Although the benefits of family-school partnership are clear, secondary schools struggle to successfully realise this partnership. Drawing on interview data from Dutch parents of secondary school students, this study aims to explore underlying structures of family-school partnership and opportunities for improvement. We defined family-school…

Communication plays a critical role in building and supporting healthy interpersonal relationships. American teacher development standards recognise this and outline the importance of communication in relationship-building with both parent and student to create a successful learning environment. However, although available research points to the…

In this study we explore the care work of homeroom teachers, who, in many educational systems, are responsible for the social and emotional wellbeing of students in their homeroom classes. The study is based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 70 homeroom teachers in Israeli elementary, middle and high schools, and draws on Tronto's ethics…

The COVID-19 school closures presented an unprecedented challenge to primary education on a global scale, with teachers, parents, and children having to rapidly adjust to a remote learning environment, and with concerns that this would exacerbate educational inequalities. Parental engagement has been widely acknowledged to have a positive impact…

This article presents the outcomes of a review of the last decade's scientific literature on primary school teachers' collaboration with parents on upbringing. Since educational goals related to upbringing are of renewed interest in today's western societies, we were curious to learn what current literature tells us about this facet of…

This paper reports the research findings from an online survey of parents of primary-age pupils in Northern Ireland during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aims of the study were to explore how parents supported their child/ren's home learning; to ascertain the communication, guidance and resources between home and school; and to learn from the…

This article reports on a joint research project across two countries, Germany and New Zealand, where there have been relatively successful measures in curbing the spread of the COVID-19 virus, though using somewhat different strategies given the different contexts with Germany being situated in centre of Europe and New Zealand being an island…

Educational transitions are crucial sites of social selection. Whereas social bias in teacher recommendations is well-established, less is known about teacher guidance in the process preceding the actual choice. Bridging the literature on social class and educational choice and home-school relations this study explores classed patterns in the…

The family--school relationship develops largely during face-to-face interactions between parents and teachers. Research shows that reciprocal and informal communication reinforces collaboration, especially between schools and families from minority groups. Yet, teacher practices regularly express a reluctance to implement reciprocal…

The article on barriers to parental involvement in education that was published in "Educational Review" in 2011 has been surprisingly widely read and cited. The article was prompted by concern over the apparent gap between the rhetoric and reality of parental involvement evident in preceding years. It presented a model which discussed…

In a 2011 article in this journal, Hornby and Lafaele provided a comprehensive model to understand barriers that may adversely impact effectiveness of parental involvement (PI) in education. The proposed explanatory model provides researchers with a new comprehensive and systematic perspective of the phenomenon in question with references from an…

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…

Young adolescents are at a critical age in their schooling as they transition from primary schooling into secondary education. The reading development of these young adolescents in New Zealand occurs within a variety of contexts. Reading is not only a complex skill to achieve, but it is also contextual. Therefore, understanding the context and the…

In this paper, we present the findings which have emerged from our investigation of parent-teacher conversations at one secondary school in the north-west of England. Data were collected in the form of audio recordings over two years, supplemented by supporting evidence in the form of one-to-one interviews with parents, teachers and students. We…

Based on the literature of the field, this article traces a continuum between parental involvement with schools, and parental engagement with children's learning. The article seeks to shed light on an area of confusion; previous research has shown that different stakeholder groups understand "parental engagement" in different ways.…