Centres that respond to today's educational challenges involving school community: Two case studies

Abstract

Purpose: Explore current forms of involvement between schools and their school communities that prove to be satisfactory.

Design/methodology/approach: Are carried out two case studies in two innovative schools, following the model of qualitative research, performing participant observation, interviews, and discussions with the individuals involved.

Findings and Originality/value: discusses four practices to approach school and community: the Tutorial Action, the Opening of the Centre to the community, the implementation of interactive groups and the creation of a Commission of families.

Research limitations/implications: The results are not representative of what happens in the common schools. Practical implications: each centre should explore their own possibilities and limits to encourage the school-community relationship betting on the maximum of collaborative organizational forms among the different agents, to provide joint responses to today's educational challenges.

Social implications: the entire educational community should be well received in centers to contribute to school improvement of students and there is a real community involvement.

Originality/value: when a strong synergy is been generating between all components of the educational community all members of the community can bring answers to the educational challenges of the moment, in a horizontal plane.