According to research, parent involvement is important for the development of children (Bakker, Denessen, Dennissen, & Oolbekkink-Marchand, 2013). Teachers must therefore be prepared during training for cooperation with parents and increasing parental involvement in order to know how they can give pupils optimal opportunities through parental involvement. What competences do they need for this and to what extent is parental involvement a theme in primary school teacher training? Several (mainly American) studies indicate that teachers are insufficiently prepared for working with parents (Ferrara & Ferrar, 2010; Caspe, Lopez, Chu & Weiss, 2011; Evans, 2012; Lindberg, 2014). Three studies on the Dutch situation paint a comparable picture (Bakker, Denessen, Kerkhof & Kloppenburg, 2009; De Bruïne et al, 2014; Willemse, Vloeberghs, De Bruïne & Van Eynde, 2016). Preparation for parental involvement appears to be largely dependent on the preferences of individual teacher educators (De Bruïne et al, 2014).

In my PhD research at the University of Groningen I am looking for the competences teachers need to be able to collaborate with parents and to increase parental involvement. This concerns competencies that emerge from previous empirical research, but also competencies that  are found in focus group interviews among teachers and parents. I my PhD research I compare the competencies I found with curricula of various teacher training colleges in the Netherlands. In a poster presentation at the Emerging Researchers' Conference, I focus on the competencies  that teachers and parents believe are needed. These competencies have been distilled from focus group interviews  with teachers and parents. These interviews provide insight into the expertise required for parent involvement from the perspective of teachers and parents, but also in the experiences of teachers and parents.

The main question of my PhD research is: does the curriculum of teacher training in primary education in the Netherlands meet the requirements that different forms of parental involvement place on the competences of teachers? To answer this main question, one of the sub-questions of my research is: which competencies of teachers do teachers and parents consider important to promote parental involvement? To answer this sub-question I worked with two types of expert panels (focus groups): three expert panels of teachers (N= 23) and three expert panels of parents (N= 22). The panels provided insight into what teachers need to know and be able to do to increase parent involvement from the perspectives of parents and teachers. The parents and teachers who participated in the expert panels came from both schools that focused on the theme of parent involvement and schools that did nothing specifically with the theme of parent involvement. To get a representative picture, teachers and parents were recruited from all over the Netherlands (e.g. from villages and urban contexts), represented each age group of the children and came from schools with different backgrounds (public schools, Christian schools, special education schools , Montessori schools and so on). During these panel discussions, the vignette method was used in the first part. The vignettes were intended to allow participants to discuss their ideas. The vignettes gave an overview of concrete situations that can occur at school or at home and that have to do with the quality of the cooperation and communication between teacher and parents. As a researcher, I reconstruct the competences based on the conversations between the teachers themselves and between the parents. In the second part of the panel discussions, teachers and parents respectively were asked which competencies of teachers they consider important to promote parental involvement.

A preliminary analysis of the focus group interviews shows that both teachers and parents particularly value communicative skills. They both mention, for example, a good listening attitude, being able to connect with the target group of parents with whom the teacher works, being able to empathize with the parents and dealing with diversity. When it comes to knowledge, only knowledge of different cultures is mentioned as important for understanding parents. Another first conclusion is that teachers and parents often have different expectations of the role that parents should play. Teachers sometimes have expectations that according to parents are not fitting for their role, for example practicing topography at home with the child or going on field trips. This influences opinions of teachers about what a teacher should be able to do, for example convince parents of the necessity of homework and enthuse them for school activities. Parents indicate that teachers must be able to make their expectations clear and communicate clearly. Teachers indicate that self-knowledge is important for teachers in the communication with parents. If you don't know yourself, it's difficult to empathize with someone else and it's difficult to set boundaries, for example towards parents. According to teachers, you need to know what your norms and values are.

Bakker, J.T.A., Denessen, E.J.P.G., Kerkhof, M. & Kloppenburg, H.L.(2009). Teacher - Parent Partnerships: Preservice Teacher Competences and Attitudes during Teacher Training in the Netherlands. International Journal About Parents in Education,3(1), 29-36. Bakker, J.T.A., Denessen, E.J.P.G., Dennissen, M., & Oolbekkink-Marchand, H. (2013). Leerkrachten en ouderbetrokkenheid. Een reviewstudie naar de effectiviteit van ouderbetrokkenheid en de rol die leraren daarbij kunnen vervullen. Nijmegen: Radboud Universiteit. Bruïne de, E.J., Willemse, T.M., D’Haem, J., Griswold, P. Vloeberghs, L. & Eynde, S. van (2014). Preparing teacher candidates for family–school partnerships. European Journal of Teacher Education, 37(4), 409-425. Caspe, M., Lopez, M.L., Chu, A., Weis, H.B. (2011). Teaching the Teachers: Preparing Educators tot Engage Families for Student Achievement. Issue Brief National PTA & Harvard Family Research Project, May 2011. Evans, M.P. (2013). Educating preservice teachers for family, school, and community engagement. Teaching Education, 24(2), 123-133. Ferrara, M.M. & Ferrar, P.J. (2005). Parents as Partners: Raising Awareness as a Teacher Preparation Program. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 79(2), 77-82. Lindberg, E.N. (2014). Final Year Faculty of Education Students’ Views Concerning Parent Involvement. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 14(4), 1352-1361. Willemse, T.M., Vloeberghs, L., Bruïne. E.J. de & Eynde, S. van (2016). Preparing teachers for family–school partnerships: a Dutch and Belgian perspective. Teaching Education, 27(2), 212-228.