Aiming for educational partnership between parents and professionals: Shared vision development in a professional learning community

In the current qualitative case study, we explored a professional learning community (PLC) that aimed to include both staff members and parents, established in a primary school for a two-year period in the Netherlands. The PLC focused on building educational partnership between parents and school staff. In this study, we explored whether and how the PLC contributed to the development of a shared vision on parental involvement characterized by educational partnership. Thematic analysis of transcripts of PLC meetings and interviews with PLC members at the end of the first and second year disclosed ambiguity. The visions reflected an ambition to build educational partnership but also barriers to this ambition, such as the presence of deficit perspectives on parents, which seemed to result in ambivalence concerning the responsibilities and possibilities of professionals and parents of building educational partnership. The results suggest shared vision development is a multiple staged process, with an initial stage in which existing views and knowledge were exchanged, a second stage focused on the process of shared vision development and practical aspects of executing such a process, and a hypothetical third stage in which the planned process of vision development would be realized. To actually form a shared vision for partnership three elements seem necessary: a substantial amount of time, continuous parent participation in the PLC, and a targeted approach addressing deficit perspectives on parents and creating awareness of the power dynamics present in the parent–school relationship.