Teachers’ and Parents’ Experiences of Using Parents as Resources in Swedish Primary Education

AbstractEducation for all children has since the 1960s been a main goal in Swedish school politics. In spite of these efforts children's social and cultural backgrounds still affect their study progress. A growing body of international research is currently highlighting changes in society and education policy in which the importance of parentś democratic rights to influence primary education through home-school cooperation is emphasized. These cooperation practices may be harmonious and/or fraught with conflict. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how teachers and parents experience parents as resources in primary education with a special focus on what teachers expect from “ideal” mothers and fathers and what parents expect from “ideal” teachers. It is an explorative study using inductive qualitative analysis of 30 interviews with teachers and parents in a mainstream district in Sweden with an increasing immigrant population. The result indicates an overall agreement around what we label as a “mother responsibility” discourse in regard to home and school practices; a discourse, where mothers expect to become teachers’ servants on teachers’ demands. There are, however, discontents expressed in regard to these power relations. The article concludes discussing these discontents in relation to expressed goals in school politics on democracy, gender equality and parents influence on primary education. We recommend that teachers’ and parents‘experiences are taken serious in further strategies to include parents as resources; strategies that are in line with an inclusive and democratic pedagogy