This article explores preschool practitioners' perceptions of their encounters with migrant parents in rural preschools. The practitioners' accounts are analyzed through Bakhtin's theory of dialogism. This theoretical approach was chosen based on the assumption that a successful integration process is accompanied by the presence of a dialogic…

The purpose of the present study is to investigate how preschool teachers see their interaction with the home. The empirical material consists of semi-structured interviews with 30 qualified preschool teachers working in Swedish preschools. The informants describe how they promote cooperation and prevent conflict by clarifying that parents'…

As a key predictor of students' academic achievement parental involvement has been in the centre of attention of both educational researchers and policymakers for quite some time. Immigrant parents represent a growing, but under-researched group with its distinctive experiences and expectations. This study provides a systematic synthesis of 40…

This study examines the encounter of Somali parents with their children's teachers and how these relations "affect" their possibility of supporting their children's attaining a successful school experience. The study is inspired by and combines the insight and concept of social capital developed by Coleman and Bourdieu. The parents…

This study shows that students, teachers, and parents in Swedish schools ascribe differing meanings and significance to students' participation in school in relation to academic achievement. Students see participation as mainly related to social interaction and not academic achievement, whilst teachers view students' participation as more closely…

The aim of this study was to discover and describe parents', pre-school teachers', and other professionals' experiences of cooperation regarding children in need of special support. It is a topic that arouses many different feelings and experiences. This study has a qualitative procedure with a phenomenological approach. The data collection in…

Based on 30 interviews with teachers and parents conducted in a Swedish compulsory school, this article discusses the current growing body of research on home-school relations that stress the importance of parents' engagement and involvement as a key factor that influences pupils' academic performance. The focus is on gendered practices in…

The purpose of this study is to bring forth preschool teachers' and parents' views on both established and future forms of cooperation between the preschool and home. The empirical sample is based on both individual and focus-group interviews. Results show that cooperation mainly revolves around the individual child. The form of cooperation that…

In-depth interviews were conducted with early childhood teachers and parents in two counties with similar characteristics in Sweden and the United States. Inductive analyses revealed differences in responses between informants at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels. At the macro-level were considerations of overall societal issues and general…

This study investigated the function of cooperation between parents and teachers, the needs of teachers and parents regarding cooperation, and the quality and form of cooperation that is most satisfactory to parents and teachers. Discussions generated by the investigation indicated that parents entertained widely differing opinions about school…