Parent-teacher meetings: Exploring parental expectations and how does school address them?

Abstract

Parents’ expectations from the school are generally expressed in the meetings with teachers
and it becomes significantly important to understand how do these expectations are met by the school
administration. The purpose of the present research is to explore parents’ expectations from the school
and how does the school address these expectations. Qualitative approach was employed to seek parents’
perspectives on their expectations and their understanding how does the school care for their concerns.
Fifteen participants including school children’s fathers and mothers aged between 30 to 45 were
purposively selected through snowball sampling. A semi-structured interview guide was used for
collecting the data. As a result of thematic analysis of interview transcripts, themes were identified on
parents’ expectations about (a) parent-teacher meetings (PTMs) and (b) the expectations about their
children’s education and development. The emergent themes include managing PTMs, unwelcoming and
discriminatory behavior, follow-up mechanism, socialization of children, sports and co-curricular
activities and implementation of school vision. The study has implications to improve teaching-learning
process through the expectations the parents hold and how does the school address their concerns that
may lead to school improvement.