The micro-politics of parental involvement in school education in Hong Kong: Ethnocentrism, utilitarianism or policy rhetoric!

The impact of parental involvement on school management has been recognized by many education professionals and policy-makers. Thus parental involvement in school education becomes one of the prime focuses in the current education reform movement in Hong Kong. Particularly, specific guidelines and policies for involving parents at various levels of children’s education have been spelled out in many governmental policy documents. This article reports on an interpretive study that explores the micro-politics of parental involvement in school education in two primary schools in Hong Kong. By analyzing the interviews with 14 parents, eight teachers and two principals, together with the field-notes of participant observations in two case study schools, three propositions of power relations between parents and teaching professionals emerge. The findings indicate that in the process of encouraging parents’ participation in school education, teaching professionals demonstrated ethnocentric attitudes towards parents; the notion of “parents as resources” were for pragmatic purposes; and the conception of “parents-as-school-governors” was of policy rhetoric in the process of implementation of home–school cooperation. Copyright © 2013 Educational Review.