Disrupting the Logic of Home-School Relations

Through in-depth interviews with 10 mothers from diverse ethnocultural and socioeconomic groups the authors explore issues of parent roles, access to power, and practices of inclusion and exclusion at an urban elementary school that is undergoing comprehensive school reform. They apply a theory of social and cultural reproduction to assess the potential for school reformstrategies to disrupt traditional patterns of parent marginalization within public schools. The analysis suggests that school interventions seeking to change established practices and ideologies concerning parent involvement can become contested terrain, mediating power relations between parent groups and exposing competing needs and concerns about children’s education.