ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the difference between engaging with parents (an action relating to the relationship between schools and parents) and parental engagement with children's learning, which most effectively takes place outside of school and is a far more powerful lever for achievement. It focuses on the concepts of social and cultural capital and then at how these impact on parenting and parental. Ule points out that 'hegemonic discourses' around parenting, that is, the way people as a society think parenting should be done, are moulded around the practices of the middle classes, ignoring many circumstances which would made these practices impossible for other groups. The relation between fathers' involvement in education and children's achievement is not only positive, but just as strong as mothers' involvement. Aligned to the concept of self-efficacy is that of the role of parents' construction of their ideas of what their roles as parents entail.
