| Statement of the problem. This study examined the role of the family in a child's education from a transcultural perspective. A municipally funded pre-school system in Reggio Emilia, Italy, and public and private schools in northern California provided the context. The question addressed was how more meaningful relationships between parents and teachers might be created in the process of transforming schools from an industrial, technically oriented model with limited, standardized outcomes to one that embraces a greatly expanded concept of learning with the goal of socially constructed understandings.; Procedures and methods. The hermeneutic tradition that guided this study involved the disclosure of meaning in interpretation. The theoretical framework is provided by the theory of knowledge and human interests posited by Jurgen Habermas and the theory of the hermeneutic phenomenon of understanding posited by Hans-Georg Gadamar. A search of the literature for this participatory research was organized around three research categories: philosophy and pedagogy, family-school relations, and community. The data, which consisted of transcriptions of electronically recorded conversations with participants, was analyzed within the framework of theories about rationality systems and language as they related to the research categories.; Results. Conversations with educators and parents provided opportunities to negotiate new meanings and greater understandings about the relationship of philosophy to pedagogy and opened the doors for the possibility of creating learning communities that include parents as partners in the educational process. The data supports the literature that is critical of the technical orientation that dominates American public education and identifies barriers to mutually supportive relationships between parents and educators. Deference to professional authority, stereotyping of family structures and lack of free and open communication between parents and educators serve to distance these major participants in the educational process.; Conclusions. Our schools as socialization institutions need to be transformed. The imperative for action calls for changes in thinking and subsequent changes in policy in three arenas: schools must be transformed into communities of critical inquirers; public participation must be reappropriated as a habit of the heart; commitment to children must be established at the local level with the ultimate goal of affecting policy at the national and global level. |
