Developing the home-school relationship using digital ... - Futurelab

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYIn recent years there has been a growingunderstanding of the importance of factorsoutside the immediate school environmentin explaining children’s success in school.At the same time, there has been increasingattention paid to the ways in which children’shome and family cultures are valuable learningenvironments in their own right. How children’sschools relate to and work together with theirhome environments is therefore a criticalsubject for school staff to consider in order tosupport children’s learning in the widest sense.Parental engagement in children’s learning hasseen particular attention from policy-makersand practitioners, as part of a wider drive toimprove children’s achievement and narrowthe gap between children from disadvantagedbackgrounds and their peers. Schools arealso being encouraged and expected to makeinformation and access to learning resourcesavailable online for children and their parents.The availability of a home computer andinternet access is seen as important enoughfor learning that the Home Access initiativeannounced plans to support low incomefamilies to acquire these technologies.The research project on which this handbookis based was situated within the contextoutlined above. It sought to understand theneeds and aspirations of teachers, parentsand children for the home-school relationship,and how the use of digital technologies maysupport as well as raise new issues for homeschoolrelationships.The emphasis on parental engagement, as wellas much work on home-school relationships,has tended to focus on the relationshipbetween parents and children’s schools, butchildren themselves play an active role inmediating between their home and schoolcontexts, making connections between thelearning they do at school and home (or not),and actively facilitating or resisting theirparents’ involvement in their learning. Childrentherefore need to be considered as at the heartof any strategies to support home-schoolrelationships and parents’ engagement inchildren’s learning.Education should equip people to participate inthe world in which they live, to make informedchoices and to have some agency over theirown lives and the lives of the local and globalcommunities of which they are part. Children’slearning is not restricted to the time theyspend in school. Through homework, throughfollowing their own interests and hobbies, andthrough participation in activities with theirfamily and peers they are often engaging inpersonally meaningful learning. Underpinningthis research project therefore is the idea thatchildren need to be able to make meaningfulconnections between their learning in schooland the learning and cultures of their homeenvironments. Education aims to broadenyoung people’s horizons, develop theiraspirations and make new opportunitiesavailable to them – but for these goals to berealistic it first needs to connect with theirlived experiences. Schools need to considerways to bring the knowledges and cultures ofhome into ‘conversation’ with the knowledgesand cultures of school, supporting childrento draw on all the resources available tothem to enable them to become resilient andresourceful learners.The starting point for thinking about homeschoolrelationships needs to adopt a ‘wealth’rather than a ‘deficit’ model. The uniquecontribution of children’s home and familylife needs to be valued and validated, anddeveloped and built on to support children’slearning at home, rather than attempting tointroduce a completely new and alien set ofschool-based requirements on children andtheir families.Negotiating the needs and aspirations ofteachers, parents and children for the homeschoolrelationship is likely to reveal tensionsbetween different groups’ priorities. Teachers,parents and children are not homogenousgroups and each will have different priorities,which need to be acknowledged. A more explicitprocess of negotiation and consultation couldsupport the development of shared expectationsof the respective roles and responsibilities ofteachers, parents and children.2