Elucidating the Complexity of Parental Involvement in Primary Schools: Three Ethnographic Case Studies

Abstract

This chapter aims to describe the nature of parental involvement as enacted and experienced by the parents as well as induced and perceived by the principals and teachers in three primary schools. A grounded-theory approach is used to explore the different facets and manifestations of parental involvement so as to understand the underlying values and the implicit meanings different stakeholders ascribe to it (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss and Corbin 1990). The practice of parental involvement in a school setting is a complex phenomenon. Given different styles of school leadership, established parent–teacher relationships and dispositions of different stakeholders, the forms of parental involvement evolved in different schools will differ. Certain forms of parental involvement tend to result from actions and interactions between and among groups of stakeholders in the education of children in contemporary society, including principals, teachers, parents and students. These actions and interactions take place in specific organizational, policy and community contexts. Table 2.1 identifies the respective contexts of the three primary schools taking part in the case studies.

Table 1 Background characteristics of the three participating schools