Different Generations in the Family–school Partnerships: toward New Forms of Reciprocity

Nowadays, the co-responsibility between schools and families has an articulated history that allows us to highlight its resources, limits but also new possibilities for expansion. National and international literature shows us how reflecting on possible ways to build educational partnerships between schools and families implies looking at the multiple actors of co-responsibility and its various declinations. These are necessary openings to deepen forms of reciprocity appropriate to our time. Within this scenario, this paper intends to launch a study on school-family co-responsibility, in order to offer new perspectives on the educational care of families, promoting experiences and paths of educational support for parenting to be experienced within renewed and even more inclusive communities. Furthermore, it must be recognized that, within the different early and second childhood education and care services, we are witnessing an increasingly high presence of grandparents. The latter are above all today not only fundamental pillars that increase the weaves of the intergenerational fabric, but also constant interlocutors of schools and services. Therefore, their presence requires a more careful pedagogical reflection which, in the proposal of this paper, must be developed together with that on parents. In particular, what we intend to explore is the possibility of educational support for parenting, promoted by early childhood educators themselves as possible facilitators of educational co-responsibility with families, also involving grandparents. This could allow us also to promote the role of families in the redefinition of educational care between generations and between educational communities. This proposal certainly highlights clearly the need for adequate training in family pedagogy for educators in order to implement their professionalism in the proposed direction.