Abstract:

The establishment of a healthy relationship among family and school has been pointed as a crucial factor in the harmonious development of the education process and in academic success. This relation has been characterized by a mutual blame between school agents and students’ families and it is far from the expected, especially in the context of many African countries. In one hand the school blames the parents for not having enough instruction on how to participate in the life and scholar activities of the students and, in the other hand, the parents put the blame on the school for not being prepared to insert the family into scholar environment. Our guiding question in this presentation, produced in the context of a PhD thesis that focuses on the relationship between school and family in Angola is: What can be done to enhance the sharing of ideas between family and school? Our main purpose is to diffuse and enhance the benefits of sharing ideas between school and family, in order to minimize the gap between those two important social institutions for the citizenship education and to allow the school to be progressively more participative, especially in developing countries such as Angola. Based on a non-systematic review of the literature, we present the current state of knowledge concerning the relationship between school and family and how to incorporate family into the school environment, including the perceptions of parents, school workers and teachers about this important relationship and the role of the class director, focusing on the present situation in Angola.

Keywords:

Family-School Relationship, Participation, Parents, Angola.