To be a teacher in inclusive educational system, means ability to collaborate with diverse families, persons and individuals. This study aims to find out how parents experience teachers as partners in collaboration with school. More specific, this research focuses on parents whose children needs at school support for their learning.

The Educational system in Finland is considered to be relatively inclusive. According to National Core Curriculum the development of school should follow principles of inclusive education (Finnish National Board of Education 2016).  The number of special schools is low. In compulsory education, so called basic education, are 547 000 and in special education schools 3500 pupils (Statistic Finland 2022a). At same time the need of support is increasing trend like last 20 years and in year 2021 nearly 23 % of all pupils are having intensified of special support (Statistics Finland 2022b).  All support should be planned in good collaboration with parents (Finnish National Board of Education 2016). Trust is respected value in Finnish education (Välimaa 2021).

Usually teacher-parent-relationship is researched from teachers’ point of view. There is less research focusing on parents’ experiences. Inclusive education highlights the role of parents (e.g. Mitchell 2014).  When teachers understand communities as sources, it is crucial to develop relationships with parents (Payne & Zeichner 2017). Modelling partnership between home and school the role of democratic, equal position in collaboration, focusing on strengths and social justice and empowerment are important (Bryan & Henry 2012).  According to Tveit (2009), collaboration means for parents continuous consideration between active and passive role: school usually wants parents to stay passive in school environment. In case there is need to change school culture, it is important that parents can challenge the decisions of authorities and professionals (Thomas 2013). However, Parents can feel themselves powerless (Hein 2017).  If teacher’s position is understood as expert, there is very limited space for parents to express themselves (Kozleski & Waitoller 2010).

The role of trust is important for collaboration in inclusive schools (Lazarová & Pol 2021), and parents do recognize good collaboration, respect trust relation with teachers and understand the value of collaborative teacher (Koskela 2021). However, there are several issues challenging optimal environment for trust building: There are sometimes situations where parents cannot assume that their children's rights are guaranteed and parents have to defend rights of their children (Honkasilta et al. 2015; Koskela 2021). In order to develop schools towards more inclusive settings, it is important to understand, how parents experience and see teacher as a partner in collaboration and find out, how to promote teachers’ possibilities to maintain culture of trust.

The context of this study is Finnish compulsory education, and the frame of support is based on so called the three-tiered model (Björn et al. 2018). Parents were found by their own networks, such as peer support groups and parental organizations. All participants were informed and voluntary. All participants have experience of collaboration with several teachers during the schoolyears of their child and all of them had one or more children with need of support.

In this qualitative research the analyze aims to capture, modify and draw the typology of “teacherhood” as a way to be a teacher, experienced by parents and described as narratives. The data consist of 11 thematical interviews transcribed verbatim. The phenomenographic (Marton & Booth 1997) approach aims to find the qualitatively diverse ways to comprehended the teacher as a partner in negotiation referring perceptions of parents. As well, narrative and discursive approaches were used in analysis in order to use metaphors and descriptions of negotations. The unit of analysis was the description of a perception or experience connected especially to teacher, and a metaphor was also understood as such. The aim of the first main phase of analysis was to find dichotomy of flowing and struggling storylines. On the second main phase both main groups were reordered by parents´ descriptions of how teachers expressed encouraging or hindering actions for parents’ participation in collaboration.

The results highlight the role and importance of teachers wide understanding of diversities in school environment, good knowledge in norms, curriculum and legislation concerning children’s rights to have support in education. As well, professional interaction skills were important. Teacher practically defines and makes individually decisions on how the collaboration is going to happen. Parents had to negotiate, not only about support of their children, but as well, about the content and mode of collaboration. Parents recognized qualitative differences between teachers’ manners. If the teachers did not express their willingness to learn new things and use information given by parents, they had no possibilities to affect the way how teacher is working. The parents were dependent on the teacher's chosen course of action and, in that sense, teacher used quite a lot of power in collaborative processes. All parents had experience of both good flow and struggeling relationships in collaboration. The relatively rough typology of teacher narratives rests on two axes with negative and positive dimensions: shared understanding of child as a pupil and willingness to collaborate with parents. In this framework, four different ways of experiencing the teacher as a partner were named: a trusted collaborator, a well-intentioned decision-maker, a nagging persuader and unattainable opponent. The perception concerning teachers way to work did not change in this data. The only place to change the tune of narrative in collaboration was situation, were there was a new teacher. It is important to emphasize the collaboration an important tool for teachers in inclusive education. Equity in collaboration with parents is one of key resources in future school environment.

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