Negotiation of epistemic and deontic rights in parent-teacher conferences in primary schools: communicative practices and resources

This study investigates an institutional activity that is situated at the intersection of school and family and plays a central role in the construction of the family-school partnership promoted by education policies: the parent-teacher conference. Although this topic is not new to pedagogical research, the novelty of the present work lies in its focus on the observation and analysis of naturally occurring interaction, with particular attention to the moment-by-moment negotiation of epistemic and deontic rights – that is, who is entitled to know and who is entitled to decide, and about what. This focus aims to illuminate the phenomenon of the erosion of authority that many teachers report in relationships with families, starting from the observation of communicative practices. Drawing on a phenomenological approach and relying on the methodological tools of video analysis and conversation analysis, the study examines 95 video-recorded conferences collected between 2017 and 2023 in four primary schools in Northern Italy. This work shows that conferences are not only sites for the communication of the child’s evaluation but also interactions where roles, responsibilities, and authority are negotiated in and through communicative practices. The analysis identifies both practices through which parents can assert their epistemic authority in interaction and, at times, challenge that of the teacher, and practices that teachers implement to contain and pre-empt possible challenges from parents, thereby sustaining their own epistemic and deontic authority. These findings provide a basis for pre- and in-service training designed to strengthen teachers’ professional reflexivity and communicative competence in building relationships with families.