Journal article
Parent engagement in the achievement society: the intensification of parenting for the datafied student subject
British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol.Advanced access
21-Feb-2026
Abstract
Parent engagement is promoted in educational policy and literature as being an effective mechanism for raising student achievement. Schools collect and report on vast amounts of student data for the purposes of school improvement and parents are increasingly privy to this data. Yet, surpringly little is known about the implications for parents when data is entwined with parent engagement. This institutional ethnographic inquiry explored the everyday experiences of parents and school staff in one Australian school as they navigated parent engagement. School efforts to increase parent engagement included providing parents with detailed information about students’ achievement, which resulted in intensive, teacher-like forms of parenting. We show how family and school orientations to data and achievement reshaped family relations. We use the concept parenting-for-schooling to highlight the impact of parent engagement on the thoughts, feelings and actions of parents as they parent for schooling, rather than for children.
Details
- Title
- Parent engagement in the achievement society: the intensification of parenting for the datafied student subject
- Authors
- Annetta Cayas (Corresponding Author) - Queensland University of TechnologyNerida Spina - Queensland University of TechnologyKaren Dooley - Queensland University of TechnologyJanet Rankin - University of Calgary
- Publication details
- British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol.Advanced access; 18
- Publisher
- Routledge
- DOI
- 10.1080/01425692.2026.2632302
- ISSN
- 1465-3346
- Copyright note
- © 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Education and Tertiary Access
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991239198602621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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