Developing hybrid activities through home-school dialogue in disadvantaged communities

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The link between poverty and educational underachievement in the UK is well established with parental involvement identified as a key determiner of educational success. Economically disadvantaged parents are reported as lesslikely to: engage in literacy practices with their children; provide role models for their children in terms of reading and assist their children with homework tasks. Furthermore, home learning (directed by parents) is thought tohave a significant effect on children's cognitive development and future academic success. More recently, with direction from Ofsted schools serving disadvantaged communities have become increasingly interested in effective strategies for parental engagement.Such 'school based' strategies include: offering parents training in how best to communicate with their children, ensuring parents feel their involvement is valued, and offering parents the opportunity to enhance their own skills. But again,such strategies emphasise ensuring parents 'fit' the needs of the school and they are beset with problems (e.g. how to engage parents who have had their own negative experiences of school.Given that high-level parental engagement is linked to positive educational and emotional outcomes, we are left with a contradiction; parental engagement is contributory to the success or disengagement of disadvantaged students, but there is little understanding of how homeschool relationships should be enacted in ways which do not pathologize parents.Research questions:(RQ1): What are parents' and teachers' perceptions of the home-school relationship in schools serving disadvantaged communities?(RQ2): How can parents, teachers, and schools in such communities establish collaborative dialogue, which challenges or overcomes assumptions of deficit in the child/parent/home?(RQ3): What are the challenges in setting up such collaborative dialogue?