Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.5559/di.25.2.02
Interested Parents Always Find Time to Come to School! Cooperation between Families and Schools in the Context of Reproduction of Social Inequalities
Barbara Kušević
orcid.org/0000-0001-8911-3295
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb
Abstract
In the last several decades in theoretical debates and
educational practice the cooperation between families and
schools has been widely recognized as one of the most
crucial factors for ensuring a child's academic achievement
and integral development, thus becoming an indicator of the
quality of teachers' work, but also of parents' interest in the
child. This has created a fertile ground for the reproduction
of the existing social inequalities because many parents, due
to their personal characteristics or the characteristics of their
families, simply cannot answer to this imperative requirement
for cooperation, hence risking to be labeled as indifferent,
negligent or even as bad parents. Proceeding from this
fundamental ambiguity of cooperation, contextualized within
school as a site of social reproduction, the central part of the
paper analyzes elements of the pluralism of contemporary
families that can act as potential factors of oppression of
parents in their cooperation with schools. The concluding
part of the paper discusses how schools can respond to the
analyzed situation and avoid perpetuating the inequalities
they initially seek to eliminate through cooperation with
parents.
Keywords
family-school cooperation; reproduction of inequalities; parents' diversity; pluralism of contemporary families; critical pedagogy
Hrčak ID:
161844
URI
Publication date:
5.7.2016.
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