The nature of the influence of parents on the education and occupational choice of school pupils

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Experiencing an 'inclusive' education:parents and their children with 'special educational needs'

This paper focuses on the experiences of British parents who have children identified with ‘special education needs’ within mainstream education. Expectations of mainstream education can have a negative affect on parents when a child is unable to maintain his or her education within a mainstream school. In England and Wales, ‘inclusion’ within mainstream schools is implemented by the current government and promoted as anti-exclusionary. However, current research indicates that actual ‘inclusion’ (the child experiencing inclusion as well as being placed in a mainstream environment) is not necessarily occurring in practice. As it stands, the conflict is between desires to embrace difference based on a philosophy of ‘equal rights’ (‘inclusive’ education) and prioritising educational performance, structuring it in such a way that it leaves little room for difference and creativity due to the highly structured testing and examination culture. Qualitative analysis of parents who have children identified with special educational needs indicate that they have hopes and expectations for their children. These hopes and expectations are challenged recurrently.

A comparison between the feeding practices of parents and grandparents

Grandparents play a valuable role in the socialisation of young children, and as many as 36% of British parents use grandparents as their main form of childcare. Research has begun to explore how grandparents impact the social and cognitive development of children, but very little research has evaluated their contribution to child feeding. The present study explores whether there are differences between parents and grandparents in terms of their feeding practices, and whether grandparents' feeding practices are related to the number of hours that they spend caring for grandchildren. Results indicate that grandparents reported using significantly more maladaptive feeding practices such as using food to regulate emotions and restricting food, but more positive practices such as providing a healthy food environment. The more hours that grandparents spent caring for children the more their feeding practices resembled those broadly reported by parents. Results suggest that grandparents can have a measurable impact on child feeding behaviour which in turn is likely to predict the eating behaviours of their grandchildren. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.