Communicating parent community at prevention meetings in Norwegian schools

Abstract

Parental cooperation has increasingly become a key component in alcohol prevention efforts in schools. Many prevention programmes actively utilize parent participation in order to strengthen the sense of community between parents, develop shared attitudes towards alcohol use, delay the beginning of alcohol use for adolescents, and limit alcohol usage by young people. Strengthening community is thus a core goal in prevention activities. This article analyses how community is developed and expressed in discussions during formal school meetings involving parents. The data used in the analysis consists of audio recordings of parent meetings in alcohol prevention programmes for 8th grade students at four separate schools in different regions of Norway. The analysis focuses on how personal pronouns are used in the conversations to signal inclusion or exclusion from the community. The article also discusses how different discursive expressions of community are used by meeting participants to position themselves as responsible parents, and the relevance of these meetings for social work.