Uma outra face da escola

As a consequence of deep and rapid changes in past and present society, nowadays schools became institutions that go beyond the instructional function and are affording services and assuming functions requiring changes at several levels. Also, the legal discourse about school has developed to growing consideration about multiculturalism and inclusion, and, as such, their influential surroundings. Those and other features shaped the concept of school, which allows consider it as an organisation. 31 If schools are to be considered as organizations, then it is a natural process to think over the relationship between them and surroundings. We focus on students’ families, since to work with and to the families is, today, an organizational function of teaching, on which rely the student, teacher and school successes. Within this framework, the school-family relationship is an important and pertinent theme. However, in most schools, it has low visible presence and a very poor investment in this area. So, it is important and urgent to investigate the causes behind those incoherences. The problematic of school-family relationship has been approached in diversified ways, but without the proper attention to the school culture, namely to the teachers’ representations, which, according to research findings, deeply influence their practices. This fact, impelled us to research in the field, where we are carrying out a study, guided by the following objetive: to know teachers’ representations about the nature, importance, and inhibitory reasons for the school-family relationship, and also about ways of acting in favour of that relationship. The research context is EB2/3’ schools, located in the middle of Portugal. The working sample has about 500 teachers of different subject areas. Quantitative research methods are to be used. Measuring instruments assume the form of questionnaires. Data analysis is achieved through descriptive and inferential statistics.