Parental involvement as a convergence of understanding by teachers and parents

Abstract

This qualitative interpretative study aimed to investigate parents' and teachers' understanding of parental involvement and its implications for improving relations between schools and parents. The study employed the theoretical framework of Community Cultural Wealth, which emphasises the importance of listening to and including multiple educational stakeholders in order to leverage their expertise. This framework helped us analyse the existing literature on parental involvement and the responses we received from participants. For data collection, we conducted individual interviews with three parents and three teachers who were purposefully selected from three different schools in the Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality, Free State, South Africa. We prompted participants to articulate their understanding of parental involvement using an open-ended question. Through thematic analysis, we found that both teachers and parents perceive parental involvement as encompassing communication, parenting, participation in extracurricular activities, and assistance with learning activities. Based on our findings, we recommend that schools and parents engage in ongoing discussions to (re)negotiate and (re)formalise their understanding of parental involvement to enhance collaboration and efficiency between schools, teachers, learners, and parents.