Within the Flemish educational system, student behaviour has emerged as a particularly pressing concern (Flemish Government, 2025). In response to the apparent increase in so‑called “undesirable behaviour” and the rise in school dropout, the Flemish Minister of Education introduced the action plan “Wel-Behaved: From Undesirable Behaviour to Learning-Supported Behaviour” (Flemish Government, 2025). One provision of this plan is the expectation that schools clearly articulate what they require from parents in their specific role and translate these expectations into concrete measures. In doing so, the plan implicitly links the management of challenging behaviour to parental responsibility, while leaving the operationalisation of parental involvement to individual schools (Flemish Government, 2025). The plan does not take into account that the insights of parents of children with challenging behaviour can counterbalance deficit-oriented and individualised perspectives, providing schools with nuanced information that may otherwise be overlooked (Fluyt et al., 2025; MacLeod et al., 2017). In practice, schools often operate from a one-dimensional notion of ‘partnership’ that primarily serves institutional needs rather than equally reflecting parental perspectives (Reay, 1998).

The theoretical framework of this study is grounded in the recognition of the value of parental experiential knowledge and its potential to serve as a counter-narrative to deficit-oriented interpretations of challenging behaviour in regular primary education (Daelman et al., 2024; Tabatabai, 2019). It subsequently offers a critical examination of the concept of ‘partnership’ within parent–professional collaboration in education, emphasising how normative expectations, power asymmetries, and epistemic inequalities continue to restrict meaningful parental participation, despite policy rhetoric that promotes collaboration (Hodge & Runswick-Cole, 2018; McLaughlin et al., 2008; Vandenbussche & Van de Putte, 2019).

This study aims to investigate parental involvement in decision-making processes within regular primary education concerning their child who is labelled with challenging behaviour. To this end, the study applies a critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1992) on motivated reports within regular primary education written by the Student Guidance Centres (SGC) in Flanders, specifically about challenging behaviour. In addition, a focusgroup was convened with members of the SGC, and qualitative interviews were conducted with three parents who had personally undergone the process of drafting a motivated report for their child, to enrich the corpus and add a further layer of contextualisation to the data (Fairclough, 1992). The study aims to map how parental perspectives within collaborative processes are reflected in these reports, and what they reveal about current collaboration practices with parents in addressing challenging behaviour in primary education. Furthermore, it explores what these reports may indicate about broader societal understandings of parents, challenging behaviour, and parental collaboration in education.

This study investigates how parental input in collaborative processes is reflected in the motivated reports produced by Student Guidance Centres (SGCs). In Flanders, the SGC, in collaboration with the school and the parents, assesses the additional support required by both the student with specific educational needs and the school (Government of Flanders, 2024a). The motivated report details the measures already implemented by the regular school and outlines the educational, developmental, and support needs of the student, their parents, and the school team. To better understand the input of parents in collaborative processes about the child’s behaviour, 62 motivated reports with the primary support need of challenging behaviour were collected. To collect the motivated reports, four SGCs representing all educational networks in Flanders and located in both urban and rural areas were contacted, each contributing between ten and fifteen reports. The study makes use of a critical discourse analysis (CDA), defined by Joye and Maeseele (2022) as ‘a systematic, linguistic analysis of discourse in its social context’. CDA enables a detailed examination of the language used in the motivated reports, shedding light on how these texts are molded and shaped by the context beyond the linguistic choices of their author (Joye & Maeseele, 2022). The motivated reports produced by the SGC conceptualise challenging behaviour in primary education in specific ways and reflect the norms and values inherent in the discourse from which they emerge (Fairclough, 1992). Through language, they reveal or express underlying ideas and practices. The analytical framework for the critical discourse analysis draws on Fairclough’s dialectic-relational approach (Fairclough, 1992). Fairclough’s model encompasses three analytical dimensions: text, discursive practices, and wider social practices (Fairclough, 1992). These three dimensions are converted by the first author into four readings of the motivated reports. To enrich the corpus, a member check was conducted through a focus group with ten SGC staff members from six different SGCs. Subsequently, qualitative interviews were organized with three parents who had personally experienced the process of drafting a motivated report for their child, in which ‘challenging behaviour’ was identified as the primary support need. By involving practitioners and parents directly, their interpretations were integrated into the study, providing insights that extend beyond the immediate sample and adding a layer of contextualisation to the data. This approach aimed to assess whether the findings were recognizable to participants or required further nuance.

The findings from this study show three emerging discourses that structure parental involvement in decision‑making within regular primary education concerning their child who is labelled with challenging behaviour. First, a hollow discourse of collaboration emerges: “collaboration” appears as a recurrent need in parents’ accounts and as a thematic anchor in school documents, yet it operates as an empty signifier. There is scant specification of how collaboration should be enacted, who is included, and how responsibilities are shared, rendering the term largely rhetorical rather than operational. Second, a normalising discourse governs the treatment of family and contextual information: such information is incorporated predominantly when it departs from presumed norms, and is accompanied by implicit value judgements that induce parental culpability. These judgements are obscured by ostensibly factual descriptions articulated with high modality in motivated reports. Third, an objectifying discourse is sustained through the use of technical (para)medical jargon expressed with high modality, which confers a professional imprimatur that purports to transcend subjectivity while, in practice, limiting parents’ capacity to exert equivalent influence. Within the genre of the motivated report, a child‑focused accountability document used to initiate support, the emphasis on what is not working foregrounds deficit framings, and parental input is frequently positioned as confirmatory evidence rather than as co‑constructed analysis. Taken together, these discourses reproduce and legitimise power asymmetries between parents and education professionals. In the discussion, we consider what is required to set these relations in motion towards the inclusion and recognition of parental knowledge on an equal footing with expert knowledge, and to enable the possible interplay between the two within decision-making processes in regular primary education, such as these.

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