How are parents involved? Investigating interactions and involvement between Church of England schools and churches with parents

Abstract

Schools often seek partnerships with parents to aid children’s academic learning and school engagement, so this paper investigates the nature of parent involvement with church and school to facilitate children’s faith formation using an interpretive phenomenological lens. Epstein’s types of family involvement model provided a theoretical framework to examine the overlapping spheres of influence (school, church and home) and the extent to which they are functional and operational. This pioneering research asks the questions: Do faith schools, churches and parents want to collaborate for the sake of their children’s faith? How do churches and schools engage with parents to support children’s faith formation? And how could collaborations be further developed? In-depth empirical data was collected from case study contexts: nine churches and eight schools, capturing teacher or church worker and parental perspectives in each context. This revealed that whilst there is significant desire for enhanced collaboration across these sectors, there is often a lack of confidence and awareness of possibilities. It is recommended that investment is made into resourcing and training to bring about a change of culture to see expectations and genuine realities of more shared responsibility and authentic collaboration across the sectors to enhance children’s faith formation.