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International Society for Theoretical Psychology, Coventry 2015
Symposium: Children’s inclusion in school investigated as conflictual cooperation1
Introduction
This symposium we would like to present and discuss with you a collaborative research project where we
address the problematic of children’s inclusion in school as conflictual cooperation in and across social
practices.
It is a project that we just started – so we will not deliver any complete analyses or results – our aim is to
present some theoretical considerations that form a basis or background for our approach – and some
preliminary analyses - to kind of show where we are going (or want to go) with this project …
I will take a few minutes to try to outline just a bit about the background for the research project: and then
there will be 3 papers that represent 3 of the four sub-projects.
Childrens’ Everyday Life in School
Children’s communities and
Parental Collaboration
Teacher’s perspectives and
professionalism in relation to
children’s communities and
cooperation
Children’s
Inclusion
Municipal Administration, Policy
Legislation
School Leaders’ perspectives,
School as an organization
Four interconnected subprojects (with two researcher on each project): A: Children’s communities and
Parental Collaboration, B: Teacher Professionalism, C: Administration and legislation, and D: School
Leadership.
In Denmark an act has been passed to reduce referral to special education and include more children in
general school. However, this is not a project about children in difficulties – but more fundamental how
conditions for taking part in school are arranged. Tilde
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The project is entitled: Children’s inclusion in school as conflictual collaboration between families, teachers, school-leaders
and legislation, and is funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research | Culture and Communication https://www.ruc.dk/en/departments/department-of-psychology-and-educational-studies/research/projekter/konflikter-om-boernsskoleliv/
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There is a long history of working with problematic of children’s participation in school and how to build
and support inclusive communities in school. I can’t do justice to that here; I will just highlight 2 central
points from earlier research that has been important for us in the process of designing this research
project:
Research concerning children’s everyday lives across various contexts and adult’s cooperation regarding
children has turned our attention to
1. Conflicts in the communities of children as well as conflicts between the adults as crucial in relation to
processes of inclusion and learning. And how such social conflicts in turn leads to personal conflicts and
dilemmas in everyday life for children, teachers and parents.
2. Processes of problem displacement – (when a problem is experienced in a specific context the basis (or
cause) is often placed as belonging to or concerning other parties and places – as when a child’s difficulties
in school are thought of as caused by parental style, or problems in a class are caused by ‘a bad teacher’
In this project we want to address the connection between different practices – but not as casual relations
or questions of “where the problem really is”.
We have a joint analytical focus on conflictual cooperation, that is we seek to develop knowledge about
how processes related to children’s inclusion are constituted across contexts and formed by multiple
perspectives, interest, and standpoints by several different parties connected through - what could be
called - a ‘common matter (or cause)’.
So, the aim is to explore children’s school life through a focus on how the conditions for children’s
participation in school are set in several different places and closely tied to the ways school is arranged as a
historical developed practice for the education of children.
We take our methodological approach in a tradition of Practice research – that means that we arrange
research processes as collaboration – meet regularly with co-researchers from the schools we are
collaborating with – to have dialogues about the progress of the project and preliminary analyses that the
researchers present – the point is to learn from each other - and work with the development of practice
and theory interlinked.
We share an ethnographic approach – working with field studies, participant observations, interview and so
on.
Theoretical approach:
Theoretical approach to social practice /praxis (Bernstein 1971; Chaiklin et al. 1999; Holland & Lave 2001;
Lave 2008, 2011; Axel 2002; Juul Jensen 1987, 1999, 2001)
Taking together with understanding of subjectivity and participation as found in subject scientific
approaches (e.g. Dreier 2008, Holzkamp 2013, Højholt 2015; Højholt & Kousholt 2015; Schraube &
Osterkamp 2013)
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Taken together this constitutes an approach that direct our focus to the situated historical structure of
interconnected practices arranged as varying ways of dealing with societal problems and tasks in relation to
the education and everyday life of children.
We consider conflicts to be an inherent part of collaboration. So when we talk about conflicts - this is not
solely about focusing on actual ongoing conflicts. It refers to that we take our point of departure in the
inherent, inescapable, conflictuality of social practice.
We explore general contradictions and dilemmas related to children’s school life through (and thereby
connected to) the actual, concrete and personal meanings of these matters in the everyday lives of the
people involved. In short – we try to develop a situated perspective or approach to structural and political
issues.
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Parental collaboration and children’s communities in school
Dorte Kousholt
Introduction
My part of our collective research project explores connections between children’s communities in school,
the social landscape in a class, the socio-material practice of the school and parental collaboration.
I address the interrelated aspect of
1) The children’s efforts to create, arrange, and rearrange their communities in school, their conflicts in
relation to this and how they collaborate with each other and the adults (teachers) , and
2) parents perspectives on their children’s school life and the collaboration with the school, and how they
arrange the everyday life of the family in relation to children’s school life and take part in collaboration with
the school.
This entails a focus on the school as s socio-material practice forming certain conditions for the
participants, including how collaboration is and can be arranged.
What I want to talk about today is most some conceptual elaborations developed through reading across
some of the research in the field of parental collaboration. (So it is not so much about the children)
The paper is based on an article I work on together with Charlotte Højholt, who is also the leader of the
project. I will try to invigorate the theoretical discussions with some empirical illustrations. Since I am in
the beginning of the project I don’t have actual comprehensive analyses of my material yet …
Just to give at short outline of the design: I have an ethnographic approach - I am following the children in a
first grade class through participant observations in the classroom and breaks. In addition, I interview the
children, the primary teacher and the parents to the children (in the same class).
In Denmark there is a huge focus (in politics and practice) on parental collaboration at the moment – it is
promoted as a way to improve children’s learning in general, and as a way to compensate for inequality in
children’s family background.
Parental collaboration is both associated with general collaboration between all the parents and the
professionals in the school, and still quite often narrowed down to discussions about compensatory
interventions ( to prevent intergenerational transmission of social problems and lack of education) - clarify
that I talk about all home-school collaboration (between teachers, school leaders and parents – and
between parents)
In a way the current debates can be seen as expressions of conflicts about how Danish schools should
prioritize, what is relevant in relation to learning, how children’s difficulties ought to be understood, and
who is responsible. The question of parental collaboration therefore seem to constitute an interesting
opportunity to discuss theoretical questions related to the challenge of conceptualizing the collaboration
between parties positioned in a conflictual distribution of responsibility and influence.
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This also accentuates the question of how to conceptualize the connections between situated problems in
the school and the different (unequal) conditions of different family lives.
Parental collaboration can be conceptualised as a many-sided conflictual matter. Taking our point of
departure in a theoretical approach to social practice which emphasizes the historical and conflictual
nature of situated interplay between subjects in and across structures of interconnected practices2, we
analyse the parties involved in the education of children as persons connected through their involvement in
common matters and concerns.3
We thereby want to point to the way each participant’s contribution is entangled with the collective
interplay across the interconnected institutions of children’s education and upbringing. The different
parties’ perspectives on the problems of the school are at the same time connected, interwoven, as well as
differentiated by the different tasks they have in relation to the children’s school life and how they are part
of the conflicts.
In relation to parental collaboration parents are often involved as the very problem to be solved, and in this
way dilemmas in the school seem to be displaced to the family background of the children. In research,
conceptions, as well as in interventions this give a focus (rather isolated) on the family and on parenting –
at the expense of investigations of the situated interplay in the school, how children and parents experience
school life as well as the broader social conflicts about the school.
Our point is that parental collaboration could be seen as a way of organizing parents and opening up for
their knowledge about their children and for their influence on school life. However, in the methods and
debates about parental involvement, parents are often represented as individualized persons in a
competition for professional resources and for performing ‘as good parents’. This individualization and
liberal political situation seem to obscure that we can address parents’ common concerns and interests –
connected to the intertwined everyday life of their children participating in learning communities, and to
children’s conditions for taking part and contributing.
Parental collaboration - significant research debates
In Western societies there has been an increase in tasks and demands on parents to support their
children’s development. In connection with this, the home is understood as a central part of the child’s
learning environment and research points to a growing professionalization and accountability of parents in
relation to children’s learning and development. In relation to this, recent studies have analysed how the
boundaries between the schools’ and parents’ responsibilities have changed historically towards increased
‘responsibilization of parents’4.
Following the demand for parents to take responsibility, there is an intensified focus in schools to inform
and involve parents, which in turn leads to increased demands on the teachers and new tasks in relation to
parents.
Bernstein 1971; Chaiklin et al. 1999; Holland & Lave 2001; Lave 2008, 2011
Axel 2002; Juul Jensen 1987, 1999, 2001.
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Andersen & Knudsen 2012; Knudsen 2010.
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A line of research, that take up this historical development, proceeding from the theorizing of
governmentality inspired by Foucault and Rose have contributed with analyses of the governance implied
in the neoliberal technologies of home-school co-operation. Such research points to a dislocation and
radicalization of the mode of parents’ responsibilization as well as to how such technologies utilize parentchild relationships and define a certain set of cultural norms that shape home-school cooperation.5
In relation to parental involvement in Denmark we face tendencies to implement e.g. techniques and
models for dialogues, for teaching parents how to chat with their children, or contracts, ‘written
agreements’, between officials and parents to clarify expectations to what parents should do.6
Analyses that take their point of departure in a governmentality perspective often address various policy
documents or technologies directed at governing parents’ behaviour or the teacher-parent-relationship.
Focus is on the conduct the different social technologies implicit seek to direct, and the constituting powers
regulating everyday practices. And typically not on how parents experience or make use of such
technologies (Baez & Talburt 2008).
In my view this constitutes a challenge in relation to conceptualising persons as participants actively and
collectively transforming their conditions. I therefore want to address the perspectives and everyday
practices of the people involved (in this case children, teachers and parents).
Another line of research – inspired by Bourdieu and Lareau has been conducted focusing on the (implicit or
explicit) expectations parents are faced with and their struggles to be seen as responsible, capable
parents7. Such approaches have contributed with an essential perspective on social class and inequality (e.g
Lareau 2000, 2003). The overall focus is on how parents (willingly or not) convey cultural norms to their
children that have an impact on their achievements in school. The processes that shape inequality are
connected to class-based mechanisms through which parents transmit advantages. In this way the school is
understood as part of the problem, but seems to be represented as quite a homogeneous culture.
These two research traditions have contributed with crucial knowledge about the governance and class
related differentiation in relation to parental collaboration. My point is not to disregard the insights from
these research traditions, but to work with or through them, but take another approach to the issue of
subjective agency and inequality.
Conflicts about different aspects of a compound social practice
Following the theorising of the school as heterogeneous many-sided practice I seek to explore – what
maybe could be called - ‘the substance or content’ of the conflicts. This entails analysing the ‘situated
inequality’ produced in school (in the classroom, in parental meetings and so on) as part of conflictual social
interplay between parties with different conditions for participating in and contributing to the practices of
the school.
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Baez & Talburt 2008, Dahlstedt 2009; Kryger & Ravn 2009:170) .
For a critique see e.g. Baez & Talburt 2008; Knudsen & Andersen 2014.
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(Bæck 2005; Crozier 2005; Crozier & Davies 2007; Crozier, Reay & James 2011; David 2003, 2005; Lareau 2000,
2002, 2003; Palludan 2012; Reay 1999)
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Danish psychologist Erik Axel writes about collaboration as a contradiction between ‘a common cause’ on
the one hand and the differentiation of the matter into different aspects and contributions on the other,
and he argues that this necessitates the development of collaboration (2015). In this way parental
collaboration can be seen as a social necessity based on an understanding that different social practices are
connected.
The parties are involved in a common matter; but the different aspects can in practice be separated,
isolated and seen as being in contrast to each other.
Since the children live their everyday life across school and home, teachers and parents cannot deal with
their tasks without going beyond their own contexts and the tasks associated with these. Their
contributions to the children’s life are interwoven, and at the same time they must pursue their different
necessities (Axel, p 46). - They have different kinds of responsibilities and perspectives.
Empirical illustrations
I will outline some empirical illustrations of these theoretical points:
In processes of dealing with social conflicts, teachers talk about the importance of ‘knowing the children’,
which involves getting a feel for the class and for what is going on between the children as well as
individual children’s specific engagements or difficulties. In relation to this, teachers state that they depend
on knowledge from and collaboration with the parents.
Parents talk about being deeply dependent on the knowledge of the teachers (as well as the other parents)
to get an insight into how their child is participating in school. They tell me, that it can be very difficult to
assess the well-being of your child in school – as a mother explains “to be honest I don’t know anything
about how she is doing in school”
Both parents and teachers can experience difficulties when seeking to obtain an insight into the complex
social dynamics in the children’s communities. They often talk about lacking the relevant knowledge – even
though there is very much information going back and forth.
Adult-defined ‘playgroups’ where the class is divided into groups of four to five children that take turns
visiting each other at home) are increasingly put forward as a way to promote class community and
inclusion. Some parents experience this as opportunity to strengthen the social cohesiveness of the class –
and to get to know the other children and their parents. Other parents experience this as ‘just another
demand’ from the school and report of conflicts with their child in relation to arranging these playgroup
activities.
Observations at parents’ meetings and interviews with parents show how such arrangement can be source
of intense conflicts – and can end up in very principled debates about the individual’s ‘private’ right to
decide who they want to spend their time with.
Parents’ meetings can also constitute situations where parents and teachers discuss how ways of
organizing the school day (e.g. in relation to day trips or homework) pose dilemmas for the practical
arrangements of the everyday lives of the families. Through such discussions parents explore the manysided aspects of such dilemmas together and can develop common solutions, negotiate and arrange or
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adjust conditions (e.g. agree to arrange shared transport or put collective pressure on the school to change
its practice).
Their collaboration can be seen as saturated with conflicts linked to broader debates about priorities and
strategies in relation to learning, inclusion and who is responsible for what.
Teachers talk about that they experience parents as a pressure – that collaborating with the parents is
sometimes the most frustrating part of their work – where they get insecure. Parental collaboration is
signalled out by teachers as well as school leaders as a crucial challenge in relation issues of inclusion.
One recurring finding in cases where children are excluded from school or marginalized is that professionals
report the reason as being a lack of cooperation with the parents – or problems with such cooperation.
Correspondingly, parents report on ‘giving up on the school.’
Parents have internal conflicts about how the school should prioritize, and about the interests of their
children. These conflicts interrelate with conflicts between the children in a class.
In parents’ stories about how they try to get insight into conflicts between the children in school, the
meanings for their own child and how best to support the possibilities of dialogue with the other parents
appear crucial. Children’s conflicts are complex and woven into different possibilities for taking part in and
influencing social interplay, thereby connecting personal engagements with social possibilities (cf. Højholt
& Kousholt 2015; Stanek 2011). Accordingly, conflicts can be experienced very differently by the children,
and it is often the case that the stories the parents are told vary a lot. In relation to this, it is noticeable
when interviewing parents that their stories about ‘when conflicts between the children get stuck’ are
often followed by statements about ‘not being able to talk to that parent’. From one parent’s perspective it
can be seen as a matter of supporting one’s own child’s integrity, while the other parent’s reactions can be
experienced as ‘crossing personal boundaries’. The perspectives of other children and parents with regard
to the conflicts might become incomprehensible. In this way parents can become isolated from or stand
opposite to each other in relation to conflicts between the children.
In connection with this, interviews with parents give insight into the significance of how the teachers
arrange to share knowledge about the children’s social interplay – involving the parents in what the
conflicts seem to be about and how to collaborate about possible solutions. Through shared exploration
and collaboration teachers and parents can gain more compound knowledge about what is at stake in the
children’s social interplay and conflicts.
Ending up …
I just shortly return to my theoretical ambitions. I hope to have opened for discussions about how the
concept of conflictual collaboration makes visible how personal agency is interwoven with the ways social
conflicts develop, and working for learning possibilities becomes a collective matter.
It is crucial to pay attention to the unequal positions in relation to taking part and getting one’s
perspectives about problems acknowledged. Collaboration regarding children’s inclusion is entangled in the
school as a historical practice for political aims of differentiation and individualization. However, school
does not constitute a homogenous culture (nor does parents and children of course).
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This connects back to the theoretical challenges of how to analyse the historical conflictuality in the
situated interplay (compare Lave 2011, in prep). By exploring different perspectives, we can learn about the
different aspects of the many-sided school life - thereby develop the social practice of the school through
exploring the conflicts about it.
Perspectives for collaboration
Parents influence the conditions for taking part in children’s communities. Parental collaboration is a social
necessity, and involved also when we do not organize it – sometimes in quite accidental, unintended and
excluding ways. So my point is that we have to explore and work with the understandings and conditions
for collaboration.
Organizing collaboration between the involved adults may transform the representation of school problems
from individual and isolated problems ( pointing out isolated responsibility), to discussions of organizational
dilemmas and common responsibility in relation to work with the very compositions, contradictions and
social conflicts in the everyday life of the children.