The purpose of this study is from a teacher’s perspective to examine how schoolteachers experience the possibilities of learning from each other within their work team and to shed some light on how teachers believe that cooperation affects their ability to learn and improve on a daily basis. My research questions are: What is the general discussion among the teachers concerning daily capacity building from enhanced teamwork? How important is well-functioning cooperation between co-workers for learning and daily capacity building? What are the prerequisites for a well-functioning learning situation within the work team? The study is based on five qualitative interviews with teachers within the same school but from different teaching backgrounds based on what grade they teach, what subjects they teach, and they belong to different work teams within the school. The interviews are semi-structured. The results have been analysed from a perspective based on the theories of organisational pedagogy and learning organisations.The results implies that the work teams does not function as a forum for exchanging experiences and learning from each other. Cooperation does, however, exist within the work teams and it has positive effects on other work related aspects, but not on individual daily capacity building. The teams are primarily used for exchange concerning more common and practical issues. This seems to be the situation due to lack of time, priority and structure. The teachers in my study believes that the work team is a vital and important part of their everyday work and it is a forum they wish to exist even if the teams are not today working as wanted when concerning capacity building. The use and functioning of the work teams at the school for this study should be carefully evaluated and improved if the work teams should also function as an effective tool for daily capacity building for the teachers.

This report presents the first intellectual output (IO1) of the Open School Doors project. IO1 has been jointly produced by the whole project consortium. It summarizes the national policies and initiatives among the partnership concerning the parental engagement / involvement of migrant / refugee parents toward school life. To this end literature resources have been collected and then analysed, with the following aims: a) Profile the target group per country, i.e. outline what is the main audience, its specific cultural characteristics (if any), what has to be taken into consideration for the design of a Training Framework that will match both their learning and cultural needs, etc. b) Elaborate on certain cases of successful parental engagement / involvement, i.e. mainly EU, nationally or locally funded projects. The rationale behind the intensive search of such cases was to identify practices that really work but not to ‘reinvent the wheel’, and have a valid starting point for Open Schools Doors (OSD) Training Framework ‐ no doubt that the amplitude and variety of such programs are good indicators of each country policy and posture towards social inclusion and provision of equal opportunities to education. c) Identify the gaps in the current situation among the participant countries and design a Training Framework that will actively facilitate parents’ engagement / involvement to school life in a tangible and long‐term manner. Methodically authors started with desk research and apart from that empirical data was collected from focus groups which were organized with the view to validating what was theoretically concluded from literature resources by asking the main target audience of the project about the Training Framework specifications and features. To this end the last section summarizes findings of both theoretical research and focus groups, providing thus an overview of what is needed and on which directions OSD didactic approach should focus.:Abstract 6 Introduction and scope 7 1 Conceptualising Home School Interaction 9 1.1 Models of Parental Engagement 9 1.2 ‘Hard to reach’ parents or Hard to Reach Schools? 11 1.2.1 Intersectionality 13 1.2.2 Social Class and home ‐ school interaction 13 1.2.3 Ethnicity and home ‐ school interaction 15 1.2.4 Colonialism / Post‐colonialism 16 1.3 Home school interaction and technology 17 1.4 Infusing home ‐ school interaction with Literacies 20 1.4.1 Home ‐ school interaction as literacy work 20 1.5 Refugee Adults and Digital Literacy 22 1.6 Looking forward: Third Spaces and Multi‐Directional Parental Engagement 24 1.6.1 Multi‐directionality 25 1.6.2 Family Learning 26 1.6.3 Family learning and ‘Digital success stories’ ‐ ideas for future engagement? 27 2 The European dimension 29 2.1 European policies on parental involvement 29 2.2 Facts and figures 30 2.3 European and international experiences: interesting cases of parental involvement projects / practices beyond the consortium partner countries 33 2.3.1 Empowerment of Roma: An interesting practice followed in Croatia 33 2.3.2 Toddler: Towards Opportunities for Disadvantaged and Diverse Learners on Early Childhood‐Road ‐ an EU project 34 2.3.3 ASPIRA Parents for Educational Excellence Program (APEX): An ongoing parental involvement project 37 2.3.4 Involve Parents – Improve School – COMENIUS Multilateral Project 38 2.3.5 Language courses for people of a migrant background: An interesting practice from Sweden 41 2.3.6 More chances with parents: An interesting practice from the Netherlands 42 3 National Experiences 46 3.1 Austria 46 3.1.1 National initiatives, projects and articles in the area of parental engagement/involvement of migrant/ refugee parents 48 3.1.2 Recent initiatives and programmes to further language development 49 3.1.3 Political support for initiatives to engage immigrant parents 50 3.1.4 Lessons learnt 52 3.2 Germany 58 3.2.1 Parental involvement among migrants in German education research 58 3.2.2 Projects on parental involvement 59 3.2.3 Research results on (intercultural) parental work 63 3.2.4 Summary 65 3.3 Greece 67 3.3.1 Good practices and research about migrants’ parental engagement 67 3.3.2 Interventions and projects with migrants’ parents in Greece 72 3.3.3 Summarizing Comments 78 3.4 UK 78 3.4.1 Home school interaction and migrant parents 78 3.4.2 Home School Interaction and Roma families 80 3.4.3 Good practice – cultural acknowledgement 82 3.4.4 ‘Good practice at the grassroots’ 84 4 Focus Groups 85 4.1 Organization and scope 85 4.2 Overview about methodical aspects 86 4.3 Trans European focus group 87 4.4 Focus groups in Austria 90 4.5 Focus groups Germany 93 4.5.1 Focus groups Germany 93 4.5.2 Focus Group “German Parental Association” 93 4.5.3 Focus Group “Teacher Training Programme TU Dresden” 95 4.6 Focus groups Greece 99 4.6.1 Organization 99 4.6.2 Analysis and main findings 102 4.7 Focus groups UK 107 4.7.1 Issues and Themes Emerging from Focus Group Discussions 107 5 Conclusions and recommendations for the design of Open Schools Doors training framework 135 5.1 Leadership 135 5.2 Underpinning principles 136 5.3 Priorities for Teacher development: 139 Bibliography 142 Publications recommended for further reading 151 Appendix 152 A.1 Interview Guide 152 A.2 Feedback Template 154 A.3 Attendance List Template 155