'We are the professionals': a study of teachers' views on parental involvement in school

The study examines teachers' attitudes and experiences regarding home-school cooperation. Teachers constitute a powerful group in school compared with parents, and this relationship is interpreted through Bourdieu's concept of social field, as a power relation. The empirical analyses are based on a mixed-methods approach with survey and qualitative interviews among teachers in Norway. The results show that while teachers experience the interaction in a positive way, they try to limit parents' influence through emphasising their own professionalism, thus leaving parents with the role as supporters. Teachers who relate to well-educated parents are especially conscious of maintaining a distance towards the parents in order to keep them in their place.