A partnership project was developed in which parents volunteered to support teachersin training years 1-3 children in computer skills at a primary school in a small, lowsocio-economic community. This article identifies the ways teachers and the ‘tutors’(as the volunteers were called) understood the value of the project. ‘Being a teacher’and ‘being a volunteer’ were structured by different forms of social engagement,which in turn influenced the ways individuals were able to work with each other incollaborative processes. We argue that the discursive practices encoded in homeschool-community partnership rhetoric represent ruling-class ways of organising andnetworking that may be incompatible with those of people from low socio-economicbackgrounds. When such volunteers work in schools their attendance may be sporadicand short-term whereas teachers would like ‘reliable’ ongoing commitment. Thismismatch wrought of teachers’ and volunteers’ differing everyday realities needs to beunderstood before useful models for partnerships in disadvantaged communities maybe realised.<br /
