Abstract
BackgroundThe family-school relationship is a crucial component in achieving the optimum scholastic experience of pupils. Such a relationship is often described in somewhat reductive binary terms of collaboration/non-collaboration. However, the significant presence of families from different cultural backgrounds in Italy since the 1990s demonstrates how multiple types of rapport with schools can generate effective styles of relationship. Infant schools constitute a privileged location where such dynamics can be investigated. Firstly, because they exhibit the highest percentage of families that have moved to Italy from other countries (33.9%); secondly, because they represent the initial stage when school and family first come into contact, playing an “imprinting role” for all subsequent scholastic phases. Based on in-depth interviews with infant school teachers and parents of pupils coming from different backgrounds, this research investigated different factors that influence family-school relations: (1) interpersonal factors, that include listening skills, emotions and relational styles of parents or teachers; (2) structural factors, that are related to the living conditions of families and to the whole social welfare system in Italy; (3) cultural factors, that bring together values, lifestyles and educational cultures of both parents and teachers.ResultsThe idea regarding the inadequate distinction based on a dichotomy between Italian and migrant families seemed to be confirmed: Italian families and migrant families are characterized by many common features as well as by many inner differentiations. The results of this study suggest that the family-school relationship evolves into a communication framework that encompasses both obstacles and resources.ConclusionsThe results of our research suggest that the relationship between parents and teachers in Italian infant schools is influenced by different factors, not only cultural ones. All of these factors are related to both parents and teachers, and they should be taken into account when investigating this topic.
Highlights
The family-school relationship is a crucial component in achieving the optimum scholastic experience of pupils
Over the years the idea of implementing intercultural education was promoted in order to encourage comparison, dialogue and mutual enrichment generated by coexisting differences as set out in regulatory texts (Mpi 2006)
In its Granata et al SpringerPlus (2016) 5:1874 article 1 it refers to the relationship between school and family, involving the latter in the definition of the education portfolio and customized educational plans (Mpi 2003)
Summary
The family-school relationship is a crucial component in achieving the optimum scholastic experience of pupils. Families (immigrants and non-immigrants) are in this way encouraged to assume an active role during their children’s educational path as part of a collaboration framework with schools This law expressed a shift of cultural emphasis: from a model where schools were offering the same training to all pupils to a model where schools shape their educational “offer” on the basis of individual needs. In this way Italian schools seek to adapt to their students, whose “specificities” have to be considered from the outset. The Ministerial Directive of 2007, entitled “The Italian approach to an intercultural school and to the integration of immigrant pupils”, indicates that teaching in an intercultural context means assuming diversity as a paradigm of the school itself, a privileged opportunity to embrace all differences (Miur 2007)
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