Schools, parents and community: teaching and learning together?

In this chapter we wish to provide an account of a recent study into the nature of school-parent-community links and whether such links provide a context for teaching and learning together. The title, not including the question mark, is the current slogan of the Department of School Education in the state of New South Wales (N.S.W.), Australia which is responsible for providing government-controlled education to 750,000 (70% of school-age) students in 2,227 schools, employing 60,000 people. We reshaped the slogan from a statement to a question in order to explore, in real school settings, the implementation of policy intentions for community participation. Recent policy initiatives, internationally and in Australia, have been designed to reform the relationship between schools and community (broadly defined) into one of partnership, but there is little research on the extent of policy-in-use and whether a genuine partnership really is emerging. Yet the immediacy of these issues in public policy suggests there is an urgent need to ascertain, as Glenn (1992) puts it, "who should own the schools?" or how such ownership might operate