Parents Associations, Social Relations and Interculturality

Author(s):

Pedro Silva

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

14 SES 02, Family Involvement at Schools: Investment, Associations and Professional Support

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-28

11:15-12:45

Room:

JUR, HS 10

Chair:

Raquel-Amaya Martínez-González

Contribution

Much of the literature about home-school relations a) does not problematize it, and b) tends to focus on teachers-parents interactions. Yet, there are some good exceptions for both points, as it is the case of, for instance, Lightfoot (1978, 2003), Connell et al. (1982), Beattie (1985), Lareau (1989, 2003), David (1993), Montandon and Perrenoud (1994), Vincent (1996, 2000), Lahire (1995), Dubet (1997), Nogueira et al. (2000), Carvalho (2001), Silva (2003a), Stoer and Silva (2005), Van Zanten (2007), Henderson et al. (2007), Silva (2007) or Diogo (2008). I have theorized school-family relationships as including (Silva, 2003a): a) a relationship among cultures, i.e., a relation among the local culture(s) and school culture – this one theorized by Bourdieu and others as a predominantly written, urban and middle class one, and also as the social dominant culture in contemporary societies; and b) a double dyad (home and school strands; individual and collective dimensions of action). The first aspect means that culture relations are social relations, thus, power relations; so, school-family relations might act, though not necessarily, as a way of reproducing social and cultural inequalities (one of the reasons why I labelled it a trapped relationship); the second aspect means we are before a complex web of relations. My investigation – about the influence of social class and gender in home-school relations – led me to deal with several social actors and realize that parents associations (PAs) can be an important social actor, either a central one, as teachers, students and parents (even though children’s role is very often ignored by research), or a peripheral one, depending on each context and conjuncture. What and whom are parents associations for? This is the main research question I deal with in this paper and from it several others arise: Do they represent other parents, in general, or a particular group? Are they a middle class job? Do “professional parents” (Beattie, 1985) tend to relate equally to all groups of parents, regardless social class, gender and ethnicity? Do they relate preferably with teachers and school administrators, also middle class jobs? Can they be “partner-parents” (Stoer and Silva, 2005) and become a privileged bridge between school culture and the local community, even when this one is basically composed of popular culture and ethnic minorities? How do PA leaders tend to articulate individual and collective action? How do they manage to act in both home and school strands?

Method

In order to attempt to get an answer to the multiple research questions (the main and the secondary ones) I conducted, during two years, an ethnographic study in three public elementary schools and their communities in the centre-coast area of Portugal. It was a reflexive ethnography, through which I tried to keep always in mind the research social relations, including the effect of my presence in the field (Silva, 2003b). I used mainly participant-observation, ethnographic interviewing, document analysis, fieldnotes and content analysis. I tried to observe more than participate; I adopted Burgess’s concept (1997) of “interview as a conversation”, in order to naturalize – as much as possible – my presence in the field; I analyzed different kinds of documents (from the school, from the Ministry of Education, legislation, etc.), I gathered 900 pages of fieldnotes, and I coded them through deductive and inductive categorization of the data.

Expected Outcomes

I realized that as members of an organization, PA leaders tend to act on its behalf. They become what Goran Ahrne (1994) terms organizational centaurs, i.e., they are part human, part organization. On the other hand, even though they tend to be seen as if they automatically represent parents, we should not take it for granted. In fact, my research shows that different PAs develop, implicitly or explicitly, multiple purposes which may not take into account parents expectations and interests. Only having this in mind can we ensure effective and democratic cooperation and dialogue among social actors in order to promote home-school-community links and a bridge among different cultures. Despite the fact that this research has been conducted in my own country, I believe that it might be helpful to share and compare its results with colleagues from other European contexts, where these questions will probably be meaningful, too.

References

AHRNE, G. (1994). Social Organizations. London, Sage Publications. BEATTIE, N. (1985) Professional Parents - Parent Participation in Four Western European Countries, Philadelphia: The Falmer Press. BURGESS, R. (1997) A Pesquisa de Terreno, Uma Introdução, Oeiras: Celta Editora [In the Field: An Introduction to Field Research, 1984]. CARVALHO, M. E. P. (2001) Rethinking Family-School Relations: A Critique of Parental Involvement in Schooling, Londres: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. CONNELL, R.W., ASHENDEN, D.J., KESSLER, S. e DOWSETT, G.W. (1982) Making The Difference - Schools, Families and Social Division, Sidney: George Allen & Unwin. DAVID, M. (1993) Parents, Gender and Education Reform, Cambridge: Polity Press. DIOGO, A. M. (2008) Investimento das Famílias na Escola – Dinâmicas Familiares e Contexto Escolar Local, Lisboa: Celta Editora. DUBET, F. – Dir. (1997) École, Familles: Le Malentendu, Paris: Les Éditions Textuel. HENDERSON, A.; MAPP, K.; JOHNSON, V. and DAVIES, D. (2007) Beyond The Bake Sale, New York: The New Press. LAHIRE, B. (1995) Tableaux de Familles – Heurs et Malheurs Scolaires en Milieux Populaires, Paris: Seuil/Gallimard. LAREAU, A. (1989) Home Advantage - Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary Education, New York: The Falmer Press. LAREAU, A. (2003) Unequal Childhoods – Class, Race and Family Life, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. LIGHTFOOT, S. (1978) Worlds Apart - Relationships Between Families and Schools, Nova Iorque: Basic Books. LIGHTFOOT, S. (2003) The Essential Conversation - What Parents and Teachers Can Learn from Each Other, New York: Random House. MONTANDON, C. and PERRENOUD, P. (1994) Entre Parents et Enseignants: Un Dialogue Impossible?, Berne: Peter Lang. NOGUEIRA, M. A.; ROMANELLI, G.; ZAGO, N. – Orgs. (2000) Família e Escola – Trajetórias de Escolarização em Camadas Médias e Populares, Petrópolis: Editora Vozes. SILVA, P. (2003a). Escola-Família, Uma Relação Armadilhada – Interculturalidade e Relações de Poder [School-Family, A Trapped Relationship – Interculturality and Power Relations]. Porto: Edições Afrontamento. SILVA, P. (2003b) Etnografia e Educação – Reflexões a propósito de uma pesquisa sociológica [Ethnography and Education – Reflections Apropos a Sociological Research], Porto: Profedições. SILVA, P. – Org. (2007) Escolas, Famílias e Lares, Um Caleidoscópio de Olhares [Schools, Families and Homes, A Kaleidoscope of Perspectives], Porto: Profedições. STOER, S. e SILVA, P. – Orgs. (2005) Escola-Família, Uma Relação em Processo de Reconfiguração [School-Family, A Relationship in a Process of Reconfiguration], Porto: Porto Editora. VAN ZANTEN, A. (2007) “Reflexividad y Elección de la Escuela por los Padres de la Clase Media en Francia” [Reflexivity and School Choice by Middle-Class Parents in France], Revista de Antropología Social, Vol. 16, Publicaciones Universidad Complutense de Madrid. VINCENT, C. (1996) Parents and Teachers - Power and Participation, London: Falmer Press. VINCENT, C. (2000) Including Parents? – Education, Citizenship and Parental Agency, Buckingham: Open University Press.

Author Information

Pedro Silva

Polytechnic Institute of Leiria

School of Education and Social Sciences

LEIRIA

174

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