Mind the gap: a transactional approach on the parent - school communication competences

A teacher communicates a lot within his or her educational practice. Nevertheless, little attention is paid to this competence, especially when it comes to communication with parents (EVALO, 2012). However, a good relationship between school and parents can positively influence the academic, emotional and social development of learners (De Coninck, Valcke & Vanderlinde, 2018). These gaps are also visible in the literature. Current scientific insights mainly focused on the behavioral and social science perspective on the relationship between school and parents, and not on the underlying communication processes. This research therefore aims to supplement and enrich existing insights from the literature from a communication science, transactional perspective: determining the communicators and their environment (focus 1), examining the messages and channels (focus 2) and strengthening the metacommunication (focus 3). These focuses not only add the communication science dimension to the literature. In this way, this research also offers opportunities for educational practice and society: stronger, communicative professionals ensure more learning gains for students, but also more parental involvement. The exploratory, rather inductive nature of this research is consistent with qualitative research methods: a case study will be set up to answer the research questions.