Can schools become an inclusive space shared by all families? Learnings and debates from an action research project in Catalonia

ABSTRACT

This article discusses a 2-year action research project carried out in Catalonia using a sample of seven schools with varying degrees of social and ethnic diversity, focusing on the debate and critical perspectives surrounding the question of family–school relationships. It underlines four considerations, which are seen as symbolic, practical and probable barriers to this partnership: unequal power relationships, diversity and inequality of families, the grammar of schooling and how teachers view their professional identity. We present an action research project that involved the critical participation of the teaching staff in these seven schools and designed to answer the following question: under what conditions could family–school relationships be improved with and for all families, pupils and teachers? The conclusion discusses both the limitations of the critical action research and the lessons learnt from it: (a) the true transformation of the grammar of schooling is a slow and complex process; (b) this process is positive for teachers and makes their work better and easier; (c) the evaluation of constructive critical support is relevant and highly valued; and (d) the assessment of improved daily actions is key to making them visible and sustaining the change process.

KEYWORDS:

• Family–school relationship
• critical action research
• equal education
• educational change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. There is much ambiguity around concepts like family–school relationship, parent participation, parent involvement, home-school cooperation, family–school interaction or engaging parents (Epstein 2001; Vincent 1996; Lawrence 2015, etc.). Our definition of ‘family–school relationship’ is all documents, information, meetings and activities, both formal and informal, on line or off line that are (and are not) between one or more (head) teacher and one member of a school family.

2. The Tagiuri school climate questionnaire has 4 main dimensions: Milieu; Social System; Ecology (the physical and material aspects of the organization) and Culture (the social dimension concerned with belief systems, values, cognitive structures and meaning). We used an adapted version for schools created and tested by Ojembarrena (1997).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Fundació Jaume Bofill (Barcelona) (2011-2014).