Reengineering Total Home-school Partnership

Abstract

Home-school collaboration has been strongly emphasized in current educational reforms in the Asia-Pacific Region as indicated in Chapter 7. The conceptions and practices of home-school cooperation may vary across contexts and cultures (Pang et al., 2003). In general, the traditional approach to home-school cooperation is often based on a division of labor between home and school. The school is mainly responsible for children's cognitive development, while the family is mainly responsible for satisfying children's material and emotional needs (Epstein, 1992). These two functions may be unrelated in practice particularly in developing countries in Asia. The traditional relationship between home and school may be superficial and fragmentary, and cannot promise real cooperation and effective education to students, no matter whether in school or at home. Although many educators and policy-makers are coming to realize the importance of home-school partnership (Education Commission, 1992; Davies, 1991; Pang, et al., 2003; Redding, 1991), many problems remain unresolved. For example, how home-school relationship should be conceptualized and understood, and how home-school cooperation should be developed more effectively are still subject to investigation. Responding to the gaps in theory building for understanding home-school partnership and facilitating its implementation, this chapter aims to develop a theoretical framework that can provide a total conception of home-school partnership and can be used to re-engineer the existing superficial and fragmentary practice of home-school cooperation in the Region and other international contexts. It is hoped that this framework could contribute to ongoing policy discussion, school practice, and further research on home-school partnership.