Angular - Directive - retain parent scope plus attribute value - angularjs

Question

So, I am looking to write a directive that displays a given structure. These structures can be embedded inside one another so the directive simply needs to read in the structure so that it can find all of its children and display them accordingly. If one of those children is another structure, then the directive is called again with the new structure.
This is pretty standard, however I want to do not want to create a new scope since I need to call functions from the main scope.
Can I retain the original scope and still pass in information through the attributes? Is there some other way of doing this?
What I have done is below:
Call the structureContent directive with the original structure.
The directive is a template that displays the properties of the structure depending on its type. It then gets its children and if one of those children is a structure then the directive is called again.
Like I said, this isn't the problem. The problem is that I need to retain the original scope as well since I need to call functions from there.
I cannot simply call the parent as there could be multiple levels of embedded structures.
Thanks
HTML
<div layout="row" flex="100" layout-align="center start" layout-fill>
<div flex="75" class="borderRight" layout-fill>
<div layout="column" layout="start center" class="fullWidth">
<structure-content struct="vm.currentItem"></structure-content>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</md-content>
Directive
(function ()
{
'use strict';
angular
.module('app.core')
.directive('structureContent', structureContent);
/** #ngInject **/
function structureContent($templateRequest, $compile)
{ return {
restrict : 'E',
controller : ["$scope", "$element", "$attrs",
function($scope, $element, $attrs) {
$scope.$watch($attrs.struct,
function(){
$scope.structObj = $attrs.struct;
}
);
}
],
link : function(scope, element, attrs){
$templateRequest("app/main/apps/document/worksheet/views/templates/multSpec/structureContentSection.html").then(function(html){
var template = angular.element(html);
element.html(template);
$compile(template)(scope);
});
}
}
};
})();
TEMPLATE CALLED
<div layout="column"
flex="100"
class="itemListSection" >
<div class="md-3-line"
ng-if="structObj.vartype=='6'"
ng-click="vm.currentStructure=scope.thisObj; vm.currentSubItem=scope.thisObj;"
layout="row">
<for-loop-list structObj="structObj" layout-fill></for-loop-list>
</div>
<div class="md-3-line"
ng-if="structObj.vartype=='7'"
ng-click="vm.currentStructure=scope.thisObj; vm.currentSubItem=scope.thisObj;"
layout="row">
<while-loop-list structObj="structObj" layout-fill></while-loop-list>
</div>
<div class="md-3-line"
ng-if="structObj.vartype=='8'"
ng-click="vm.currentStructure=scope.thisObj; vm.currentSubItem=scope.thisObj;"
layout="row">
<if-else-loop-list structObj="structObj" layout-fill></if-else-loop-list>
</div>
<div
ng-repeat="thisObj in vm.cadwolf_worksheet | orderBy:'location' track by thisObj.itemid"
ng-switch on="thisObj.vartype"
ng-if="thisObj.parentid==structObj.itemid"
class="subSection"
ng-click="vm.currentSubItem=thisObj; vm.currentStructure=thisObj" >
<div ng-switch-when="3"><equation-list equationobject="structObj"></equation-list></div>
<div ng-switch-when="6"><structure-content structObject="thisObj"></structure-content></div>
<div ng-switch-when="7"><structure-content structObject="thisObj"></structure-content></div>
<div ng-switch-when="8"><structure-content structObject="thisObj"></structure-content></div>
</div>