Responsibility and powerlessness

On parents’ possibilities for participation in collaborations with teachers and educational psychologists

Abstract

Children lead their lives across various contexts as for instance school and home. The way different contexts interact constitute important conditions for children’s development. Therefore perspectives on a child from different contexts are valuable in understanding the difficulties the child faces in the school context. Hence the collaboration between adults in the child’s life is central to inclusion in school. Educational psychological counselling (PPR) has potential for exploring different perspectives on the child. However, perspectives of the parents are often marginalized in collaborations on children in difficulties in school. This article explores parents’ possibilities for participation in collaborations with teachers and PPR and how these possibilities for participation are linked to conditions for the collaboration regarding children in difficulties in school.
The study takes the German-Danish school of Critical Psychology and the associated practice research as a theoretical and methodological starting point. The study is based on participant observations in a Danish PPR-department, and qualitative semi-structured interviews with PPR-psychologists and parents.
The analysis indicates that parents’ possibilities for participation can be understood as a relation between responsibility and powerlessness. Parents experience a responsibility for coordinating the collaboration. However, the conditions for the collaboration impede the parents’ possibilities for influencing the collaboration. This is related to an interplay between conditions such as the organization of and conflicts in the collaboration. To understand how some parents manage the difficult conditions for influencing the collaboration, the concept of “strategic action potency” is developed. Implications for practice and further theoretical development are discussed.

Keywords:
Educational psychological counselling, parents, parental collaboration, school, Critical Psychology.