Trust and resistance: Swedish parents´ relationship to school 1861-2012 from an educational history perspective.

The purpose of the project is to describe the role that parents have played in the formation of the Swedish school and to investigate parents´ trust in the school as an institution and how this has changed over time.

Through archival studies of different types of source material, we will be able to follow how parents´ relationship with the school has changed from the 1860s until 2012.

In the study, we want to answer the following questions:  1) which school issues have parents been involved in? 2) How have parents been organized? 3) in what contexts (and how) have they expressed their views on school 4) which conflicts have existed between parents and schools? A part of the analytical framework is based on the concept of trust.

By studying parents from a trust perspective, we will not only be able to contribute to an important part of explaining the history of Swedish school, but also contribute to the research that discusses Sweden as a high trust state.

The overall goal of the research project is to develop and deepen knowledge of the interaction between families and the school as an institution, which will benefit both historical and contemporary educational science research.