Respondents acknowledge that a positive home/school relationship should keep the child as the focus for communication, and perceive that fostering a pleasant
atmosphere in school will encourage parents to be more willing to help their child. Teachers speak of the need to build trust with home and being consistent with the support they provide to support student learning outcomes. While an intention to make school accessible is expressed, a potential exists that teachers may be inclined to temper their engagement practices according to the extent to which they feel valued or respected as an educator. Making school less frightening for parents, also means
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letting go of their professional demeanour, to some extent. Fiona says it is important to:
Make school a less scary place, because if the parents have had a bad experience at school, they don’t want to come and see us. So if we try and be as human as we possibly can. And sometimes the change in language, like if I talk to someone in a not so professional way, then it’s more relating for them on their level, than me talking in my teacher speak to them, and they are like, what’s she talking about?
However, for Julie, lack of communication from home signals a possibility that parents are transferring parental responsibilities to the school, and teachers become de facto parents. In Julie’s experience, there is a difference between the ‘imagined’ meaning and the ‘real’ meaning of home/school partnerships:
So it’s the child knowing that the teacher and the family are on the same page. Knowing that the kid knows that all three of them have got equal stakes in
making sure that the child succeeds. And also, it’s the kid knowing that they can’t play one off against the other. In reality, I feel like it’s the school giving hard out trying to involve parents, and the parents, the majority of parents just being like, it’s babysitting. Right, here you go, take the child. I feel like that’s a lot of
parents.
While professional insight in the classroom environment works to accommodate student needs, teachers may be inclined to reinstate professional boundaries in pursuit of making explicit their expectations of parent engagement practices. An apparent withdrawal of parental support changes dynamics in the relationship, where a perceived lack of accepted social conventions may occasion the teacher to view the home school partnership as one of convenience to meet the student’s learning outcomes. For example, Susan says:
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Parents say that they’d like to help at home and so you get things ready for them, they take it home and it doesn’t often get done at home. As I am getting older, I am getting a little bit more blunt. I have said, this needs to be done, so we do it at school. I make sure it’s done in the morning, we make sure it’s done in the afternoon, and it would be great if you could do it in the evening, and this is how you do it.
It is perceived that the home/school partnership is fundamental to student achievement. Teachers say they cannot accommodate all of the student learning requirements in school hours yet teachers time and again find themselves making concessions in educational expectations by setting optional homework, and making space for families to have time out at home by way of minimising additional stressors. Susan continues:
I make it really, really, easy for parents, because they’re people that are struggling with this child anyway, so I don’t want the struggle to carry on at home. So I’ve said, if it’s going to be a struggle, stop and try it again the next day. As soon as it’s a struggle don’t do it.
Brenda has had a similar experience:
The way they learn at home is, you know the kids might read something else, or they just don’t do the homework that’s set by the school at all. And I don’t make a big issue out of it because I know it’s hard for some families. They do get learning at home but it’s only a really, really, small part.
While it is anticipated that teachers can rely on parental support to advance student academic achievement, home circumstances may not make that possible. Both Susan and Brenda convey an insight that there may be latent tensions within the home, making it difficult for families to have, the right frame of mind to assist their child with home learning. That inside knowledge tempers any overt insistence that homework
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must be completed. Cognisant that learning across home and school will be of benefit, however, teachers talk about the ways in which they try to bring parents into the pedagogical field.