Cooperation between home and school : The importance of collaboration between pupils, parents and teachers. Observations gained from a primary school, year one up to and including year three

The main purpose of this study was to shed light upon several questions regarding co -operation between the home and school, based upon earlier research and empirical studies. The study focused on the opportunities and drawbacks as well as on the motives for home and school cooperation. The first section deals with the questions at issues, and the bases the dissertation was dealt with. The second part covers the empirical studies which were carried out within the first three years of the primary school, and in the third part the limitations, most important results, and future research were discussed. The aim of the first section was to identify the starting points for the study, based on earlier research, and to review, via the main body of the study, how co-operation between the home and the school developed. An analysis of the review suggested that the goal formulations of the main body of the paper allowed for opportunities for home and school collaboration. Not only had interesting possibilities come to light, throughout the earlier research, but so too, a number of problems concerning the concrete collaboration between home and school. An very important conclusion, as a result of this review focused on the importance of proceeding from the unit that a class of pupils, parents and teachers represents. The purpose of the empirical studies was to describe and to try to understand why co-operation between home and school developed as it did. A longitudinal study was carried out by means of on-site research in the primary school itself, among pupils in years 1-3. This was proceeded by questionnaires and prestudies of selected classes. The data was collected mainly by means of questionnaires, interviews and written documents. The results showed that parents could function as a valuable resource within the work of the school and that it was relatively easy to take advantage of them, as such. It became clear that pupils, parents and teachers were extremely inventive and resourceful with regard to ideas on cooperation, and indeed on carrying through those ideas. Parents saw themselves and other parents as an important resource for the work of the school. The teacher emerged as a key figure for intensified collaboration. In the concluding discussion the results from the microlevel formed the starting point for the discussion concerning the context of cooperation between home and school at the macrolevel. As a conclusion, the discussion was about collaboration between home and school in terms of some of the effects of cooperation opportunities and obstacles, the interest shown by parents together with the content and forms of collaboration. Here it was pointed out that an important condition for achieving society's objectives was that pupils, parents and teachers together should interpret this in order to connect them to the cultural economic and social reality that was relevant to that particular class.digitalisering@um