Involving Roma parents: analysing the good practice of a primary school in Ghent

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Recently, societal and academic attention toward the topic of Roma integration has been increasing. With this article we aim to make a contribution to the domain of educational research. We explore strategies that schools can adopt to improve the involvement of Roma parents. Using a theory-based stakeholder evaluation, we more specifically analyse how the organizational model of a primary school contributes to the establishment of trust between both parties. The results show that the theoretical principles guiding the daily school practices and interventions are aligned with the needs and specificity of the target audience, but are also broadly supported by the school staff. As such, the organizational structure of the school contributes to the support of the school staff for the global school vision and to the overall success of the approach. Nevertheless, some tension remains between team members working on the ‘care’ aspect and teachers working solely within the classroom.