A typology of parental involvement in education centring on children and young people: negotiating familialisation, institutionalisation and individualisation

This article explores the widespread emphasis on parental involvement in ed ucation from the perspectives of children and young people. In contrast to the conceptualisation of children as variable social actors, policy initiat ives to link home and school more effectively, and research-generated typol ogies of parental involvement, unthinkingly familialise and institutionalis e children by ignoring any part they may play in parental involvement in th eir education. Drawing on data from our study of children's understandings of home-school relations, we develop and elaborate a typology that centres on the complex ways that children and young people talk about creating, acc eding to, and resisting their parents' involvement in their education. The socially patterned differences between the children and young people's unde rstandings and experiences demonstrate how the broad social processes of fa milialisation, institutionalisation and individualisation are, in fact, con cretely lived and negotiated in variable ways. Nevertheless, there are also some commonalities in children and young people's resistance around notion s of privacy.