Working towards a democratic home-school imaginary

This chapter explores how a radical pluralist democratic understanding of parent engagement can offer a counter to the current neoliberal view of parents within education. It demonstrates how parents were able to challenge the apparent hegemony of parent engagement as an instrument for social mobility, and articulate the need for a more relational, dissensual model of parent voice. Parent involvement in education has been a contested idea since the inception of mass schooling in England in the 1880s. The November 2015 meeting highlighted how being seen as the ‘other’ – the bad parent – affects democratic engagement. In order to negotiate such challenges and silencing, parents have to risk being the ‘other’ and break the chains of equivalence. The idea of support started to evolve and move away from the simple idea that reading is essential to being a good or supportive parent