Debbie Pushor PhD

The objectives of this program of research are to determine what parent knowledge is and how parent knowledge is held and used.  While there is an extensive body of literature on teacher knowledge, there is no corresponding body of literature on parent knowledge.  Within schools, teachers are positioned as knowing professionals; parents are positioned as unknowing, or less knowing, about children and their learning processes.  A “badge of difference” separates educators and parents – determined by who holds professional knowledge of teaching and learning.  As long as this badge is worn by teachers, power and authority will continue to rest with educators and the current hierarchy in schools will be maintained.  Educators will make decisions important to teaching and learning, often with little parent input or participation.  Parents will continue to serve as audience, spectators, fund raisers, aides and organizers.

In coming to a conceptualization of parent knowledge, new possibilities will emerge to shift the positioning of parents on school landscapes.  Can what parents know, given that it is different from what teachers know, enhance schooling experiences for children?  Can parent knowledge, used alongside teacher knowledge, inform decisions about school programs, policies, procedures and routines?

My questions about parent knowledge emerge out of, and further, my doctoral research – a narrative inquiry into the positioning of parents in relation to the landscapes of schools.  In analyzing attempts made to engage parents meaningfully in curriculum planning and implementation, I came to the realization that the parent expertise drawn on in this strand of my research came from the parents’ craft or professional knowledge, knowledge developed in their careers outside of home or in their extracurricular activities.  It struck me that the knowledge parents had gained from living with children in complex and ever-changing situations was not the knowledge drawn on in the research.

Clandinin and Connelly have conceptualized teachers’ “personal practical knowledge.”  I see the potential of using their conceptualization to research parents’ personal practical knowledge.  They describe personal knowledge as the teacher’s knowledge gained from lived experience in all aspects of life.  Practical knowledge is the teacher’s knowledge of the classroom gained through experiencing the dynamic interaction of persons, things and processes in the situation or environment of the classroom.  It is more than knowledge of theory; it is knowledge arising from the teacher’s experience which enables the teacher to make thoughtful, contextualized decisions about practice in a complex, dynamic and multifaceted situation.  Drawing a parallel between teachers and parents, it strikes me that parents too have personal practical knowledge.  Determining what that knowledge is, and how it is held and used, is the focus of this program of research.

The methodological approach for this program of research is narrative inquiry.  Dewey’s expression of the need for a philosophy of education based on a philosophy of experience is foundational.  The focus of narrative inquiry is “lived experience – that is, lives and how they are lived.”  The intention in this inquiry is to understand parents from their own perspective, to have them give accounts of their experience in their own terms – terms which will give insight into their stance in the world.  The intent in this inquiry is to search into the personal experiences of three parents in order to understand their knowledge as it becomes apparent through what they do and what they say, possibly in the form of temporal rhythms and cycles in their lives, in images and metaphors, in rules and practical principles, in personal philosophy and in narrative unity.

Current literature on parent involvement perpetuates the hierarchical structure of schools and the privileging of teacher knowledge.  It does not bring into question the ways parents are involved, or not involved, in schools.  Instead, it generates possibilities for doing the ‘same old things’ with parents in new ways. As there is no body of literature on parent knowledge, new understandings arising from this program of research have the potential to shift thinking about parents and their positioning in schools.  If parents are seen to be knowing, can they continue to be excluded from decisions about their children’s schooling?

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