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A Typology of Parental
Involvement in Education
Centring on Children
and Young People:
Negotiating familialisation,
institutionalisation and
individualisation
Rosalind Edwards & Pam Alldred
Published online: 28 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Rosalind Edwards & Pam Alldred (2000) A Typology of
Parental Involvement in Education Centring on Children and Young People:
Negotiating familialisation, institutionalisation and individualisation, British
Journal of Sociology of Education, 21:3, 435-455, DOI: 10.1080/713655358

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 British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 21, No. 3, 2000

A Typology of Parental Involvement in Education Centring on

Children and Young People: negotiating familialisation,
institutionalisation and individualisation
Downloaded by [University of California Santa Cruz] at 21:12 26 October 2014

ROSALIND EDWARDS & PAM ALLDRED, Social Sciences Research Centre, South Bank
University, London, UK

ABSTRACT This article explores the widespread emphasis on parental involvement in education from
the perspectives of children and young people. In contrast to the conceptualisation of children as variable
social actors, policy initiatives to link home and school more effectively, and research-generated typologies
of parental involvement, unthinkingly familialise and institutionalise children by ignoring any part they
may play in parental involvement in their education. Drawing on data from our study of children’s
understandings of home–school relations, we develop and elaborate a typology that centres on the complex
ways that children and young people talk about creating, acceding to, and resisting their parents’
involvement in their education. The socially patterned differences between the children and young people’s
understandings and experiences demonstrate how the broad social processes of familialisation, institution-
alisation and individualisation are, in fact, concretely lived and negotiated in variable ways. Nevertheless,
there are also some commonalities in children and young people’s resistance around notions of privacy.

Introduction: Trends Towards Familialisation, Institutionalisation and In-

dividualisation in Children’s Lives
School and home are sites that are implicated in the three main social processes
identiŽ ed as broadly affecting contemporary children’s lives (Brannen & O’Brien, 1995).
Children are subject to familialisation, whereby there is an emphasis on them being the
responsibility of their parents, and on their upbringing and home lives as shaping their
behaviour and attitudes. They are increasingly located as supervised sons and daughters
in the home, and conceptualised in terms of their familial dependency status (Qvortrup,
1995). Western children in particular are increasingly ‘economically useless’ but ‘emo-
tionally priceless’, with high levels of economic and emotional investment and obligation
required from their parents (Zelitzer, 1985; Beck, 1992).
This trend towards familialisation has been reinforced by aspects of the process that
also institutionalises children’s lives. Institutionalisation encompasses children’s increasing
ISSN 0142-569 2 (print)/ISSN 1465-334 6 (online)/00/030435–21 Ó 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd
 436 R. Edwards & P. Alldred

compartmentalisation in separate and protected organised settings, supervised by profes-

sionals and often structured according to their age (Nasman, 1994). This includes an
emphasis on children’s status and location as pupils in schools, accompanied by a focus
on their educational attainment and development.
Indeed, the joint trends towards increasing familialisation and institutionalisation mean
that independent unsupervised location outside of the spatial and temporal boundaries of
home and/or school is regarded paradoxically as both posing risks to vulnerable
children’s safety and well-being, from which they must be protected, and as an unruly
threat to social order and a danger to others who must be protected from them (Scott
et al., 1998)—with familialisation and institutionalisation then themselves seen as solutions
to these problems.
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A further paradox is introduced when we consider the other contemporary social

process in uencing children’s lives. Individualisation represents an increasing emphasis
on children as individual social actors (not dependents) who re exively shape their own
biography, and are responsible for their ‘project of self’. This is accompanied by a focus
on their rights under the law and on their being able to determine their own lives
(Nasman, 1994).
The process of individualisation may appear to contradict the other two trends. This
is especially the case in political formulations associated with the right, where moves
towards children’s individualisation are seen as corroding the fundamental moral values
of ‘the family’ and discipline in schools. From another perspective, however, the paradox
is that it is often children’s dependency status within familialisation and institutionalisa-
tion that is regarded as producing this individuated autonomous personhood. Following
notions of a developmental trajectory (Burman, 1994; Alldred, 1998), parents’ and
schools’ responsibilities towards children are often posed as ensuring that children are
guided towards such values and competencies. This is most obvious in policy-makers’
and professionals’ pronouncements about the nature of parenting and of schooling, and
policy and practice aims. For example:
[Schools’ provision of] education about parental and personal responsibility
[will] … give pupils the knowledge, skills and attitudes to become conŽ dent,
caring and responsible citizens, prepared for the opportunities and responsibil-
ities of adult life. (Home OfŽ ce, 1998, p. 17)
Thus, in a circular fashion, schools are also to educate their pupils to be the kind of
responsible parents who inculcate the correct values of individualised personhood (see
also Department for Education and Employment, 1998).
However, such implicit assumptions about developmental trajectories and desirable
socialisation can also be contained in sociological theorising about the nature of
modernity, self and family life. A notable example here is Anthony Giddens’ work on
democratisation and intimacy, in which he contends that parents should treat their
children ‘as a putative equal of the adult’, as if they were able to exercise autonomous
choice and re exively deploy arguments (Giddens, 1992, p. 91)—in effect, guiding them
into a future individualisation. Nevertheless, in a complex social world, we also have to
recognise that such political and theoretical notions are in tension with other understand-
ings, such as home and family life as sites where childhood innocence and freedom is
maximised (discussed in Ribbens McCarthy & Edwards, 1999).
Generally, however, within the trends of familialisation and institutionalisation, par-
ents and schools are increasingly regarded by policy-makers and professionals as having
similar functions in relation to children, which require them to work in ‘partnership’. In
 Parental Involvement in Education 437

this article, we explore this emphasis on home–school relations in the form of parental
involvement in education from the perspectives of children and young people, showing
how it reveals the variable interaction of the processes of familialisation, institutionalisa-
tion and individualisation in their lives at a number of levels. We begin with an
examination of political and professional initiatives to link home and school, and also
look at the typologies of parental involvement that have been generated by researchers
studying the topic, especially within the Ž eld of the sociologies of education. As we
demonstrate, these initiatives and typologies unthinkingly familialise and institutionalise
children by ignoring any part that they themselves play in parental involvement in their
education. Drawing on conceptualisations of children as variable social actors, and on
data from our own empirical study of their views of home–school relations, we then go
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on to develop and discuss a typology of parental involvement in education that centres

on children and young people. We highlight the complex ways that they can create,
accede to, and resist and modify the extent of parental involvement, and how these can
be socially patterned, especially around gender, class, ethnicity and age.

Home–School Relations
As we have said, at the broader level, functional and socialisation boundaries between
home and school are becoming ever more ambiguous and blurred. This is driven by a
political, practitioner and academic consensus, developed over the past four decades, that
a lack of dissonance between home and school, and parents’ involvement in their
education in both settings, is in children’s best educational interests (David, 1993). Across
the political spectrum, parental involvement and home–school partnership are regarded
as, variously, enhancing the educational performance of children from deprived socio-
economic backgrounds, or as a market mechanism or communitarian approach to
improving schools’ effectiveness for all children. This orthodoxy is evident not merely in
Britain but, given the global nature of the processes of familialisation and institutionali-
sation, is either entrenched or growing internationally (see Sanders & Epstein (1998) for
a range of international examples).
Over the years, numerous studies have shown that parental attitudes towards and
involvement in their children’s learning activities in the home and at school have an
in uence on children’s level and quality of learning, development and attainment at all
ages (see reviews by Macbeth et al., 1984; Toomey, 1989; Jowett, 1990; David, 1993). In
the UK, a variety of different national and local intervention strategies have been
designed and implemented to link home and school more effectively, both by involving
parents within schools, from helping out in their children’s classrooms through to school
governance, and also by transforming the home setting into an educational context,
including through homework schemes developing children’s curriculum skills and involv-
ing parents in these. For example, the IMPACT project aims to help primary schools
establish the regular involvement of parents and children in collaborative mathematical
activities within the home, through school-issued sheets setting tasks and requiring
responses from both parent and child (Merttens & Vass, 1990). (For examples of other
schemes, including reading, see Tizard et al., 1982; Macbeath et al., 1986; see Bastiani,
1989; Macbeth, 1989).
Currently, at the national level, there are moves to produce National Curriculum
packs for parents, to enhance their involvement in their children’s school project work,
to encourage them to buy relevant books and CD-roms as learning aids, and to
encourage them to take their children to visit museums, galleries and libraries (Home
 438 R. Edwards & P. Alldred

OfŽ ce, 1998, p. 16). Under the National Framework for Study Support, the government
is also championing the setting up of homework clubs in schools (The Guardian, 10
November 1998). This latter initiative blurs the boundaries of home and school in a
different way—quite what is the meaning of homework when it is not conducted in the
home but in school? Additionally, at local levels, in an effort to reach what the
Department for Education has referred to as ‘missing parents’ (Department for Edu-
cation and Employment, 1998, p.4) [1], and drawing on schemes developed in the US,
there have been pilots of initiatives where teachers and community groups collaborate in
visiting the homes of parents who are unable or reluctant to come to the school to discuss
their children’s schooling (for example, the Alliance Schools Initiative, Foundation for
Civil Society).
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Thus, familialisation and institutionalisation are not only Ž rmly linked, but the former
is being incorporated into the latter in the case of home–school relations. Indeed, all
forms of parental interaction with children (which in practice usually refers to mothering)
have been colonised by professional discourses of ‘education’ and ‘learning’ (David et al.,
1993). This is neatly captured in the statement introducing the British Government’s
rationale for strengthening home–school links under the 1998 School Standards and
Framework Act: ‘Parents are a child’s Ž rst and enduring teachers’ (Department for
Education and Employment, 1998, p. 3).
The School Standards and Framework Act, among other things, seeks to provide a
Ž rm base for home–school links through mandating home–school agreements (Depart-
ment for Education and Employment, 1998). Schools are required to issue a written
‘agreement’ to parents that sets out their responsibilities for their children’s school
attendance and punctuality, homework completion, discipline and good behaviour, as
well as for informing the school of any problems affecting their children, and generally
supporting their children’s schooling. In turn, schools agree to let parents know about
their children’s progress and any problems associated with their schooling. Parents are
‘expected’ to sign a declaration of their acceptance of the terms of the agreement
(although schools must not make signature either a condition of acceptance of new pupils
or a factor in decisions about exclusion, etc., and the agreements themselves are not
legally actionable). In a nod towards individualisation, children and young people may
also be invited to sign the home–school agreement, but, returning to institutionalisation,
it is the governing body of the school who decide whether or not they are ‘sufŽ ciently
mature’ to do so.

Parental Involvement Typologies

In tandem with the long-standing and widespread political and professional agenda on
home–school relations, academic research has studied, and developed typologies or
classiŽ cations covering, the forms and extent of parents’ participation and involvement
in their children’s education. Underlying many of these is the prescription that the more
involvement there is from parents, the better.
Some of these studies have produced typologies of home–school relations charting
historical and political developments around citizenship and consumer empowerment.
John Bastiani (1987), for example, discusses a developmental ‘ladder’ of compensation,
communication, accountability and participation, while Philip Woods (1988) classiŽ es the
development of home–school strategies in the 1980s as market-oriented, partnership and
instrumental. (Other examples in this vein include Beattie, 1985; Macbeth, 1989.)
 Parental Involvement in Education 439

Other studies, however, break down parental involvement into a series of discrete
types of participation and home–school partnership, substantively based around the
ongoing activities and practices involved. In Britain, for example, Her Majesty’s Inspec-
torate (1991) produced a typology of home–school relations around ‘what the schools do
for parents’, ‘what parents do for schools’ and ‘parents as governors’, while Sally
Tomlinson’s (1991) typology covers communication between home and school; parental
involvement in (i) learning and (ii) day-to-day activities; parental informal involvement;
and parental formal (and legal) involvement. Joyce Epstein (1990a, b), in the US, has
produced an in uential classiŽ cation of types of involvement that pay more explicit
attention to home and school as sites in which parental involvement can occur: Type 1,
‘Basic obligations of parents’, covering the provision of ‘positive home conditions’ that
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support children’s learning; Type 2, ‘Basic obligations of schools’, covering a range of

‘communications from school-to-home ’; Type 3, ‘Parent involvement at school’ in the
classroom and attending events; Type 4, ‘Parent involvement in learning activities’ at
home, including parent, child-, and teacher-initiated; and Type 5, ‘Parent involvement
in governance and advocacy’.
Epstein (1995) has latterly extended her typology to cover another type of partnership:
Type 6, ‘Collaborating with the community’, covering resources and services that
strengthen home–school links (thus incorporating the US-inspired initiatives recently
imported in the UK that we have already noted). Supportive links between school, family
and community have also featured in Mog Ball’s (1998) more recent British participation
classiŽ cation, listing school decision-making and management, home–school communi-
cation, school support for families, family and community help for schools, school
support for learning at home, collaboration with community agencies, and community
education. Thus, the linkage of the processes of familialisation and individualisation in
children’s lives are now to be bolstered through ‘community involvement’.
Epstein’s typology is particularly interesting because she initially developed it as part
of an argument that, in the same way that parents and schools need to work together
for the beneŽ t of children’s education, the sociologies of family and of education need to
be integrated:
Most family texts and courses ignore the school, and most education courses
ignore the family … We must actively integrate the sociologies of education
and the family to understand schools and families as institutions and to
understand the roles and relationships of the individuals that share responsi-
bility for children. (Epstein, 1990a, pp. 118 & 122)
The sociologies of families and of education may well need to take account of each
other in developing models and explanations. However, neither Ž eld has produced a
unitary perspective and agreed body of knowledge (indeed, each is better termed
‘sociologies of …’), and sociologists working within them may not be so willing to follow
indiscriminately Epstein’s pro-parental involvement agenda in any such integration.
Miriam David (1993) has made similar comments about the need for analyses of family
and of education to inform each other, but from a far more critical stance. Indeed, she
and other sociologists have pointed to the need to acknowledge, investigate and assess the
impact of signiŽ cant and long-standing differences in material and social resources
between social groups, including gender relations, on home–school links and parental
involvement (for example, Reay, 1995; Lareau & Shumar, 1996; David et al., 1997;
Standing, 1999).
However, there is another pertinent sociological Ž eld that Epstein does not call upon
to be integrated into studies of home–school relations, and which points to a curious
 440 R. Edwards & P. Alldred

silence in typologies of parental involvement and home–school (and community) links—

the sociologies of childhood. Children and young people themselves are rarely considered
as actors in the process of home–school relations, rather than merely being the objects
of concern who manifest the educational outcome or product (Edwards & David, 1997).
The typologies themselves unthinkingly familialise and institutionalise children in as-
suming a one-way set of relationships between parents, schools (and communities) and
children. Parents’ and teachers’ (and communities’) attitudes and actions are presupposed
to be crucial, while children are implicitly placed as the inert recipients of these.
However, the process of individualisation identiŽ ed as a major trend in contemporary
children’s lives points towards the importance of paying attention to the part they may
play in parental involvement and integrating concerns from strands of the sociologies of
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childhood into any typologies.

Conceptualising Children
Theorists within the sociologies of childhood argue that children can be conceptualised
either as passive dependents of adults (as in familialisation and institutionalisation) or as
social actors exercising agency (as within individualisation). Alison James and Alan Prout
suggest that the former is tempered in social science theorising but still retains currency
in other academic, policy-making and professional circles:
Looking at children not only as the outcome of social processes but as actors
within them has gained widespread acceptance in UK social science thinking
… [Nevertheless] the conception of children as inadequately socialised future
adults still retains a powerful hold on the social, political, cultural and academic
agenda. (James & Prout, 1997, p. xiv)
It is these conceptions of children as dependents or as actors that have formed the
framework for long-standing debate and negotiations around the construction of child-
hood (Cunningham, 1995).
Dependency and agency are not mutually exclusive concepts. Most childhood sociol-
ogists recognise that children are in many ways dependent on parents and other adults,
with their childhoods shaped by wider social institutions and policies, and that their
abilities to act are tempered and constrained by these. Indeed, it is sociologists of
childhood who have identiŽ ed the processes of familialisation and institutionalisation
(Brannen & O’Brien, 1995; Qvortrup, 1995). Nevertheless, within sociologies of child-
hood, there is also a parallel emphasis on children as social actors who negotiate and
participate in the construction of their daily lives in much the same way as adults
(Waksler, 1991; Jenks, 1996; Alanen, 1998; James & Prout, 1997; James, et al., 1998).
This is in sharp contrast to the implicit or explicit model that portrays children as being
passively socialised by monolithic social institutions like family and education (James &
Prout, 1997), and which, as we have shown, dominates much thinking about home–
school relations. Rather, children are seen as ‘beings’ in their own right rather than
‘becomings’ who will one day mature (Qvortrup, 1995).
Not only have sociologists of childhood identiŽ ed the trend towards individualisation
in children’s lives, but it is arguable that it forms a base for those conducting intensive
empirical research exploring children’s own perspectives on their experiences. It is the
conceptualisation of children as re exive social actors that forms a context for arguments
that children can be, and are, legitimate and competent informants about their own lives
in social research concerning them (Alldred, 1998; Edwards & Alldred, 1999).
 Parental Involvement in Education 441

This is against a reliance on parents or others to speak about or report on children’s

behalf—a feature of some research on parental involvement in education. Indeed,
children tend to be both conceptually constrained by and substantively contained within
the social institutions of family and school (Alanen, 1990; Qvortrup, 1994, 1995). In
particular, the criticism made by some sociologists of childhood, that usage of the term
‘family’ has too often come to be identiŽ ed with parents, often applies to research in the
home–school relations Ž eld. Statements along the lines that ‘families need to be more
involved in schooling’ are a conceptual aspect of familialisation that renders children
invisible.
Furthermore, most strands of the sociologies of childhood tend to take account of
structural differences between children, around gender, class, ethnicity and age, rather
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than treating them as an undifferentiated unitary category. In this approach, childhood

is posed as a set of culturally and socially varied patterns. Children may be subject to the
widespread homogenising processes of familialisation, institutionalisation and individual-
isation, but this is occurring in the context and dynamics of other structural and local
frameworks of differentiation. Thus, the concrete implications of these main social
processes in contemporary children’s lives will be shaped and experienced as variable
rather than uniform (Edwards & Alldred, 1999).
Thus, in investigating the part of children and young people in parental involvement
in education, we need to priorities their variable interests and perspectives, and enable
their lives and activities to be made visible—however uncomfortable this may be for the
dominant orthodoxy on the nature of home—school relations. Our own research set out
to do this.

The ‘Children’s Understandings of Parental Involvement in Education’

Project [2]
This study is concerned with children’s experiences and perspectives on parents’
involvement in their education both in the family and home setting, and in the formal
educational environment of the school. It takes children and young people’s accounts as
central, and looks at their experiences and understandings as these occur within the
wider context of home–school relations, and the broader meanings of ‘family’ and
‘education’.
In order to include children and young people from a broad range of backgrounds in
our study, we selected a primary and secondary school in each of three contrasting
locations: inner-city London, a London suburb, and the town of Brighton. Deprivation
and af uence are strongly spatially concentrated as a result of urban development in the
post-war era (Hudson & Williams, 1995). Thus, each location produced a different
overall sample in terms of ethnic diversity, socio-economic background (using eligibility
for free school lunch to indicate levels of deprivation, and as a form of proxy for social
class), as well as a range of family forms.
In London, the inner-city primary and secondary schools each draw pupils from a
range of ethnic groups, mainly African–Caribbean, Asian and White. In these schools,
over half the pupils receive free school lunch because their parents are claiming beneŽ ts.
The London suburban primary and secondary schools also contain pupils from a range
of ethnic groups, mainly Asian and White. However, in these schools, only 10% of the
pupils have free school lunch. The Brighton schools have much less ethnic diversity,
being overwhelmingly White, and have around 20% of pupils claiming free school lunch,
which is close to the national average.
 442 R. Edwards & P. Alldred

All of the schools broadly adhered to the orthodoxy concerning the promotion of
parental involvement in education. In general, they informed parents about what to
expect from the school and what was required from them (through letters, parent
consultation evenings, etc.), but the suburban primary school also particularly empha-
sised consultation with parents (who were encouraged to also consult their children).
We talked in depth, in small groups, in pairs and individually, to around 70 children
overall in Year 6 and Year 9 classes in these schools, i.e. 10 and 14 years old, respectively
(for further discussion of the research process, see Edwards & Alldred, 1999). The
discussions and interviews were concerned with their perceptions and experiences across
a wide range of curriculum subjects, school- and home-based activities, and other daily
and one-off issues. These covered not only the sorts of substantive activities and practices
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referred to in the adult-centered parental involvement typologies, but also wider

home–school relations and meanings. So, for example, we asked about getting ready for
school, the school day, and coming home from school; doing homework and who might
also be involved in this; parents helping in the classroom, going on school outings, and
talking to teachers, including at parent consultation evenings; teachers visiting homes;
school governance; taking school letters home and notes into school from home; who was
involved in choosing secondary schools and GCSE options; family based ‘educational’
possessions and activities, such as books, computer programes and family outings; and so
on. It is on the basis of the children and young people’s responses to these questions that
we elaborate a typology of parental involvement in education that is centered on them,
[3].

A Typology of Parental Involvement Centring on Children and Young

People
In order to construct a typology of parental involvement in education that renders
children and young people visible, we need to conceptualise them as potential actors in
that involvement. At its most basic level, this means starting with the assumption that
children and young people are able to be re exive agents in the home–school relations
process, and that they can exercise agency. Substantively, as we will see, our data shows
us that children and young people can actively shape, and work towards encouraging or
discouraging, ensuring or preventing, their parents’ involvement in their education for
their own reasons (and while we know of no other studies that speciŽ cally focus on
children’s understandings of parental involvement, there are indications in studies of
children at school that point to their activity in this respect; see review in Edwards &
David, 1997). However, we also need to recognise the context that provides opportunities
or constraints for children and young people’s exercise of agency. They are not the only
actors in home–school relations. Children’s desire for involved or uninvolved parents
may be constrained by the actors who more usually receive attention in home–school
relations—parents and schools. They are thus potentially rendered passive in the process.
However, there is no simple and rigid distinction between children and young people’s
activity or passivity. The impetus for children and young people’s activity in parental
involvement can shade into a passively active stance (i.e. they may choose to act as their
parents or the school wish). In this sense, their activity is not necessarily individualised,
in being their own re exive social action. Alternatively, it may shade into a form of active
passivity (i.e. a re exive choice not to take much action at all, but to let parents and/or
teachers make the running). Children’s ability to act is not the same as their choice to
do so.
 Parental Involvement in Education 443

Furthermore, as Epstein’s typology recognises, the sites in which parental involvement

can occur (home and school) are key issues, and the different substantive aspects of
parental involvement (i.e. homework, written communication, face-to-face contacts,
school decision-making, and so on) are also important. So, children and young people
can actively and strategically work towards, or passively respond to, both their parents’
involvement and uninvolvement at the same time, according to the site and/or the
aspect, or indeed be active towards parental involvement or univolvement in some ways
and passive in others. In this way, parental involvement and uninvolvement can shade
into forms of semi-involvement.
All these sorts of variations are signiŽ cant in understanding children and young
people’s activities in relation to parental involvement in education. We draw attention to
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their possibilities as we now discuss our typology in detail.

Category 1: Children as Active in Parental Involvement

Here, children and young people could speak of themselves as self-re exively being in
favour of home–school links, and as working towards their parents’ involvement—or
most often their mother’s involvement, as this was the parent to whom they mainly
referred, even for children in two-parent families. None of the children and young people
spoke about their parents (mothers) rebufŽ ng their advances, and not wishing to be
involved in their education. As these examples show, they talked about asking their
parents for help with their homework or to provide extra educational work, initiating
discussions about educational matters and seeking their advice, and spontaneously telling
them about their school day:
If I get stuck on my maths I normally ask my dad, and if I get stuck on
anything else I normally ask my mum. (Bob, town secondary school)
Well sometimes she asks me ‘how was school today’, and like that. But most
of the time I go—say something really interesting’s happened at school, I go
‘Mum, guess what’s happened at school today, and she goes ‘what’, and I go
‘guess!’ But in the end I tell her ‘cos she won’t guess. In that way I end up
telling my mum. (Natasha, suburban primary school)
Such activity on the part of children and young people can be seen as an interesting mix
of individualisation and familialisation in its institutionally incorporated form. Very few
of them explicitly referred to involving their parents in their education purely because it
would advance the quality and level of their formal learning. Rather, it seemed the
children and young people were concerned with the familial intimate connection
between themselves and their parents, especially mothers. As Natasha, already quoted,
went on to say:
I like sitting down with my mum because she’s like—I don’t know, she
like—we just sit there sometimes and we just talk … Most girls, I don’t know
if this is true, but most girls are more close to their mothers because they can
tell them anything.
Children could initiate and welcome their parents’ involvement because these people
were their parents and should know about their school lives, and, as their children, they
liked their involvement.
All of the sorts of parental involvement at the behest of children mentioned so far,
however, take place within the home setting. There were far fewer examples of children
 444 R. Edwards & P. Alldred

saying that they were active in ensuring their parents’ involvement in their education in
the school setting. Where this was the case, it was mainly spoken about in relation to
encouraging parents—again, most often mothers in practice—to come as a helper on
school outings or in the classroom, and also coming into the school for informal, as well
as the formal opportunities for, consultations with their teachers (again, most often
referring to mothers in practice):
She go to the trips and we enjoy it very much when she comes on school trips.
The last trip she said ‘it’s very nice being with your class because they’re very
nice’, and my class says ‘your mum is very nice, we’ll make another trip with
her’. (Andres, suburban primary school)
Thus, here, children and young people were selective about the sites for initiating and
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promoting their individualised, institutionally informed, familialisation.

Within this category, however, there was a sense that some of the children and young
people’s desire to involve their parents was not initiated by them to quite the same
extent. Rather, they might be passively active in that their activity took the form of
agreement with their parents’ own moves to be involved, which could also be coupled
with an awareness that this was promoted by the school. They thus supported the idea
of parental involvement, and enabled it through their actions, rather than initiating it.
Here, individualisation is Ž rmly in service, and responsive to, familialisation and
institutionalisation. Such a stance towards parental involvement could then, in turn,
shade into the more passive approach of our second category.

Category 2: Children as Passive in Parental Involvement

Children and young people could portray themselves as being quite happy to just go
along with, or let their parents or school get on with, the process of involved
home–school relations without much active and re exive facilitatory or obstructory input
from themselves. In this sense, we return to the dominant portrayal of parental
involvement and home–school relations as dependent upon the actions and attitudes of
parents and schools, with children as passive outcomes of this process.
They said they did not mind their parents (again, mainly mothers) prompting them to
do their homework or offering to help with it, buying them educational materials (books,
games, etc.), giving them advice about schooling matters, and going into the school to
talk formally or informally to teachers. They responded when their mothers asked about
their school day. They co-operated in passing on information to their parents from the
school, showed their parents their homework diary when asked to by parents or teachers,
and/or let their mother check their school bag for any letters from the school. James’
interview (town secondary school), for example, was characterised by a series of ‘It’s
okay’ and ‘I just don’t mind’ when pressed as to how he felt about his mother’s
involvement in his education, and Pooja (suburban secondary school) exempliŽ ed
another aspect of this willing passivity when she said:
You should tell your parents about your school day ‘cos they’ve a right to ask
you about it.
Nevertheless, there were degrees of passivity, and some children and young people were
somewhat more active and re exive in terms of facilitating parental involvement. Thus,
here we have a shading back into our Ž rst category of children as active in parental
involvement. Such active passivity was largely evident where children and young people
asserted that they knew implicitly that their parents and/or the school wanted or
 Parental Involvement in Education 445

required involvement, and in what aspects, and so acted accordingly without being told
or asked. Jack (suburban secondary school), for example, explained how he did not really
see much point in telling his mother when he got into trouble at school, but mostly did
so because he felt that was what she wanted (on the basis of their familial intimate
relationship, as already noted):
If I get into trouble at school I don’t actually Ž nd it that useful telling [my
parents], but I think they Ž nd it more annoying if I don’t tell them myself, than
Ž nding it out from my Link Book … I think [my mum] Ž nds it annoying
because she thinks that I don’t trust her [if I don’t tell her]. I do trust her.
[Jack’s emphasis]
Parents were thus not necessarily active themselves in wanting involvement in a speciŽ c
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instance, but were a form of anticipatory ‘presence’ in the children and young people’s
minds. Here, familialisation and institutionalisation were assumed by the children and
young people.

Category 3: Children as Active in Parental Uninvolvement

Children and young people could be just as active in discouraging, evading and
obstructing their parents’ involvement as they could in its promotion (as we have seen
in the Ž rst category). They worked at rebufŽ ng any attempts at parental involvement on
the part of both parents and school. They talked about keeping their school life separate
from their home life and parents, and about having privacy boundaries. This was framed
in two main ways.
First, in a ‘pure’ form of individualisation, they saw themselves as an autonomous
person who could make their own decisions, take responsibility for regulating their own
homework, and generally manage schooling matters themselves, and who thus did not
need their parents’ involvement:
I concentrate much better at home ‘cos I’ve made myself strict rules. I get 30
minutes a day to play computer. When I come back I have something to eat
and I start working at 5. At 6.30 I’ve got time to play until 7. At 7 I start
reading, and I go to bed at 9. (Bart, town primary school)
Well my parents don’t tell me to do my homework because sometimes they
don’t always know if I have homework. Because I think it’s my own responsi-
bility to remind myself, not just leave it. (Samantha, suburban primary school)
Second, in an attempt to resist the institutional incorporation of home and family life,
children and young people spoke about actively blocking and evading their parents’
involvement in their education. This in no way implies that they were alienated from
their parents generally; indeed, a few seemed to be doing this to avoid ‘stressing’ their
parents. They spoke of limiting their parents’ knowledge about their schooling, especially
through school communication with parents via letters (which did not get passed on
unless the children considered them important), and/or generally avoided telling their
parents’ about their school day:
If it’s a bad letter I’ll forget about it and just put it in the bin … Like we got
a letter and straight away I just looked at the price, £448 for eight days, and
go ‘my god’. Like my parents couldn’t afford it so even if they did let me go
they’d have stress in their mind that we have to pay that much. (Sabrina,
suburban secondary school)
 446 R. Edwards & P. Alldred

Every time when I go in the house [my parents] always go ‘David, how was
your day?’ … I go ‘don’t ask’, and they don’t. And then the next day they don’t
ask, and then the next day they do and I go ‘don’t ask’, and it carries on like
that. I don’t want to tell them about the day ‘cos it’s boring. (David, inner-city
primary school)
The boundaries to parental involvement that children and young people could erect were
not only restricted to the home setting. Having their parents come on school outings,
help in the classroom, come up to the school to talk to their teacher, or become school
governors also breached the separation of worlds that they worked towards. Certain
types of parental involvement in the school setting could also be seen as acutely
embarrassing or constraining:
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No I wouldn’t like it if any of my family came in more often. You’d deŽ nitely
get teased and you can’t be like your normal self at school … people’d turn
into a totally different person if your parents came in. (Khadija, inner-city
secondary school)
Here then, children and young people’s individualisation was approached and experi-
enced as in tension with, or even threatened by, familialisation and institutionalisation.
Within both autonomous and resistory forms, however, the children and young
people’s activity could be strategically deployed. They spoke of exerting control over
their parents’ involvement through deciding what aspects of their schooling to tell them
about and what to withhold. Similarly, they said they could go along with or encourage
their parents’ involvement in the school setting under speciŽ c circumstances. These
circumstances mainly focused around parents having a good reason for going to the
school and having Ž rst warned them that this would occur, as in this discussion between
Kaysha and Karima (from the inner-city secondary school):
Kaysha: No they wouldn’t come in [to talk to the teacher] and I wouldn’t like
it if they did. It’s just embarrassing. There has to be a reason why
they must come in. It feels weird.
Karima: If you’re naughty, then that’s alright, but just no reason.
Kaysha: It’s embarrassing they come into school.
Karima: Come into school for no reason.
Thus, the line between parental involvement and uninvolvement becomes fuzzy, to
produce various forms of semi-involvement. This semi-involvement on the part of their
parents might be shaped by the children and young people’s own decisions or, in forms
of passive activity or active passivity, it might also be their enabling or facilitatory
response to stated parental desires to be involved or uninvolved in particular ways. This
shades back into both categories 1 and 2 of our typology, and also into the more passive
stance of category 4 that we discuss next.

Category 4: Children as Passive in Parental Uninvolvement

The situation regarding the extent of their parents’ involvement in their education could
also be portrayed by the children and young people as constrained by their parents
themselves. As with category 2, this Ž ts with dominant political and professional
understandings of the process of home–school relations as shaped by parents (as well as
schools), this time in the ‘negative’ sense of ‘missing parents’.
 Parental Involvement in Education 447

No children and young people saw their parents as wilfully uninvolved; rather, for a
variety of reasons, they were prevented from being involved. The most common reasons
were that they were not the type of person to get involved:
My mum can’t [be involved] because when she was working she couldn’t. Now
if it’s like a school trip and we’re out for like a week or something, no-one
would be able to look after my brother. My mum wouldn’t do it anyway. If it’s
a parents’ meeting she wouldn’t go, she doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like anyone
knowing all about her feelings. She doesn’t like anyone knowing. [Would you
rather that she did go?] It’s up to her really, isn’t it. It would be up to my mum.
(Emma, town primary school)
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Alternatively, some parents could not be involved, especially with homework, because
they did not understand the process of schooling or the work itself. This was especially
the case for those minority ethnic children whose parents did not speak or understand
much English, and thus found any form of involvement difŽ cult. Jasem (inner-city
secondary school), for example, had to translate all written communications for his
parents and concluded: ‘I guess it makes them more distant from school’.
In addition, fathers were sometimes said to be unable to be involved because of other
commitments, especially their hours of work:
My dad, well he can’t [be involved] because he works … We don’t see much
of him during the week. I wake him up about 10 pm and then he goes out and
comes back in the morning all week. (Natasha, suburban primary school)
Only rarely did children or young people speak of wishing that their parents were able
to be more involved in their education, or described a lack of parental involvement as
holding them back educationally. More often, the separation between their home and
school lives suited them, or they accepted it without much question, as in the earlier
quote from Emma.
Within this, of course, children and young people spoke of shades of parental
involvement, such as where parents could become involved because there were some
aspects of schoolwor k that they understood, or they were described as strategic about
their involvement in the same way that the children and young people themselves could
be. For example, they could involve themselves in their children’s education in the home
setting but not go into the school, or only go into school to challenge or attempt to rectify
negative situations, such as bullying by other pupils or mistreatment by a teacher.
Anticipating parental uninvolvement could also lead to a sort of active passivity, where
children ‘knew’ that their parents would not want to be, or could not be, involved in a
particular aspect of their education and so did not attempt to approach them about it
or pass on information from the school about that aspect of involvement:
Some [of the letters home from school] are just about things your mum and
dad aren’t going to want to know about, say a parent governor and they might
not want to be one, you just know they won’t … so you just put it in your bag
and forget about it. (Ray, town secondary school)
Either way, the impetus for parental involvement or semi-involvement largely lay with
the parents themselves. Children and young people were subject to what they regarded
as an acceptable familialisation that limited any institutional incursions, in that they
accepted their status as dependent on parents who were unable to undertake educational
involvement as part of their parenting.
 448 R. Edwards & P. Alldred

Patterns of Social Differentiatio n in Living Familialisation, Institutionalisa-

tion and Individualisation through Home–School Relations
By their very nature, typologies work at the level of ideal types. They are ‘second order
constructs’ (Schutz, 1979) of key features abstracted from an interplay between concep-
tual and substantive starting points, and the empirical data itself. In terms of what the
children and young people actually told us, there are more complex variations on their
activity and passivity. The rigid distinctions between categories in our typology, as we
have indicated throughout our discussion, in practice can be fuzzy and permeable. Thus
children and young people could negotiate activity and passivity in their parents’
involvement in their education in complex ways. This meant that individual children
appeared in several different places on our typology depending on the site and aspect of
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the (un)involvement that they were telling us about. Banks (at the inner-city secondary
school), for example, actively involved his parents at home, especially in urging them to
check his homework, told them about his day when asked (strategically holding back
negative information), accepted his mother phoning the school to see how he was getting
on, but did not pass on his mother’s verbal requests for him to be given more homework
and did not want her to actually go up to the school to discuss his progress with his
teacher.
Critical analyses concerning the resources available to different social groups of
parents, and concepts of socio-structural variation between children, also point to the
need to pay attention to the ways that gender, class, ethnic and age differences may
impact on children and young people’s understandings and actions in home–school
relations. As we have said, we cannot ‘allocate’ each of the children and young people
participating in our research to any one particular category of our typology. Neverthe-
less, we were struck by some particular patterns in aspects of particular groups of
children and young people’s accounts (although how the group of children then
combined the categorical aspect in question with other categorical aspects of negotiating
parental involvement are not patterned). These patterns reveal complex relationships
between gender, class ethnicity and age, and as these characteristics coalesce in particular
schools.
It was notable that girls talked far more about being active in involving, or supporting
the involvement of, their parents, especially their mothers, in their education. Posing
parental involvement in ungendered terms (with respect to the parents), as is the case in
much political and practitioner, and even academic, discussion, obscures both the gender
of the parents who are involved, how this may interact with the gender of their children,
and children and young people’s own activities around which parent they involve in their
education. This involvement was strongest in the home setting, where girls, but also some
boys, often referred to spontaneously telling their mothers about their school day, and
involving them in, or welcoming their help with, homework. Within this, boys tended to
focus more on their formal school work (especially their achievements), while girls spoke
about discussing broader aspects of their schooling. Actively encouraging parental
involvement could also be included within the school setting for middle-class girls
especially, and children in the primary schools more generally. Parental involvement in
the school setting, other than for formal parent consultation evenings, seems to be
something that children see themselves as ‘growing out of’, and the young people in the
secondary schools often spoke of this as embarrassing and constraining:
My mum used to help in school a lot in [my primary school] because she had
[my little brother] and I don’t think she was working then, so she had time to
 Parental Involvement in Education 449

come in. [But she doesn’t come into your secondary school at all?] I don’t know whether
I’d want them all coming in now because it’s embarrassing when your parents
come into school now really. (Emma, town secondary school)

Given the signiŽ cance of mothers, parental involvement from the children and young
people’s perspective had little to do with how many parents they had available to them.
This is particularly interesting in the light of policy-makers’ and professionals’ concerns,
or even pronouncements, about the familial circumstances that may block institutionali-
sation’s incorporation of familialisation—that children from lone-mother families have
less involved parents (see, for example, comments by the General Secretary of the
Professional Association of Teachers, quoted in Daily Telegraph, 8 August 1991). (See also
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Standing (1999) for a discussion of lone mothers and parental involvement.)

As we noted earlier, activity in, or support for, parental involvement was mainly
related to a sense of familial connection, not merely related to educational outcomes.
Nevertheless, in responding to questions about why they thought they did well in some
curriculum subjects and not so well in others, girls were far more likely to refer to the
support of other family members, teachers and other pupils, as well as their own efforts,
with boys focusing more on the latter (Edwards et al., 1998). The gendered aspects of
feelings of relational connection have been widely discussed (for example, Gilligan &
Brown, 1992; Sevenhuijsen, 1998), but the concrete implications of this for children and
young people’s understandings and experiences of parental involvement in education has
not been given much attention. As our data indicates, girls may thus experience, and
work with, familialisation and institutionalisation in different ways to boys.
The implications of social class, as this interacts with gender, ethnicity and age, are
also striking. Children and young people in middle-class circumstances (from the
suburban and town primary and secondary schools) were far more likely to take a stance
of active passivity in portraying themselves as happy to go along with and facilitate their
parents’ involvement in their education (although for the girls this often also shaded right
over into activity). As such, it would appear that they were far more subject to the
guiding and channelling of their parents and the school (see also Reay & Ball (1998) on
this feature in school choice). That is, they were more accepting of familialisation and
institutionalisation in their lives and, in the case of girls especially, it seems that this
formed part of the process of a relational type of individualisation.
Nevertheless, not all the middle-class children and young people promoted or accepted
the familialisation and institutionalisation of their lives in the form of parental involve-
ment and close home–school links. Those at secondary school could also take an active
role in discouraging their parents’ involvement, and keeping home and school separate.
It is notable that they took what we have identiŽ ed as the autonomous, rather than the
resistory stance on this, focusing on making their own decisions and taking responsibility
for themselves. For some middle-class children, then, especially as they get older, there
are indications that the process of individualisation can be experienced in a disconnected
sense, and familialisation regarded as impinging on this.
The children and young people in working-class circumstances, especially in the
inner-city schools, in contrast, were far more likely to be active either in initiating their
parents’ involvement (mainly girls), or in blocking their involvement through a resistory,
rather than autonomous, stance that was not so disconnected in that is was concerned
with resisting institutional incursions into family life. In these ways, either because of or
in spite of their disempowerment in terms of their social placing as children and as from
a class with less power and resources in society generally (and as this can combine with
 450 R. Edwards & P. Alldred

minority ethnicity), working-class children and young people seem to be more active in
shaping, and in taking and/or being given more control over, their parents’ involvement
in their education (see also Reay & Ball, 1998).
There is, however, a major caveat to this activity for children and young people from
working class and/or some minority ethnic groups, where it is concerned with involving
parents in their education. That is, their parents’ own social powerlessness—an inability
to become involved because they felt uncomfortable, did not know enough, and/or could
not communicate in English.

Commonalities in Living Familialisation, Institutionalisation and Individu-

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alisation through Home–School Relations

We have already drawn attention to differences between children and young people in
their understandings and experiences of parental involvement, as these reveal the
variable interaction of the processes of familialisation, institutionalisation and individual-
isation in their lives. However, there were important commonalities in the children and
young people’s reactions to some aspects of home–school relations.
Earlier in this paper, we noted a recent initiative concerning what policy-makers have
referred to as ‘missing’ parents, whereby they are visited in their homes to discuss their
children’s schooling. We have already seen that parents may be ‘missing’ as a result of
their children’s own activities around parental involvement, and that this ‘absence’ may
only be in terms of involvement in the school setting and in ways that the school can
recognise. None of the schools involved in our research had instituted any moves to visit
their pupils’ parents in their homes. However, we did raise the issue of teachers coming
to their homes with the children and young people, and received remarkably similar
responses from them. This exchange between Emma and May, from the town secondary
school, is typical of their reactions:
Emma: It would be embarrassing having teachers come to your home.

May: Yeah, they’d see the real you! I suppose I’d go quiet if they came.

Emma: I’d probably hide upstairs.

May: Yeah, it’s embarrassing ‘cos they’d see like your house and your
family, and I’d feel like they’re judging me or something.
Hiding in the bedroom or going out, and feeling that the state of their home and their
family life was being judged, were themes that occurred again and again in the children
and young people’s discussions of this issue. This particular sort of linking of institution-
alisation with familialisation was too much to negotiate and required resistance—even on
the part of the few children and young people whose parents were actually teachers.
Thus, while such home visits may be viewed as desirable by policy-makers and
professionals, or maybe even some parents, and may be in the interests of home–school
relations from their point of view, for children and young people they transgress a
strongly held boundary.
There was also resistance from most of the children and young people to the link
between familialisation and institutionalisation in another aspect of home–school rela-
tions that is a feature of home–school contracts: school and teachers being informed by
 Parental Involvement in Education 451

parents about their children’s home circumstances and problems. Typical statements
concerning this include:
I wouldn’t like teachers to know what I do at home, that’s my life. I don’t need
to know anything about them. (Nisha, suburban secondary school)
It’s private. Just like school is private from home, home is private from school.
(Mark, suburban primary school)
Generally, the children and young people felt that it was only valid for the school to be
informed about their home life if it was affecting their education or if child protection
issues were involved. Nevertheless, even under these circumstances, most felt that it was
still up to them to decide whether and which teachers to approach about their problems,
or decide how to respond to teachers’ enquiries:
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It’s none of their business. I would say to a teacher, if she was really bugging
me and kept on saying ‘well, what’s wrong’, I would if it was me, I would just
go ‘it’s nothing to do with you, can you leave me alone’. I used to cry [about
my mother’s partner being violent] and they’d say ‘what’s wrong’, and I used
to say ‘oh well’ and I’d like lie. I’d just say I was upset because I felt ill. (Emma,
town primary school)
Thus, notions of individualisation were called upon by the majority of the children and
young people to counter the processes of familialisation and institutionalisation in these
particular aspects of home–school relations, and the incorporation of the former by the
latter.

Some Further Issues

There is a Ž nal aspect of home–school relations to which we wish to refer brie y here.
Those concerned with, and working within, the dominant consensus on home–school
links have latterly, as we have said, turned their attention to the resources and supports
for this available within the wider communities in which families and schools are
situated. We also noted the con ation of ‘family’ with ‘parents’ identiŽ ed by some
childhood sociologists. To some extent, because of our focus on the part children and
young people can play in parental involvement, and our concern with familialisation and
institutionalisation as these interact with individualisation, in this article we have been
complicit with the usual obscuring of the ways that children involve others in their
education. ‘Home’ and ‘family’ can also encompass brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts
and uncles, and so on, as well as parents. And these are not the only people involved in
children’s lives, not least their classmates and other friends. Indeed, as we have seen,
other pupils within the school can play a role, as an audience, in generating embarrass-
ment for young people especially, in relation to their parents’ involvement within the
school setting.
The children and young people taking part in our research could be active in
involving, as well as passively receiving the involvement of, a whole range of people apart
from their parents. Among those from whom the children and young people mentioned
actively soliciting help with homework were brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts and
uncles, cousins, and classmates (either face-to-face or on the telephone). They could also
refer to older siblings signing their homework diaries, writing notes explaining school
absence for them, or coming into school for consultation evenings. This was especially
the case for those from minority ethnic groups whose parents did not speak English. The
role played by siblings was even further strengthened for a few of the minority ethnic
children who Ž rst came to Britain without their parents to join older brothers and sisters.
 452 R. Edwards & P. Alldred

These older siblings then undertook a parenting role until their parents followed the
children a few years later. Involvement of other family members could also be the case
for children whose parents’ work patterns did not easily permit contact with the school.
In this sense, a focus purely on ‘parental’ involvement in education marginalises, and
devalues, this wider familial involvement.

Conclusion
In this article, we have been concerned with exploring the process of parental involve-
ment in education from the perspectives of children and young people, revealing how the
trends towards familialisation, institutionalisation and individualisation are implicated,
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experienced and negotiated in their lives in variable ways. In producing a typology of

parental involvement in education that centres on children and young people, we have
made their presence visible and shown how they can be active, as well as passive, in
home–school relations. Yet, as we elaborated earlier in this article, the integral familial-
isation and institutionalisation of the prevalent emphasis on parental involvement does
not consider children as participants in the process, other than as passive dependents. At
national and local levels, policy and practice target parents and schools, with home–
school agreements as a notable example of this. Interestingly, in terms of policy
recognition of children, this runs counter to the Children Act 1989 which, in contrast to
education policy, brings children as actors into the legal framework (Nottage, 1991), and
gives them greater rights over certain issues in their lives.
Our evidence suggests that children’s and young people’s role in home–school
relations does need to be considered if policy-makers and practitioners wish to intensify
parental involvement in education. Certainly, some strategies will need to be developed
to encourage children, just as much as their parents, to initiate and/or facilitate their
parents’ involvement in their education, and convince them that the accompanying
blurring of the boundaries between home and school are in their own best educational
interests. At the very least, children could be mandated as parties to home–school
agreements. Within any such interventions, however, policy-makers and practitioners will
also need to recognise that parents who may be ‘missing’ from the school’s perspective
are not necessarily missing from children and young people’s perspectives: those we
interviewed referred to far more parental involvement in their home setting than in the
school, and could themselves selectively work towards this being the case. Thus,
policy-makers and practitioners need to recognise the occurrence of this ‘invisible’ (to
them) involvement that children play their part in initiating or facilitating, and perhaps
keep ‘private’ from the school.
However, attempts to involve parents in their children’s education, even if they are
directed at children and young people, are not necessarily an unmitigated good. They
will differentially impact on, and be shaped by, children and young people from various
social groups (which tend to coalesce in particular schools), introducing further tensions
into the relationship between the processes of familialisation, institutionalisation and
individualisation in their lives. Our research suggests that a number of scenarios are
possible here. The increased familialisation and institutionalisation involved may accord
with several of the aspects of activity or passivity of girls, those in middle-class
circumstances and younger children. Nevertheless, some middle-class children may Ž nd
their sense of autonomy is reduced or threatened. Children and young people from
working-class circumstances, furthermore, and boys more generally, may either increase
their resistance to attempts to incorporate their home and family lives into educational
 Parental Involvement in Education 453

agenda, or have their ability to shape their own boundaries between parts of their lives
removed. Those whose parents cannot be involved may have their social powerlessness
reinforced. Each of these courses has implications for these children and young people’s
understandings of the nature of individualised personhood as related to connection,
autonomy or resistance. Furthermore, the concentration on home–school partnership
and parental involvement in education risks riding roughshod over children’s and young
people’s privacy boundaries generally, and narrowing their ability to creatively and
complexly manoeuvre and respond to shades of parental involvement in their education.
Policy-makers and practitioners concerned with home–school links thus have to recognise
that there may be issues other than children’s educational interests at stake. They need to
be careful in balancing this with their social interests.
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Our Ž ndings may not be comfortable ones for policy-makers and practitioners
concerned with encouraging parental involvement in education. They may not be
welcomed by academic and other researchers committed to the dominant orthodoxy on
home–school links either. Nevertheless, they are certainly of relevance to their endeav-
ours. Taking account of children’s and young people’s understandings and experiences
in relation to home–school relations, and recognising the broader, and variable, implica-
tions for the processes of familialisation, institutionalisation and individualisation in their
lives, will pose them a creative challenge.

Correspondence: Prof. Rosalind Edwards, Social Sciences Research Centre, Faculty of

Humanities and Social Science, South Bank University, 103 Borough Road, London
SE1 OAA, UK.

NOTES
[1] This reveals the institutional standpoint of these sorts of perspectives on parental involvement. Parents are
merely ‘missing’ from the perspective of educational policy-makers and schools. This does not mean that
they are missing in other senses, including from the perspective of their children.
[2] Funded by the ESRC under grant no. L129251012 , as part of the Children 5–16 research programme.
Professor Miriam David, Keele University, is co-director of the project.
[3] Where we refer to the names of individual children and young people, these are of course pseudonyms
and were usually chosen by the children and young people themselves.

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