Figuring the World of Home-School Relationships

This article uses figured worlds to explore the limit-situations imposed by dominant narratives of home-school relationships. Through a semiotic analysis of a wall hanging in a preschool classroom, we explore what figured worlds are imagined as possible for home-school relationships. The dominant narratives implicit in these figured worlds ossify configurations of home and school that privilege ways of being and knowing that exclude, reject, or demonize the experiences of culturally, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse families.