Home-school relationships and cooperation between parents and supervisory teachers

Sammendrag

Supervisory teachers are responsible for the home-school relationship in compulsory schools in Iceland. According to this study on parental involvement in compulsory schools, the practices in the relationship are systematic and regular, and quite similar to those in Denmark and Norway. Data was gathered using two online surveys, one for professional staff in 20 compulsory schools and another for parents of children in those same schools. Ninety percent of parents find communication with supervisory teachers to be easy. The ease of communication is related to overall satisfaction with the experience of school, which demonstrates the importance of the supervisory teachers’ role. Cooperating with parents is more difficult for the supervisory teachers. Two-thirds of them said that they spend 2–4 hours per week cooperating with parents, and a major part of the cooperation is concerning individual students. The results show no difference in parental satisfaction with the cooperation in relation to the age of the child, but teachers use more time on cooperation about learning for the older students, which can indicate greater emphasis on learning and achievement. It should be considered to encourage teachers to spend more time on cooperating with the whole parent group, to increase direct contact with all parents and to be aware that parents can be vulnerable due to their child’s special needs. In practice, parent participation and involvement must be encouraged in many different ways if the aim is a joint responsibility of student welfare and education.