New forms of governance: Parental involvement in schools

This paper argues that parental involvement in their children’s schooling is an extension of educational governance into the home and family. What parents describe as involvement occurs across a wide spectrum of activities with their children (St John, Griffith & Allen Haynes, 1999; Standing, 1998).  What schooling defines as parental involvement is a much narrower set of activities oriented to the school’s teaching and learning agenda (e.g. Epstein, Ontario Ministry of Education website).  Currently, this narrow version of parental involvement is touted as a major solution to gaps in children’s school achievement by researcher.  While the call for parental involvement is not new, recent institutional technologies such as standardized testing, or homework agendas, have increased pressure on parents to do particular kinds of school-oriented work with their children.  In effect, work that was traditionally classroom work has been downloaded to parents.  This paper explores a variety of sources (interviews with parents and teachers, websites, etc.) to identify these new forms of governance as they extend into global changes in education and the traditionally ungovernable realm of the family’s educational work.