Powerful parent educators and powerless parents: The 'empowerment paradox' in parent education

•Summary: In an action research project to develop an empowering mode of parent education in Hong Kong, premised on an empowerment discourse and a social constructionist epistemology, a pilot design was developed through a series of four ‘‘reflective seminars’’. These seminars engaged parents and professionals in a process of participatory inquiry, three parent groups with Chinese parents, followed by two focused group interviews and six individual interviews to tap participants’ narratives of their learning experience. 
•Findings: Although parent empowerment has been widely advocated in parenting work, the authority of expert knowledge as perceived by participants and the power imbalance between parent educators and parents posed a new ‘‘empowerment paradox’’. In our attempt to practice a new empowering mode of parent education for local parents was developed. Addressing this ‘empowerment paradox’’ requires a paradigm shift from the education model to an approach based on reflexive practice. 
•Applications: Parent educators need to be sensitive to social, cultural, discursive and institutional forces in order to negotiate a power relation that is  characterized by collaboration and partnership but is also responsive to parents’ pedagogical expectation in the Chinese cultural context.