Parent experiences of participation in full service schooling: a phenomenographic investigation

This dissertation presents a phenomenographic investigation aimed at generating new knowledge to the literature of parent participation in schools, particularly to full service schooling approaches. Specifically, the study is situated within the early stages of the implementation of a full service schooling program. This thesis is an account of parents’ experiences of participation at the school during the first year of that project. Interviews with ten parents were analysed to consider the research question: How do parents experience participation at St Paul’s Catholic Primary School? It was discovered that parents experience variation in the ways in which they understand their participation within the school community. These multiple understandings are explored through a phenomenographic analysis of ten interviews with parents. The main findings of the analysis are identified as four categories of description, indicating parents’ conceptions of participation. These four categories are determined by similarities and differences in the data and are exemplified by excerpts of the transcripts to describe the principal nature of each, while at the same time reflecting significant disparities between each of the different conceptions