Examines alternative patterns of communication between home and school. Study participants were 23 families of kindergarten or first-grade students. A key finding of the study was that parents and teachers sometimes used avenues other than the traditional parent-teacher conference to gather information about each other and about the children for whom they were responsible. Case studies highlighted these alternative ways of information gathering and communication, including: (1) use of indirect information obtained from school personnel, extended family members, and community sources such as the local newspaper to augment more conventionally obtained information in order to address a child’s academic and behavioral struggles; (2) regular telephone conversations between parent and teacher leading to a collaborative intervention to address the child’s behavioral problems; and (3) reliance on the child as the conveyor of information between parent and teacher. These informal communication patterns arise as a result of family structure, school accessibility, and the parent’s level of trust in the school. The widespread nature of these alternative home-school communication patterns suggests that they need to be more explicitly examined in educational research and practice, with particular focus on how different communication patterns can influence children’s successful navigation through both childhood and school.
