Abstract Book of the 8th International Conference on Innovative Research in Education
Year: 2025
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Parental Involvement in School Pedagogy: New Ways of Cooperation
Adam Haisraeli
ABSTRACT:
This paper brings together two rich bodies of knowledge that to this day have barely intersected in research: parental involvement in the school and processes of pedagogical change. Until now, parental involvement has been studied in many contexts, but references to parental involvement in a school’s pedagogy are rare. Management of pedagogical change has also been studied extensively, but mainly by relating to the school as an organization that functions separately from the family and community contexts. This study is based on 22 in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with parents, principals, and senior education officials of two elementary schools that are undergoing pedagogical changes. Whereas the schools have similar demographic characteristics, they differ in pedagogy: One is an older school characterized by a conservative pedagogy; the second school is new and was founded with innovative pedagogy in the spirit of the 21st century. The findings reveal that the parents in both schools are interested in influencing the school’s pedagogy, but that they do so in opposite directions: The parents at the conservative school are interested in promoting innovative learning, while the parents in the innovative school are interested in reintroducing conservative practices, such as frontal teaching and standardized evaluation. The findings of the study concern the processes of change that schools, families and communities are undergoing since the corona epidemic and throughout the last years, which are characterized by frequent changes and great uncertainty.
Keywords: Parent School Relationship, Elementary Schools (pedagogy), Educational Practices, Educational Change