“As a Parent You Become a Tiger”: Parents Talking about Bullying at School

Bullying at school can be a distressing experience for children. It is also likely to be distressing for their parents. In spite of this, research in the field of school bullying and peer victimisation has tended to overlook the experience of parents when their child is bullied. This study explored school bullying from the parent’s perspective. Twenty-one parents took part in semi-structured focus groups and interviews to share their experiences. Thematic analysis of the interview transcripts identified two main themes: ’perceived institutional factors’ and ’being a good parent’. It was found that parents viewed their principal role as protecting their child; they referred to this as an instinct and fundamental to them being a good parent. However, during their attempts to help their child, many parents talked about difficulties working with schools and this triggered frustration and distrust towards teachers. The findings highlight the importance of communication between parents and teachers and ensuring that parents are kept informed of progress when teachers are trying to address the problem. Additionally, the findings indicate that parents may hold different views to teachers about their role in school bullying situations. This would suggest that parents looking at the situation from the teacher’s perspective, and vice versa, could help to build better parent-teacher relationships when tackling school bullying

What Can We Learn About Research on Parental Involvement in School? Bibliometric and Thematic Analyses of Academic Journals

We present an empirical overview of current research in the area of parental involvement (PI) based on a bibliometric analysis of 544 articles published between 2014 and 2018, and a thematic review of 39 of the Q1-journal articles in the sample, which contributed to a more detailed illustration of the knowledge base of PI research. The findings reveal an ongoing increase in the intensity of research in five distinct foci. The research is shown to be largely urban- and US-centric and dominated by diverse psychological and sociological perspectives. Implications and avenues for future research have been suggested