Smart Schools and the Family-School Relationship: Teacher Profiles for the Promotion of Family Involvement.

Abstract

Smart schools prioritise work in the educational community, identifying the participation of families as an opportunity, rather than a form of intrusiveness. There are currently a multitude of ways of sharing education with families, ranging from communication to training, with teachers being the driving force in promoting the different roles that families can assume. In this respect, the aim of this cross-sectional, evaluative, non-experimental and quantitative study is to establish the family participation facilitation profiles of 542 teachers working in schools in a multicultural municipality in the autonomous community of the Region of Murcia, in south-eastern Spain. They completed a validated questionnaire with 91 items regarding the different dimensions of family participation, carrying out a cluster analysis to determine the teacher facilitation profiles. The results obtained from the application of the questionnaire show two statistically differentiated teaching profiles. The first of these, with a smaller number of teachers, with fewer years of experience and linked to the pre-primary and secondary stages in public schools, shows less participation in all the modalities considered. In contrast, the profile with the greatest commitment to promoting participation is characterised by having a greater number of teachers, predominantly from state-subsidised centres, that are experienced and linked to the primary stage. In relation to the previous literature, it was possible to confirm the presence of a differentiated profile, finding, on the one hand, teachers interested in the involvement of families and, on the other hand, teachers who do not identify the family-school relationship as a priority. This highlights the need to improve the prior and ongoing training of teachers to raise awareness and sensitise them to the inclusion of families in the educational community.