Il divario di genere nell’interazione fra genitori e docenti nelle scuole italiane

Sociological research has highlighted the importance of parents' role in supporting their children’s learning processes and educational success. Less attention has been devoted to examining whether and to what extent parents interact with their children's teachers, the matters addressed in such contacts, and whether their efforts vary according to children’s gender. These topics, especially the latter one relating to gender differences, deserve to be analyzed and are explored via a secondary analysis of data drawn from the 2012 edition of PISA (Program for International Student Assessment), primarily its often overlooked “parent questionnaire” (approximately 20,000 cases with regard to Italy). The authors explore the relationships that families of 15-year-old students in Italy have with teachers and show – with the aid of binomial logistic regression models – that parent-teacher interaction varies considerably according to the stimulated or spontaneous nature of such participation, student characteristics, and family and schooling contexts. Most importantly, findings suggest that parent-teacher contacts are the source of gender inequality: parents of girls are less likely, compared to parents of boys, to meet with teachers. The results are also placed into a comparative context featuring other European countries.