Social representation of family support in the educational process of children: the perspective of preschool educators

Abstract

This article aims to show the different meanings given by teachers to what they call "family support" when they express their representations of the "good pupil". These meanings involve different rationalities which refer to conceptions of family, the role of the school, and the parents' involvement in their children's schooling. Data collection was carried out with ten teachers of year one (preschool) of municipal schools in the city of Blumenau, state of Santa Catarina. Data were through individual interviews that were started by using the Multiple Classification Procedure (Roazzi, 1995). Results show that the families are quite criticized by the teachers, who see them as the onset of and the solution to all the problems faced by the children at school. The teachers' speech shows that the schools consider just two possibilities of parents' involvement, without taking into account their needs and availabillity.