The home environment is fundamental for children’s development, well-being, and education (Davis-Kean, 2005; Ceka & Murati, 2016). Today, most children attend various educational institutions, which also significantly impact children’s development (Kulić et al., 2019). Based on the work of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological model, where both the microsystems (home and education setting) and the mesosystem, the collaboration between them, creating coherence in a child’s developmental environment and building on each other. In addition to what the teachers do, parent's backgrounds and attitudes contribute to involving the parents (Smith et al., 1997). The thought about parental involvement in children's education can be traced back in time (Epstein, 1966). Parents can be a resource for children's educational learning experience (Calzada et al., 2015). The collaboration between home and educational settings can be a facilitator if the collaboration ensures the best possible academic and social education for children. It could also be barriers in the collaboration (Wildmon et al., 2024). Barriers to collaboration could include asymmetrical power relations, cultural differences, and disagreement (Nordheim & Moser, 2020). ECEC settings and schools must cooperate with parents to ensure children and pupils' good development and learning opportunities. It is a goal across programs to engage the parents (Matthews et al., 2015), and engaging the parents benefits the children. A longitudinal study by Arnett et al. (2020) from the US shows that ECEC providers who were able to engage parents by giving information about their child and when parents were involved by participating in meetings and engaging in voluntary work were linked to children’s academic readiness. Another study indicated that learning outcomes positively relate to parental participation and teacher-parent communications. Teacher-parent communication again influences their cooperation (Syuraini et al., 2022). In the Izzo et al. (1999) study, the teachers reported having several contacts with them and were satisfied with both the quality and quantity of the parent's involvement. Parents' views on the quality of collaboration are mixed (Wanat,2010). The key elements to a good collaboration are participation and partnership (Samuelsson& Ingebrigtsen, 2023) and communication, relationship, and context in home-school collaboration (Westergård, 2013). ​There is a need for a systematic overview of existing empirical research on the collaboration between home and school. This study investigates what has been researched and what is emphasized regarding cooperation between children's homes and educational settings within Nordic countries. Equity, participation, and welfare are significant goals within the Nordic model, which also has a publicly funded comprehensive school system. The construct of the Nordic model is an education system founded on specific national and local values and practices but also subject to international influence (Antikainen, 2006). 

In this current scoping review, we aim to synthesize the research on the collaboration between parents/legal guardians and staff in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings and teachers in primary and lower secondary education schools in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden). 145 met our inclusion criteria and were included in our scoping review. Our research questions: 1. How many studies have investigated home-educational setting collaboration (in what form and in which year and country have they been published?) 2. Which research methodological approaches characterize these studies? 3. Which dimensions of home-educational setting collaboration are highlighted in the studies? 4. What are the similarities and differences in the collaboration between home and ECEC settings and schools? To synthesize the research on home and educational settings collaboration in Nordic countries, we conducted a scoping review, which is an ideal tool to determine the scope or coverage of a body of literature on a given topic and give a clear indication of the volume of literature and studies available as well as an overview of its focus (Munn et al., 2018). The scoping review was conducted following the JBI methodology for scoping reviews (Aromataris & Munn, 2020) and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) with extension for scoping reviews guidelines (PRISMA-ScR, Tricco et al., 2018). The protocol was registered on the Open Science Framework Registry in March 2024. A total of 2914 studies were identified, and 397 duplicates were removed. So, number of records screened was 2517. After title and abstract screening, we had 291 articles for full-text screening. After excluding based on the given criteria, we were left with 145 studies from ECEC and school settings.

Sweden has the highest number of publications on the collaboration between educational institutions and home (48) and specifically on the collaboration between ECEC and home (20); meanwhile, Norway is a leading country in publications on school–home collaboration (26) as well as in publications, where both ECEC and school settings are included in the investigation of collaborations with home (3). Two studies about research on collaborations between educational settings and home were conducted in Finland. The least number of publications has been obtained in Iceland (9). Only three publications regarding the collaboration between ECEC and home were obtained in Denmark. There are more publications on the collaborations between school and home than between ECEC and home in all Nordic countries except Iceland. Thus, research on the collaboration between school and home is still dominating compared to research on the collaboration between ECEC and home. The number of publications is growing. However, the growth is not straightforward. Only a few studies (on collaborations between educational institutions and homes were published until 2006. Since 2007, the number of publications has fluctuated for both types of collaborations and reached a top of 10 publications on school–home and nine on ECEC–home collaborations in 2021. However, we found a decrease in the number of publications on school–home collaborations and a fluctuation to two and then up to six publications on ECEC–home collaborations. In terms of research design, qualitative research (98 publications) dominates in comparison to quantitative research (37 publications) on collaborations between educational institutions and homes. Even fewer publications (10) were found where the mixed methods design was applied. The analysis reveals different dimensions of collaboration related to children's outcomes, cultural backgrounds, difficulties, values, special needs, bullying, and communication, with some similarities and differences between ECEC and school settings.

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