Too much parental cooperation? Parent–teacher cooperation and how it influences professional responsibility among Danish schoolteachers

Abstract

Parental participation is a fundamental principle of the Danish folkeskole (for children aged 6–16), yet this article explores how too much parental cooperation influences the relationship of teachers to their professional responsibility. The majority of research on parent–teacher cooperation has focused on parents’ opportunities to participate in school life, but little is known about what teachers think about such collaboration, and how imbalances in power and authority in parent–teacher cooperation influence teachers’ professionalism. The use of reflexive autoethnographic accounts, participant observation and document analysis during a four-year period in one school provided emic insight into the, often invisible, social processes of power. Semi-structured interviews with teachers in a second school were also conducted. Drawing on a body of interrelated work focusing on Bourdieu, situated learning theory and literature about professional studies, the findings suggest that parent–teacher communities can be understood as stratified fields which provide different and complex spaces for exerting power and domination. Although power in these communities is constantly negotiated, professional responsibility may be lost when parents occupy central positions in parent–teacher collaborations.