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Building a Grounded Theory on Parental Involvement in Education

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Parental Involvement on Children’s Education

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Abstract

After reviewing existing literature about parental involvement in education, incorporating Bourdieu’s “theory of practice”, his concept of capital, and Coleman’s concept of “social capital” and preliminary findings from the three ethnographic school studies, we construct a conceptual framework on parental involvement using a grounded theory approach in this chapter. From this framework, the different types of individual, organizational and institutional factors which would constrain or facilitate the practice of parental involvement will be identified and a set of research questions will be derived to evaluate their independent and relative effects on the type and extent of parental involvement enacted and induced by different stakeholders in the primary schools of Hong Kong.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As admitted by herself, her own relationship to students’ parents mirrored the pattern of family–school relationships in the two schools she researched (Lareau 1987, p. 198) which was a “separated” one. This probably resulted from the fact that it was the symbolic foundation (appearance) of the working-class parents that made her (and also the teachers) feel uncomfortable in their encounters with the parents. Such discomfort might have discouraged those working-class parents from getting involved in school activities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR

    Esther Sui-Chu Ho

  2. Department of Applied Social Studies, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR

    Wai-Man Kwong

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  1. Esther Sui-Chu Ho
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  2. Wai-Man Kwong
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Correspondence to Esther Sui-Chu Ho .

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Ho, E.SC., Kwong, WM. (2013). Building a Grounded Theory on Parental Involvement in Education. In: Parental Involvement on Children’s Education. SpringerBriefs in Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4021-99-9_3

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