Interested Parents Always Find Time to Come to School! Cooperation between Families and Schools in the Context of Reproduction of Social Inequalities

Kušević, Barbara. (2016). Interested Parents Always Find Time to Come to School! Cooperation between Families and Schools in the Context of Reproduction of Social Inequalities. Društvena istraživanja : časopis za opća društvena pitanja, 25(2). pp. 179-198. ISSN 1330-0288

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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.

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