High school staff increasingly recognize that parents of adolescents have a positive role in cooperating with the school to support the performance and well-being of students (Vedeler, 2021). The study is set in Norway, where systematic school-home cooperation has been required at the upper-secondary level since 2006, giving all parents the legal right to be involved. Teachers, however, also need to reckon with the changes in the students’ development and expectations and use other strategies of relating to families than in lower grades (Deslandes, & Barma, 2016). High school students with migrant backgrounds negotiate multiple identities as they come to terms with both developing individual autonomy and more pronounced family concerns and cultural expectations about their choices (Ball et al., 2001).

Recent research documents that families with migration backgrounds experience extra barriers in communication with schools (Antony-Newman, 2020). Teachers may not see establishing reciprocal relationships with parents as their priority (Bæck, 2010; Vincent, 2000). In an Icelandic study (Jónsdóttir, & Björnsdóttir, 2012), 86% of parents say they are satisfied with their communication with the teachers, and parents of teenagers (ages 13-16) report less contact compared to parents of younger students. In this paper, I explore at-school parent involvement practices during the transition from high school (ages 16-19) to further education or work.

The research question is 'what opportunities do high school teachers and leaders create to involve migrant parents in their children’s education?' The focus is on parent involvement at three high schools. Park High is located in an urban area with a large migrant population. Unlike several other schools in the neighborhood, it focuses on preparing for higher education rather than for vocational careers. Birchwood High is a suburban school with a reputation of students pursuing high academic standards and is dominated by students from non-migrant families. Fjord High mainly serves a rural area and holds several vocational education programs, some of which are in high demand among the students and some that accept anyone irrespective of middle school grades.

Bourdieu’s social reproduction theory (Bourdieu, 1984) allows me to investigate how family backgrounds interact with schools' social and cultural contexts. Bourdieu highlights the role of doxa, the sides with the culture that most people in a social field take for granted, in the construction of the education system's practices (Bourdieu, 2000). Parent involvement, or rather traditional lack of at-school parental involvement outside critical situations, can be interpreted as a form of high-school doxa. This doxa has been recently challenged: more rights are granted to parents, and new heterodox beliefs and discourses about parents of adolescents at school emerge. However, migrant parents whose socialization differs from that of teachers may not always possess sufficient cultural capital to take advantage of these changes, as the new discourse is mediated only by recognized parties (Deer, 2008).

In my preliminary analysis, I discover a paradox in the school’s practice. A decade after the first policy changes introduced mandatory home-school communication in Norwegian schools, the teachers in the study have developed a new awareness of the importance of parent involvement. At the same time, the schools appear to have limited room for imagining untraditional forms and content of cooperation with the home. The focus in the relatively few formally organized occasions when parents do get to meet the school staff is mostly on appraisal, attendance, and student behavior. My study is expected to contribute to existing research by emphasizing the need for professional discussion around more equitable and reflexive forms of engaging parents in the context of the broader democratic and Bildung-dimensions of school education.

The paper presents part of a multiple-case study of three high school. The schools were selected after indications from local teacher education programs that they actively worked to involve migrant parents. Fjord and Birchwood hosted induction programs for newly arrived migrants, many of whom, especially in the case of Fjord, were refugees, some unaccompanied minors. The urban Park had a large student population of second- and third-generation immigrants, many with Asian backgrounds, but also a large number with backgrounds of recently arriving from the Balkans, Middle East, and Eastern Europe. High schools in Norway often specialize in vocational or academic programs. Therefore, I chose schools with different programs and social histories to explore possible differences in school approaches involving parents. This paper builds on notes from observations of 18 teacher-student conferences at Park, most involving parents, video, and presentations from online parent conferences at Park and Fjord, and semi-structured interviews (lasting on average 40 minutes) with four school leaders. I have asked them about how the parent-home cooperation was organized at their schools, what they expected of parents and the joys and challenges of meeting parents. We also discussed schools’ histories and the sort of students they encountered over time, both migrant and non-migrant. Other material from the study, including teacher, student, and parent interviews and other online and printed material representing the schools, provided important background information. The required clearance from the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD) was acquired, and three-way consent issues maintaining confidentiality interests of students, parents, and teachers were addressed underway in the study. Some of the data was omitted to maintain anonymity. The analysis included a combination of intuitive processing and some elements of more inductive coding (Simons, 2009) with my interest in the teachers' assessment of migrant families' cultural and social capital and their views on appropriate and inappropriate matters of parent concern stemming from my engagement with Bourdieu’s theory and previous research. Interview transcripts (in original languages, Norwegian and Russian) and observation notes were organized and coded in NVivo software, first as part of narrative analysis of school cases (Becker, 1992) and later across the cases to find different and similar themes while sensitive to school and community contexts.

Preliminary analysis of interviews with school leaders and notes from observing teacher-student-parent meetings at one of the schools indicate that the way the schools addressed parent involvement was highly contextualized. Schools differ in terms of which parents got to have a say on their children’s education and choices and how and to which degree teachers and school leaders engage families and communities. Common across the schools is that there is little opportunity for and no expectation from policymakers or professional community to involve parents in discussing curriculum, the students’ home culture values, or dreams and educational plans. Unlike compulsory school, high school policy does not require parent engagement on the school council. Only one of the schools had an active parent group, but its purpose mainly was the education of newly migrant arrived parents. The covid-19 lockdown has contributed some glimpses of the more personal and familial exchange between the teacher and the families in online meetings. Still, most attention remained on measurable goals and individual strategies for reaching them. Few migrant parents engaged actively and naturally with these matters in dialogue with the school, and most took on a more subtle interest and care role concerning the school and were silent in meetings. Park High has the largest population of students with migrant backgrounds, and the staff readily discusses new ways of involving parents more. The discussion, however, focuses on ‘hard-to-reach parents’ (Crozier, & Davies, 2007) who may be failing in their role as emotional supporters and disciplinarians for the students. It may not be surprising that parents are then reluctant to be involved in these limited roles, and a broader recognition of the families’ resources and interests not limited to individual student performance on measurable outcomes could be suggested.

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