Building Bridges Between the School and Refugee Parents

Abstract

Parental involvement in the educational process is considered a very important parameter, which ensures academic success and facilitates the smoother psychosocial development of the children. The case of immigrant and refugee parents' involvement is even more complex, requiring systematic practices and strategies from the school as they face multiple difficulties in the host country (Isik-Ercan, 2012). Besides, communication between the school and immigrant/refugee parents involves issues of power and "legitimacy" of specific linguistic and cultural capital about the right and accessibility to children's education (Androulakis et al, 2016). The main objective of this paper is to present the practices of parent involvement among refugee parents in Magnesia in the school year 2016-17, the year in which refugee children were introduced into the Greek educational system through Reception/ Preparatory Classes (DYEP). The ultimate aim is to identify those factors that facilitate the involvement of refugee parents in their children's education as well as the obstacles that were encountered. It also aims at highlighting the sociolinguistic and educational dimensions of home-school communication and its ideological implications.