Home–school knowledge exchange in context

This paper provides an overview of the Home‐School Knowledge Exchange Project and an introduction to this special issue on home–school knowledge exchange. The paper starts by situating the project within a number of contexts—those of UK educational research, national and international interest in home–school relationships, national and local priorities around literacy, numeracy and primary/secondary transfer, and theoretical work on ‘funds of knowledge’. The paper then goes on to show how these contextual factors influenced the project's aims and design. The paper ends by identifying a number of important themes and issues in the area of home–school knowledge exchange, and shows how these are illuminated by the papers presented in this volume.