Browsing by Author "Palmu, Minna"

The aim of this thesis is to participate in the ongoing conversation concerning home and school cooperation, in which the upbringing responsibilities are being negotiated and the relations of home and school are structured and reorganized. Home-School partnership offers an ideal cooperation model in which the parents have equal opportunities to make their voices heard. On the other hand, the idea of partnership has been criticized because the core elements of equality, trust, voluntary and participation do not consider the unequal power relations between parents and teachers. Previous research has shown that the rhetoric of Home-School partnership usually differs from the way partnership is practiced in school settings. The rhetoric emphasizes agency, activity and dynamics of the parents but when put in practice parents are usually seen as passive crowd, passive receivers of information, participants of events, volunteers and non-participating supporters. I participate in this ongoing conversation with the help of two research questions, which I approached by using the elements of discursive analysis. My research questions are: 1. What are the Home-School partnership ideals the barometer respondent parents are building in their responses, and what kind of tensions these ideals might include? And 2. What kind of parenthood is possible within these ideals? My research data consists of one open ended question of the Parents 2018 Barometer, which I interpreted as a structuralised e-form interview question. As an answer to my research questions I identified four Home-School partnership ideals. These ideals included tensions, which came apparent when parents were building their Home-School partnership with other parents of the school and when the parents were problematizing their participation in relation of trust, the school practises and the voluntary aspect of Home-School partnership. The findings of this thesis also show based on the partnership that there are a variety of possible parenthood identities to parents in these ideals which can be conflicting and challenging to each other.