Kitchen: regulating mothers and socialising daughters (London, Virago). ‘Woop, D. (1986) Aspects of teaching and learning, in: M. Ricans & P. Licitt (Eds) Children of Social Worlds (Cambridge, Polity Press). Correspondence: Professor Anne Edwards, School of Education, University of Birming- ham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK. APPENDIX A Categories for the Analysis of Schools” Rationales for Parental Involvement 1. Supporting pupil learning at home (i.e. valuing what parents have to offer) .a. Parents can suppor directly what schools are doing with children (i.e. school-ted). 2g. 0 raise standards, 0 follow up classroom activites, to help children with their reading, spelling, ables, etc, they are an extension of the work done in school. 1.b, Parents can be encouraged to create situations at home that are conducive to children’s learning and appropriate development (i.e. home-led). eg interested parents motivate children (related to curriculum? to distinguish from 5), t0 enhance parenting skills. 2. Communicating as a one way process (Je. indicating that parents need to be educated into a shared understanding of what the school is doing) 2.a. Help parents to understand what we are trying 10 do. 2.6, create a shared ethos, share the values of the school let them see what we are doing. 2.6. As 2.0, but with a direct reference to Asian background parents and the need to involve them. 3.a. Parents know their children better than swe do. e.g. We need 10 drawo on what they can tell us about their children, partnership cith parents, get their perspectives. 3.5, To understand where the child is coming from, e.g. Implying essa view of working with parents and more a view that if teachers understand the home situation they till be better able to teachhmanage the children. 4. Showing children that home and school are linked, This may be related to any of the above but is indicating the importance of the child’s perspective on a partnership of any kind between home and school.Parental Involvement in Primary Schools 341 5. Developing self-esteem. S.a. Of children e.g. They feel valued. ‘Sb Of parents (include confidence here and notin 6). e.g. They feel valued. 6, Parents become better educated. ess. Parents acquire skils they can use elsewhere 7. Parents can work as volunteers in the school. 2a, This is a valuable resource. ‘e.g. Volunteering can include translating, painting and decorating, running a library, assisting in classrooms, 7.b. This is regrettable. eg. We are exploiting parents. 8, Linking the school with the community. 8.2, To help school to become part of the community (ie. likely t9 be unproblematic). 8b. To break down barriers berween school and community (ie, there are barriers between school and segments of the community). 9, Provides a support network for parents. 10, Parents become aware of the demands made on the teacher.