Between consensus and conflict: Schools and parents negotiating the educational trajectories of students at risk of early school leaving

Abstract

There is a vast amount of literature which locates the home-school relationship as a keystone to improving academic outcomes and preventing school dropouts. It is not always sufficiently clear, however, how these relationships are established and function and how they impact on students’ school engagement. This paper draws on the concepts of familial habitus and institutional habitus to better understand how home-school relationships are formed and how they are deeply class-biased. Using in-depth qualitative interviews with parents and teachers from four public secondary schools in Barcelona, this paper examines the factors explaining more and less harmonious relations between these two agents. This article will help shed light on the challenging relation between home and schools, taking into account different sociocultural contexts mediating this interaction and suggesting some implications in terms of educational policy from a social justice perspective.