Community and Collectivism: the role of parents' organizations in the education system.

This paper outlines the theoretical and empirical starting-points for a research project addressing the role of parents' organizations in the education system. It argues that a study of relationships conducted between homes, schools and parents' groups and organisations has the potential to illuminate key concepts an education, considering as examples `citizenship' and `community'. The paper as divided into three main sections. The first briefly describes the study's background, its scope and methodology. The second section considers the use of some of Antonio Gramsci`s work in providing a theoretical starting-point with which to explore the construction and maintenance of hegemonic discourses surrounding parenting. The concluding section of the paper widens the discussion to consider two key concepts, community and citizenship. It is argued that the discursive positioning of these concepts, in other words, how they are understood and defined, influences the ways in which relationships between parents and the education system are perceived and constructed. This is illustrated with reference to readings of `citizenship' and `community' which emphasis, not consensus and homogeneity as in traditional definitions, but conflict, difference and multiplicity. The paper concludes that there is a continued need for empirical data focusing on everyday citizen and citizen-state interactions. Such reveal how individuals live within, and understand and experience these relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]