Social Networks and Home-School Relations

Abstract

Although parental participation in schooling is a common topic in the rhetoric of educational reform, few researchers have looked at the process by which people learn to become parents. This article describes how parents in two communities constructed their roles in a social context shaped by economic resources, local notions of home-school relations, and information networks. Framed from a Vygotskian perspective, it examines parenting as a social activity that is internalized by individuals through their daily interactions. It connects the actions of parents with the activities of schools, showing the relationships between family ideas about their roles and the practices of school as interrelated.

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