Principales características de las familias españolas según el nivel de participación en la educación escolar

Résumé

The widespread recognition of the importance of family involvement in school education and its implications for the integral development of the individual, has favored large volume of research on this topic, showing a growing interest in recent years. The present work aims to contribute to knowledge in-depth of family involvement in the Spanish educational system, through the analysis of possible features that characterize different profiles of involvement, understanding that participation in a broad sense (formal and informal), following a selection of explanatory variables and considering the specificity of each educational stage (kindergarten, primary and secondary). The data used in this research come from a larger study sponsored by the State School Board (Consejo Escolar del Estado, 2014). As a response variable we built a Family Involvement Index from 8 indicators of participation. The data analysis technique used (decision trees), has enabled the Family Involvement study through a complete set of demographic, economic and cultural family variables without the prior establishment of hypotheses about their participation. The results reveal some common features in each profile between different educational stages, such as immigrant status of the mother and the level of possessions in the home, as well as specific variables of each educational stage. The study makes an important contribution to the field because after recognizing the importance of school participation, we must go forth analyzing the school realities and accordingly directing practices designed to its strengthening and improvement.