Att vara förälder i skolan : en studie om föräldramedverkan i den obligatoriska skolan

What is a, in the school, participating parent? That is the main question of this essay and study. The study involves interviews with 19 parents of children in the age 10-13, in the Karlshamn-region in Blekinge. Two schools in the region were included: one in the centre of the town Karlshamn and one in a smaller community on the countryside, outside Karlshamn. We also met with the principals of these two schools, to get a better picture of the situation at the schools. Through the analysis of the 19 interviews we wanted to lay focus on parent participation. We base this essay on the curriculum for the mandatory school system of 1994. It points out the importance of parents that act as an active part, with students and teachers, when it comes to the planning of work within the schools. Everyone that works within the school shall cooperate with the students' caretakers so that the schools contents and work can be developed in unison.Lpo 1994 1999:16 The writers of this essay both share a background in working within the school, as extra and stand-in personnel. The origin of the choice of subject is that we both were, more and less, affected by the curriculum of 1994. We were also both interested in comparing the theory of the curriculum with the reality of the parents that were to be affected by it. What were the results of it? Had it changed anything? To this we wanted to see if there were any differences among parent participation, when looking at sex, education, working situation and comparing the situation today with the study-participants recollection of their time as students in the mandatory school. Another aspect was if there was any difference depending on where the school was placed. The results of this study are perhaps not revolutionary but still interesting, at least for us. We found differences between the two schools we had included. Examples of differences were the relation between the parents, which was closer in the smaller community. The view of the school as an institution of power has weakened. With this comes a better relation between the school and the home, than it was in the childhood of the interviewees. Another conclusion we could make was that women are still found as the "main character" in the family, when it comes to the relation to the school. But when men enter the schools activities, they usually take an active part, whereas women, according to our female interviewees, tend to ventilate and discuss. One of the greater things we can see is that time, for example working hours, is the major factor, when it comes to parent participation. To this we can also count the number of children a family has and if a child has problems in school. When a child faces a hard time in school, participation increases. We would like to thank the parents and the two principals of the two schools in Karlshamn for their participation. Without them we would not have been able to make this essay