researching parents

• Parents


  Play an important role in children's education
• How parents can influence education

  1. Involvement in school through parent-teacher contacts

  2. Parent governors

  3. Attendance at parents evening
• Marketisation policies

  Encourage parents to see themselves as consumers
• Parents as a research group

  • Not a single homogenous group
  • Class, gender, ethnicity may all affect how willing or able they are to participate in research
  • Middle-class parents may be more willing to return questionnaires than working class so will make findings unrepresentative
  • How likely parents are to give their permission may depend on whether they can see their child benefiting from being involved
  • More sensitive an issue appears to be for parents, the less likely they are to consent to their children participating
• Parents present themselves

  In a positive light by exaggerating their involvement in their children's education
• Many sociologists believe parents play a vital role in children's education
• When research is in a closed setting

  Parents may be lying about how involved they are outside of the school building
• Unlike most other important groups within education, parents are for the most part physically located outside the school
• Parents may be hard to contact without the school's cooperation


  May lead to biases