How did the study help to improve relationships between schools and families from minority ethnic groups?
All of the schools involved in the study were selected to reflect the ethnic and cultural mix of Cardiff and Bristol and therefore there were significant minority ethnic populations in several of them. The activities planned by the schools in many cases sought to target minority parents. The activities also sought to tackle some of the difficulties associated with exchanging knowledge across different languages and cultures. Cultural knowledge exchange Some of the knowledge which was transferred from home to school in the study had clear cultural and ethnic origins. Several families of Asian origin used traditional practices of ‘strand counting’, counting on fingers and finger joints to represent units. One child who was learning Punjabi at her local gudwara was given novel strategies for memorising the letters by her grandfather, as she ‘couldn’t keep them in my head’. These strategies had been passed on to children, but the teacher was often unaware of them. The exchanges of knowledg
