Parental involvement in education and home-school collaboration have been given increased emphasis during the last decades. Previous research has provided evidence of the positive correlations between parents’ active engagement in their children’s schooling and better outcomes and behavior of their children in school (Cooper et al., 2006; Epstein, 2001; Erikson, 2009; Högdin, 2006; Ravn, 2005). They find that parental involvement has a positive effect in that children take more pleasure in school activities, and that a more positive climate results in the classroom with a high level of interest and approval of work done by the school work. Better academic results are achieved when there are open channels between home and school.

In Sweden, like many other countries, parents are regarded as having an important role as resource persons in school as stated in national educational policies (Lpo 94, 1994; Lgr 11, 2011). Since the last decade, the traditional family-school relationship characterized by separated responsibility between school and home, and teacher’s authority in this relationship are emphasized, has been challenged through the shift from  a macro democracy to a more micro democracy, in which “partnership”, “user influence”, and “choice” are the main principles for structuring and managing school and family relationship, as well as changing the role of both teachers and parents (Eriksson, 2011, 2012). However, research in this field has mainly stressed parents’ right and opportunity to choose school for their children they prefer and the consequences brought about by this. Studies of how school understands and deals with the new conditions for relationship with family, and what strategies school applied in practice are scarce.

Access to meaningful and effective communication between home and school enhances home-school relationship and collaboration as well as parental involvement and influence. The utilization of technologies through the use of Internet for information to and communication with parents is growing rapidly as an additional means for school-home relationship. Nowadays almost all Swedish schools have own websites that serve as prime locations for public advocacy and communications, including for parental use. It will be interested to find out what and how information is presented by local school actors on their websites, which in some way reflects their understanding of and attitudes towards relationship with parents and opportunities for parental influence. Moreover, parents are not a homogenous group, their accessibility to web-based information and communication and their ability to utilize the resources are influenced by their social, cultural and economic circumstances that could be a challenge for home-school relationship in terms of issues such as inclusion and exclusion (David, 2003; Ravn, 2005). The purpose of the study is to explore, describe, and compare the content and design of the schools' websites to identify and analyze how schools inform and communicate with parents and to deal with parental involvement through the use of their websites. The research questions are:

-          What information is presented on school websites and what is the intended parental use of the information?

-          How and to what extent the school websites provide the parents with the opportunities for two-way communications and possibilities of actual parental influences?

-          How schools relate to different parental groups in terms of cultural and educational backgrounds regarding accessibility and usability?

The framework containing six important factors with regards to parental involvement (i.e. parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision-making and collaborating with community) developed by Epstein (2009) is used as theoretical basis to examine and analyze school web settings and their strategies for working with school-home relationship.

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