ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a critical look at parental involvement in Germany, bearing in mind the social inequality discourse and the role of schools. The chapter begins with a brief description of the characteristics of the German education system, then presents the terminology and the legislative and regulative context of parental involvement. Over the last 20 years there has been a rise in research on parents and parental involvement in Germany in the school context, and a summary is given here of the empirical findings, theoretical approaches and underlying concepts behind this research and of the the political debate. Findings from a German-wide trend analysis, the JAKO-O survey, are presented with a focus on parents, their involvement in home- and school-based activities, and how school and parent factors influence this engagement. A critical summary reveals that the topic of parents is still a marginal issue in the national political debate and programmatic papers as well as in empirical research. However, various efforts and initiatives are being undertaken in Germany to focus on parents or at least announce the intent to do so. Recent results indicate that initiatives focussing more on the quality of schools than on the deficits of parents might be key for increasing parental involvement.
