The Subject of Family Education in Spanish Educational Research

Family education is a fundamental pillar for individuals' education and an essential part of the personality and human constitution of each of us. This is what has motivated our interest in ascertaining what has been published on this important subject. We do so through attempting to discover what has been published in leading Spanish education journals such as Revista de Educación, Revista Española de Pedagogía, Revista Bordón, Revista de Investigación Educativa and Revista Enseñanza and Teaching.


Introduction
For those of us who are convinced of the importance and significance of family education in shaping individuals, it is impossible to overlook the thematic areas that have arisen out of Spanish educational research in the aforementioned context. To this end, we deployed a systematic review of what has been published in some of Spain's main education journals in order to illustrate the true dimensions of the subject. We chose five journals that are representative of the Spanish teaching spectrum, taking into account those which have been in publication for at least 25 years in order to provide a sufficient temporal perspective so as to establish strong ideas or nuclei of interest. The journals are Revista de Educación, Revista Española de Pedagogía, Revista Bordón, Revista de Investigación Educativa and Revista Enseñanza and Teaching (Table 1).
In view of the results obtained, it does not seem that this subject has been of special interest in the journals chosen. We first need to make a few relevant observations. The first is that all the selected journals, as we have said, have been in publication for at least 25 years. We believe that this is the minimum time period to ensure that we take a scientific look at the subject under analysis here. The second is that any citation from the journals that we provide will be ordered according chronologically. The third and most important observation is that we do not attempt here a content analysis in the style begun by Berelson [1][2][3][4][5][6] in their day. Instead, we conduct a systematic review, as we set out in the following Table 2, distinguishing our review from other kinds of documentary analysis: Our starting point is an evident reality: in all the journals that we analyse, the articles have been selected and evaluated through a double-blind system, which, in theory, decisively ensures the quality of the works that we analyse. We will now analyse the selected articles one by one:

Families and schools: a reflection on shared educational environments
The educational contexts in which we are involved to a large extent define the course of our personal and social development. It is clear that for centuries the family has been the main and almost exclusive setting for child development in most cultures. At present, relations between family and school are not understood as separate influences but overlapping ones. This underscores the relevance of the coordination and collective work of fathers, mothers and teachers. No developmental context can explain on a separate basis the complexity of evaluation processes. The setting where we carry out our activities is of the utmost importance: the physical characteristics of environments stimulate, inhibit and shape the activities that individuals undertake in them.
As mentioned above, it follows that the home and the classroom are not vacuums in which things happen, because they accommodate educators who can contribute a greater or lesser wealth of stimuli according to the structure or organization of these places. We accept that the school and home are environments with different spatiotemporal characteristics and that these differences are inevitable and desirable if we consider the role that each environment plays in the socialization of children [6][7][8][9][10][11]. In short, the school and the family differ in terms of the types and forms of interaction, their teaching/ learning strategies, their patterns of communication and organization of relations and so on, though we must understand them as different sources of stimuli, and therefore, of development. There seems to be some level of agreement that families fundamentally undertake to ensure the survival of their younger members, as well as their socialization, which turns them into active members of the cultural group in which the individual is immersed.
Parents' and teachers' educational practices are far from a homogeneous whole. Educational activities require an institutional framework specifically designed for their implementation, something that is of course not found in families. In the family, educational interventions have more temporal continuity, but they are rather irregular. The two share not only a same culture but also the function of caring for children and the responsibility of education them.
In short, at present, educational functions must necessarily be carried out both in schools and in the family because, even though they are contexts with clearly distinct identities, the educational principles that govern them do not in essence differ but rather are adapted to the specific characteristics of each learning situation. An understanding between the school and the family is necessary for the development and education of children. The relationship between the family and the school should be pursued based on fundamental objectives of, on the one hand, acquiring a greater knowledge of the child or student, and on the other hand establishing common educational standards or, at least, not contradictory ones. The relationship between the school and the family is successful when it is bidirectional and complementary, when information flows in both directions.

Family resources allocated to education (293)
The aim of this article is to analyse the sums allocated by households for the overall purpose of education. To do so, it presents via a variety of numerical and descriptive tables the evolution of this area in the period 1964-1981, highlighting that education costs represent a very significant part of families' budgets and, above all, that there is great variability in expenditure depending on the household's social class, which may perhaps not be independent of the inequalities of opportunities found within the education system itself.

Preschool at home: family infant education (galicia)
The 1975 FOESSA report states that a lack of pre-school education is the most effective form of definitive marginalization and discrimination. It has been observed that the experience of some parents of carrying out activities to prepare for starting school with their children instils in the child a sense of safety as well as skills and knowledge that result in better integration into the school and a greater chance of success. Following prior experiments, carrying out the Preschool at home program is considered feasible on the basis that attending to education in the home prior to the child's entering school is viable. It can undoubtedly be considered a good stimulus for motivating some parents, in addition to being a good opportunity to observe mother-child interaction (given that, generally, it is the mother who participates in the meetings). Preschool at home is defined as a training program for parents in family infant education, which is understood as a service and educational interaction for both children and the community. The family is the first institution to receive the child; in it, children undertake socialization and basic learning that will serve as the foundation for future socialization and learning. The idea was to respond to the need for pre-school care for children of 4 and 5 years of age in a rural environment. Working alongside families, the programme's specialists analysed their interests, doubts, fears, expectations and so forth with regard to the education of their children. This analysis will be the basis of the work to be done, and other aspects that arise throughout the course will be added, including other needs that are not sensed by families but that are of vital importance. The programme's main objective is to contribute to the development of the family education system in terms of its structure and values in order to construct a form of educational thought. The ultimate goal is to contribute to the complete and harmonious development of children, with scheduling of fortnightly training meetings.

Values and family in the third millennium
The problems faced by many children today are attributed to changes that have come about in Spanish society. These problems include difficulties with shared family and social life, recourse to violent behaviour to resolve disputes, the use of deception in many situations, a loss of cultural and intellectual curiosity, a tendency to seek an easy life, an emphasis on immediate needs, and so forth. The family continues to be in good health; it is still the reference social group for people of all ages. There is need for reflection on how this process of change is coming about. The changes primarily affect family models: traditional stem family, single-parent family, polynuclear families, unmarried partners, homosexual unions, liberalization of sexual relations, and so forth. Understanding many of these situations requires a degree of maturity and ethical sense.
One of the fundamental functions of the family in relation to offspring is socialization, given that the family acts as a mediator between the child and society. It plays the first and foremost role in cognitive and emotional configuration. The family contributes to the child's shaping as a person in a way that no other institution does. Things have changed [12][13][14]. The challenges of being a parent today have become a recurring theme. With regard to values, what is important is today's thinking with respect to the qualities that are transmitted-or that ought to be-in the family.

The family as a paradigm
We are witnessing a process of erosion of the family, from which a loss of any patriarchal legitimacy stems, creating a feeling of uncertainty. For this reason, family actors must set formulas for understanding that reflect their new circumstances. New actions by individuals within the framework of determinants of social structure are giving birth to new values, bringing about a form of education whose reflexivity makes it particularly innovative. Institutions are not born in a vacuum, but rather are nurtured by moral values and notions. One of the tasks that the family can successfully and skilfully undertake is educating children on the importance of fulfilling obligations.
We can conceptualize the family as a paradigm of the multicultural society to the extent that it exemplifies the synthesis of the apparently antithetical principles of equality and difference [15][16][17][18]. The family is one of the best illustrations of the merger of particularism and universalism. We must take advantage of the wealth of experiences within the family. The more democratic and supportive family that is emerging can also provide ideas for the organization of society as a whole.

Couple relations
A person's life is determined by the social relations that he or she is able to generate and maintain. These social networks are one of the most precious assets and represent a person's integration within society. Within social relations, those of the couple represent a very specific and essential type. When they appear, they become the most meaningful relations in the life of an individual. The highest hopes and expectations are placed in them. For this reason, it is essential that, once people are immersed in a couple, it succeeds. All research on the family and a couple relationships describe a high valuing of partnerships and marriage for people. Most people believe that this is an important aspect of their life.
In surveys, an important meaning to affective relationships is identified in relation to young people. It is noted that the meaning of the couple comes above the value of individuals' possessions and objects, and above free and leisure time, studies and, even, individuals' financial and employment situations. Relationships occupy a privileged place among individuals' key aspects [19,20]. A crucial factor in the creation of current couple relations is women's new circumstances, which are based on three fundamental aspects, namely ideological, formative and employment factors.

Family breakdown
Variables such as economic (growth of well-being), religious (secularization), social (mass access to higher education for women), ideological (accentuated individualism), legal (divorce legislation), demographic (a fall in the growth rate and the increase in life expectancy) and cultural-sociological (the utopia of private happiness) ones are all factors in the evolution in the social fabric, and they constitute what might be termed the ecological niche of the growth of family breakdown. Family breakdown does not affect spouses alone: if there are children, it seriously alters their surroundings and affective situation. Society is the environment that enables this breakdown.
From the sociological perspective, and in the area of the family, these changes entail modern processes of secularization and heterogeneity of values that are typical of modern pluralistic societies. Between parents and their children, traditionally less stereotypical but probably more intense relationships are being established. These are increasingly inspired by affinities or a reciprocal effect, and less by the duty derived from blood ties. Changes in attitudes toward relationship breakups are one of the indicators of the general tendency to replace traditional values of reference. Sociologically, this does not imply a crisis for the family, but a crisis of part of a family model. Our understanding of child development is recent and has been guided by the notion of the Oedipus complex, which is based almost exclusively on the impact that parents have on their children [21]. The new family models (broken or rebuilt families) in modern societies in some cases defy the universal validity of pure models based on the biological family. In any case, the diversity of experiences that children have following family breakdown is an indicator that the separation of parents is not the only element that is detrimental to children. Today, educational institutions (and the family is one of these) must be established as a common space for the construction of values.

A general overview of the single-parent family in Spain
All surveys coincide in their pointing out that the family is one of the assets that citizens appreciate the most. The elements can be analysed according to the extent of their stimulating power. The school and the home are two educational environments. However, something is changing: the family is not going to disappear, but it will be more diverse, democratic and egalitarian. Research carried out in previous decades indicated that divorce left irreparable consequences on the children of the broken marriage. It was assumed that the family nucleus was the model of normality. The traditional family is being challenged. The evolution has been so fast that it has not been able to adjust to new realities [22]. The framework of the family is increasingly complex: fathers and mothers remarry, biological children are separated by big age differences, adopted children grow up with biological children, and there are only children or weekend halfbrothers, and so on.

The socialization of children in single-parent families
Through socialization, we can understand how personality and social context interact with the purpose of finding reciprocal meaning. Socialization is a complex process with uncertain results. It gives rise to the emergence of different conceptions in theoretical approaches, the different ways of evaluating social reality. The family continues to have an enormous influence on primary socialization, but it is also true that, in relation to the immediate past, it has lost some of the functions in this process, and we find ourselves faced with a growing presence of other socializing agents that can have more influence than parents do, such as schools, peer groups or the media. The family structure influences the process of socialization, but it is not a determining factor. Other socializing agents have appeared, and the multiplicity of roles that this situation calls upon can be a source of stress or a cause of personal enrichment [23]. Ultimately, the authors of the article argue that children from single-parent families are devoid of problems related to behavioural abnormalities or maladjustment that stem from family structure, and that they may present a greater degree of maturity and responsibility than other children of their age.

Demographic aspects of the family in Spain
Change to the social control exercised over family life has given rise to a social space of individual freedom in the shaping of life projects and in the ways of conceptualizing and organizing couple and family life. The denormalization of family stories and the relaxation of family models has produced the consequence of a plurality of forms of joining, remaining in and leaving family life. Despite the deep privatization of projects relating to family life and the consequent loss of social control over how a family's story begins, the most socially widespread beginning to a shared life project continues to be marriage. The extension of smaller and minimal family models among new Spanish families does not mean that procreation has been renounced.

Family and the elderly
The only valid standards are the values that we assimilate and apply in our cohabitation with the people who constitute our immediate surroundings: the family. An ageing population is a new reality that is bringing great changes to society and social assistance. Among the most serious losses that a human being can experience is that of one's own dignity. As a result, society as a whole and the public authorities in particular have a role to play in ensuring that older people do not lose or are not deprived of their human rights or the social protection that they require, either on a personal level or on a familial one. The family environment plays an extremely important role in the ageing process. The family is the basic unit recognized by society, and all required efforts to support, protect and strengthen it in accordance with the systems of cultural values of each society in response to the needs of its elderly members should be made. Affective relations with children in this new situation require that parents and children understand how to adapt to the new situation.

Social support services for the family
Social services have taken a long time to contemplate the changes that the structure of the family has undergone. Without attempting to either directly or indirectly arrange private lives, family social support services are intended to contribute to solving common problems and the difficulties faced by the majority of families. We might put forward that the benefits aimed at protecting the family are insignificant in Spain; the delay in the universalization of family services in respect of other countries is hard to surpass; family services should not only be universal, but also increased in quantity to more satisfactory levels.
Family benefits do not serve as a substitute. Rather, they compensate for the needs and additional costs that family responsibilities entail. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is necessary to update the resources and supplementary benefits available for families, in addition to giving primacy to the individual's social right in view of the concept of subsidiarity. In summary, we can conclude that the social context of family has changed and that it continues to be a fundamental ingredient in the welfare of its members. The family needs support and social services for dependants--that is, social services that ought to be linked to the family unit. Social services have to take into account changes to the family and adapt to its new demands.

The social and economic functions of the family in emerging societies
We agree with the idea that the family is the most universal institution and that it is present in all cultures, even if it may take different forms. The most widespread idea in the social sciences is that the family or kinship group was at the heart of all social and economic life in the most ancient societies. At present, the reality of the family is not questioned, but a plurality of forms and behaviours that transform the classic concept of the family has been established. Perhaps the most important change has been the process of democratizing the internal relations of its members. Although such changes are decisive, they have had varying degrees of diffusion and resulted in the coexistence of different forms of family ties. There has also been an explosion in alternative forms of affective relationship: unmarried couples, singleparent households, homosexual couples, remarriages, couples without children, and so forth. From the point of view of the individual, the family is valuable in terms of resolving basic needs. The more complex a society and the more diversified and specialized its institutions, the greater the role of the family as a complement or replacement as a result of the inefficiency or inadequacy of these institutions. It is likely that the problems facing families are greater than those encountered in other times. The pressures of the surrounding world on the family, which are ever greater and more frequent, test the solidity of the institution, which in response and despite such obstacles is proving to be essential and difficult to replace in emerging societies.

Literature review of studies on the family, 1990-2000
The sociology of the family in Spain has advanced considerably in recent years although there is still a long way to go towards greater clarification of the concepts and the theoretical framework used, as well as towards a systematization of knowledge in the form of a sociology manual. This article is a review of the main ideas in different works on the following topics: the socialization of children and parents in today's Spanish family and their relationships with other agents of socialization; the internal dynamics of the alternative forms of family, with special attention paid to the single-parent family; family relationships, patterns and roles and their transformations in the different stages of the cycle; the family's relationships with other institutions such as religion, the economy, work, school, and the media; communication involving the nuclear family, its members and the parental network; conflicts, abuse, violence and the breakdown in family life and the post-divorce context; sexuality in couple relationships and adolescent members of the family [24][25][26]. Publications on the Spanish family have touched on the issue of change and transformations in the past two decades. Over this period, the family has demonstrated a capacity for amazing persistence and adaptation. The top subject has been the change in the role of women in the family and in society.

Family and school: two worlds called upon to work together
The school that we need would take the view that the idea of public education means not only educating the public within the school, but also educating them outside of it. The school is not the only educational context, and nor are its teachers the only actors. But in a knowledge society that divides, the community is where many improvement efforts have to be situated. Demanding new services and educational efforts at school should mean assuming a shared responsibility, with the direct involvement of parents and the educational community. The emotional range of the family is the privileged level for early socialization (judgment; attitudes and values; clarity about and acceptance of rules; self-control; a sense of responsibility; motivation for study, work and personal effort; emotional balance; social development; increasing autonomy; and so forth). In the early years, the family mediates the child's relationship with the environment. However, a stable pairing has ceased to be the basic model; if the family must be reinvented, this will not take the form of choosing a new model. Rather, multiple forms of family will persist. In the second modernity, women and men have an urgent need for self-realization and identity. On the one hand, the family does not primarily exist in institutional terms but in terms of communication between members. On the other hand, it is beginning to lose its basic structure and its primary function of instilling a set of social norms and values through socialization. Because of the family's progressive eclipse, the school has to take on the basic shaping of both the personality and cultural and cognitive development through the teaching of a set of knowledge that is now more volatile and complex. After more than a decade of incentivizing of families' participation in the educational system, they are starting to be considered as clients of educational services, and they are demanding greater functions in terms of quality from them. The crux of the debate is situated elsewhere, namely in the effectiveness of management methods. This obliges us to decentralize or deregulate the public system; participation must be linked to forms of teamwork at all levels of the life of the school. A model of democracy that is not the result of shared work and effort becomes bureaucratic and formalistic.
Problems have been exacerbated by families' increasing tendency to delegate responsibility to the school, through which they partially relieve themselves of their primary educational functions. Our starting point is a situation in which a heavy history of misunderstandings, incomprehension, suspicion, mistrust or hostility has meant that there are many obstacles to be overcome. This makes it necessary to redefine professional duties, not only at the individual level but also at a collective one. Expanded professionalism will be required to do so [24,25]. The autonomous professional model falls short when it comes to the task of establishing partnerships with the community. The model of a professional who works in a collegial manner with his or her colleagues should be expanded via other social sectors, especially families. The family plays a critical role in student achievement levels, and efforts to improve student outcomes are much more effective if they are accompanied and supported by the respective families. Family, school and community are three areas that have an effect on the education of students if they overlap; but the degree of connection between the three worlds depends on attitudes, practices and previous interactions. As theoreticians of social capital say, if there are no participation networks, the possibilities for collective action are limited. Social capital theory provides a framework for the various institutions in a community to collaborate with each other over student development. At the same time, schools can be agents in establishing this capital through developing community relations, and they can be beneficiaries in the establishment of such a community.
Investing in creating community social capital represents the commitment of a group of people who want to generate a process of relationship and cooperation that leads to the creation of levels of mutual trust between the members of a group, consensus on a set of shared standards, resource mobilization, management of community resources and the generation of spaces and structures for teamwork. Educational activity will in this way bring improvements by building bridges between the various actors and institutions in an area, helping to increase the volume and reserves of social capital in their respective contexts.

The Atlantis project: experiences to strengthen the school, family and municipality
Based on the analysis of everyday tasks, the Atlantis Project allows the identification of real problems, keys for rethinking the societal model, and the functions that education should prioritize to encourage the path towards a more democratic and supportive citizenship. The development of the Atlantis Project has managed to bring together two complementary lines of work: on the one hand, the revitalization of experiences related to action research of a curricular kind, and on the other, the approach to participatory action research. We discuss the community democratic model. The Atlantis Project seeks to integrate its reflections and those of other groups, putting forward ideas that were part of the innovative culture developed by many health professionals and groups linked to the discussion of the new citizenship. These ideas form the basis for new proposals that are emerging within a new social and participatory model. With regard to experimental data, the starting point was informal meetings convened by entities from this area. Without trying to substantially change schools' work programmes, Atlantis invites them to reflect in a way that makes it possible to raise their sights from the specifics, in a process that allows us to link and relate everyday problems with the global problem: the model of education and society that underlies our own professional performance [27]. Through Atlantis, we argue that building and working with a more democratic and global curriculum is important. We seek, on the one hand, to collectively reflect on the need to update basic learning offerings and the common curriculum of citizens, and on the other hand to reflect upon the agreement or code of ethics that should be discussed and assumed as a citizenship status in contexts that are experienced as a result of a collaborative work.

Families and schools: a reflection on shared educational environments
The school and family have defining characteristics and unique features that make them two distinct contexts. The reflections presented here are part of a longitudinal research project with a sample of 40 boys and girls as well as their families and their classmates. A specific interview was used that examined aspects related to educational and disciplinary practices, educational values and goals, ideas about the influence of heredity and the environment in development, the influence of the family in child adjustment, and relationships between parents and teachers. Authors such as Home and Ecers present data, in the scores for scales of this type, that show a significant correlation between the various measures in the development of the child and the ideas that parents and teachers have about development and education. We can state that varied stimuli are present. Accessibility and a tailoring to the needs of children and spatio-temporal organization are the most relevant aspects of the physical environment that facilitate or inhibit the development of activities in each context. In addition, activities should be stimulating, varied, organized and regular, and they must be tailored to the developmental needs of children, regardless of whether they are conducted in school or at home.

Family language and knowledge of the instructional language in Catalonia at the end of infant education
This article is the result of empirical research carried out with indigenous students and 547 native pupils and 434 allophone students at the end of infant education in 50 schools in Catalonia that accommodate students of foreign origin. The research was conducted via a questionnaire prepared by the educational authorities to measure the linguistic competence in Catalan of students at the end of the kindergarten. The questionnaire had two parts: one on oral language and another on written language. The questionnaire was administered between March and June 2007. Highlights of the results include that native students know the Catalan language significantly better than do allophone students in terms of listening, speaking, reading and writing, and that language and sex are of significant importance in the difference in results among the native population, in a way that is not the same among the allophone population. The typologies of classroom and sociolinguistic context are of great importance among native students but are of less importance among the allophone population.
Comparative analysis between both populations shows that when the father's socioprofessional status is high or medium, the differences between both populations with regard to the variables of comprehension, reading and writing disappear. However, these remain favourable towards natives when the father's socioprofessional level is low [27]. The comparison between populations disappears when the educational level of the mother is high.
Students who have been in school since the beginning of kindergarten do better than do their peers who start school later. Therefore, differences occur in favour of students with more years of schooling in kindergarten. The Catalan students showed significant differences relative to other students, with the exception of bilingual students. In short, when allophone students who speak Arabic, Soninke or Spanish finish infant education, they have significantly fewer cognitive-linguistic skills in the Catalan language than native students do.

Perception of support from parents and teachers: selfconcept and decision making at the baccalaureate level
This research was conducted with 454 students who were studying for a baccalaureate at three schools in the Canary Islands autonomous community. The three schools were in the public sector and were located in high-density urban areas. Information was collected through a questionnaire consisting of twelve multiple-choice questions.
The main outcome of the investigation is to reveal that with regard to scales of perceived academic self-concept, the students described the existence among their parents and teachers of variations that encouraged their path through the baccalaureate. Similarly, the academic self-concept scale exhibited a positive image for their educational aspect. At both levels of the baccalaureate, the mean scores for perceived self-concept were significantly higher for students with high academic self-concept than they were for students with low academic self-concept. Therefore, students' perceptions about how they are evaluated by their parents and teachers are clearly associated with academic self-concept.

Perceptions and attitudes toward the school institution
In this investigation, we set out from the principle that human beings are highly conditioned by the social class to which they belong. Based on this approach, the following hypothesis could be derived: the level of expectations and attitudes towards the school's activities is different for socially and economically advantaged groups and for those which are not advantaged. To verify this, we chose a sample comprising different socio-cultural levels. Our analytical method was based on the idea of association in the semantic field. The technique employed for this purpose was composed of three parts: content analysis, functional analysis and an x2 statistical test with a significance level of 0.01 (99% confidence level).

The influence of the family in school integration
The present work is based on a review of the theme of school maladjustment. The goal is to ascertain to what extent the family environment affects this problem. For this purpose, two questionnaires were administered, and the correlations between the different variables were analysed. The results obtained confirm the importance of the family environment in the emergence of the issue of school adaptation.

Parental participation in the school: A community intervention reform on difficulties at school
The article highlights the importance of parental participation in the school as a form of psycho-educational support for it in its intervening in school problems. According to the results of various studies, participation of this kind has been very effective in terms of the increase in children's school performance, of the shaping of their attitudes and personality and even of enriching their intellectual capacity. Despite the fact that this form of parental involvement in the teaching-learning process of their children's formal education is not easy to undertake owing to the many disadvantages that parents, teachers and the school as an institution, in general, report in attempting to bring it about, it seems to be one of the most effective intervention paths for controlling and preventing failure at school, as is evidenced in the work of the many researchers who have analysed it.

Families, education and prevention in relation to secondary students following the adaptation of a cognitive training programme with transfers to the curriculum
We set out from a basic premise: "Parents have primary responsibility for their children. They are the most significant people with regards to education and to the definition of the basic aspects of its nature. "This article presents a family education project that starts out with its theoretical justification and ends with the definition of the educational units corresponding to four different areas: physical care of the children, the organization of the household, relations with the school context and relations in the family context. The aim of the research is an educational intervention in the care of children. The sample is composed of families that have multiple problems and that are considered by social services as negligent in terms of educational or physical treatment or as physically abusive [28]. The instruments used for monitoring the families are particular to qualitative methodology: participant observation and a field diary. This project is designed with the aim of producing a manual that can be used by a family educator to support individual or family activities. The programme was well received and appreciated by social services professionals and educators. The professionals highlighted the high level of concretion. The program was more effective for rural families than it was for urban ones. The manual has demonstrated its effectiveness in supporting interventions in individual households. In terms of the use of the manual for parental group work, professionals were able to adapt it to the group's dynamics. Families' motivation and the reception of the intervention played a fundamental role in the effectiveness of the program.

Family participation in education: an unresolved issue
This article reflects on the philosophy behind and the meaning of social participation in education. Participation can be understood as a continuum that reflects different degrees of access to the decisionmaking process: giving and receiving information; accepting and giving opinions, consulting and making proposals; delegating authority; codeciding; comanaging; and self-managing. These can translate, in turn, into the different types of democracy that coexist in our society: consultative, representative, participatory, assembly-based or community.
Social participation in education must be seen as an exercise of citizenship and an indicator of democratic normalization. It should help to reduce the distance between citizens and institutions, and it should make organizational processes more transparent.
• The participatory situation of schools could be summarized as follows: if the • Management environment is characterized by an educationdeficient democracy, the curricular one is characterized by • A democracy-deficient education, while extracurricular activities • Generally fall within the terrain of laissez faire.
Three objectives were set for the research conducted: • Understanding parents' participatory reality. • Pointing out the difficulties encountered in the exercise of their rights. • Fostering guidelines that can be translated into proposals for improvement. • The population and sample sought a representativeness of cases: • Among the difficulties pointed out was a lack of time, lack of training, and greater recognition for all sectors. Moreover, there were calls for more support and accusations of a lack of confidence, and results were not seen in a clear or tangible way. • Among the concerns stated was the lack of an established way to change the representation, mainly with regard to the council Whereas the representatives of the council considered that the operation of the school council was good or very good, parents' associations were of the opinion that it is not good.

Family, society and communication networks
The aspects that are structurally and functionally defining the new social reality-for example, the ethnic and cultural diversification of the population due to the phenomenon of immigration; the plurality of forms of family cohabitation; social inequality based on gender, culture, race or religion; social imbalances produced by unequal access to new information technologies; a loss of cultural diversity due to the phenomenon of non-inclusive globalization; and economic and social problems generated by the unsustainability of development-are now global in nature and are causing new social instabilities, strong environmental imbalances, increasing exclusion, social fragmentation and territorial segmentation at the local level.
In the face of these phenomena, the need to act is being asserted from the different areas of the social reality, including education, so that citizens can learn and understand the causes and consequences of the problems linked to unsustainability, face the challenges posed in today's society and participate in the construction of a form of human development that is inclusive and environmentally and socially sustainable.
The family is considered as a private space where models of personal and community identity are shaped and reproduced. It is also viewed as basic place for learning values and recreating social behaviours and as the space for reproducing culture, in which a sense of belonging, tradition and communication is formed and in which people learn affective relationships and develop basic skills. It is the natural social nucleus where the individual conscience is moulded, and the most important and primary agent for socialization in a community. Family life now in itself represents a situation of privileged experience [29].
The family context can act as an authentic context for learning citizenship. It provides differentiated, comprehensive and inclusive experiences, through which children acquire globalizing experiences of the social reality and a greater preparation for active citizenship.
All these questions require family purposiveness to strengthen in children, in collaboration with other bodies, the necessary skills to decipher, interpret and manage the current codes of information and expression; to develop the capacity for critical and responsible judgements; and to understand, defend and exercise the rights to responsible and conscious participation in personal and social life through the development of democratic and pluralistic values such as effort, respect, dialogue, tolerance, participation and responsibility.
Moreover, the impacts of ICT are showing that such technology can be either beneficial or destructive, taking into account that it is sometimes used to develop democratic practices and at other times even to undertake immoral or unlawful activities and practices. It must also be borne in mind that society as a tool for better human development offers two clearly different versions with regard to the possibilities for achieving this: a utopian vision that enlarges the beneficial influence of ICT in the development of a digital citizenship; and a realistic vision that emphasizes the risks and the structural weaknesses of the cyberworld that is under construction and the influences of the actual powers in the real world over the new notion of active citizenship and its ethical, political and social consequences.

A value of the school institution for young university students at the University of Granada
The family has traditionally been considered as a natural and primary unit that requires harmony and union among all its members to survive; it has always existed and has undergone numerous changes and modifications in order to adapt and fulfil the functions that have been assigned to it at different times. This research focuses on the analysis and evaluation that Granada's university students have given to the family as an institution.
There are four objectives: • Understanding this collective's hierarchy of values • Determining the importance of a set of terms directly related to the family environment (father, mother, children, grandparents, siblings, and so forth). • Ascertaining the underlying structure that can be inferred from assessing the set of elements put forth through the application of factor analysis. • Reflecting on the educational impact of the results obtained.
The population is composed entirely of final-year students. It is made up of 423 students. The cluster sampling method was used. García's (1976) evaluative reaction test was consulted in order to produce the questionnaire. With regard to the first objective, the hierarchy of values expressed was the following: affective, moral, ecological, individual, corporal, social, intellectual, instrumental, aesthetic and religious.
Related to the second objective, the order was: mother, father, family, siblings, grandparents, boyfriends, children, marriage with respect to the third objective, the grandparents form the base of the pyramid; they maintain harmonious family ties between their children and grandchildren. The mother plays an essential role in the family; she is a linchpin who soothes tensions and brings understanding to the family nucleus.
The father is, alongside the mother, the primary model for the children. He is the person who forges the first experiences that will become part of the children's personality; he is the one who gives advice and teaches life values. Children are considered the expression of affection professed by two people who love one another. They are the most important aspect of a couple's life, and the love between the couple's members is projected onto them. In short, all the members of the family as an institution are highly valued.

Parents' opinions on their sons' and daughters' participation in domestic work: Implicit models of family education.
Families are recognized as an educational entity on the basis that they are the environment for first social contacts and the place in which the first structures of children's future personalities begin. We conducted a qualitative investigation that enabled men and women to recount their experiences in relation to educational coresponsibility processes. We chose to use the discussion group as our data collection technique.
Our study population was men and women residing in the county who have made families in which there is at least one school-age son or daughter. Each of the discussion groups lasted approximately two hours and on average involved six participants. We established three levels of analysis: thematic significance of the different ideas verbalized in the discussion groups; Description of the transcription content; theoretical interpretation of the transcriptions the results were the following: When the participants in the discussion groups were asked to report their children's participation in the sharing of household responsibilities and engagement in them, the answer was unanimous: this is necessary. It was evaluated as something of great importance and a basic element in children's development as people. The specific age varied between parents, though they took the view that it should begin at an early age. They tended to say that participation was occasional and limited. Although parents said that they would like to see a supportive participation model, they were nevertheless competent in their management.

Family participation in primary schools
Parental participation in schools is one of the key indicators of the quality of education systems. Accordingly, families' collaboration with these in relation to the education of their children is a topic that engages attention at two levels: the political/legislative and the scientific [12]. The results obtained show a positive trend. However, desirable optimal levels have still not been attained if one considers its educational value and importance and considers its benefits in terms of social cohesion, integration and classroom performance.
There are several educational conceptions of parents that involve different levels or degrees of involvement in the school Consumers: education is conceptualized as a product that is consumed, and if the individual is not satisfied, he or she opts for another school that is considered to be better. The internalization of this approach is evident when family participation is reduced to a mere choice of school that is thought more suitable Customers: when parents assume that teachers are experts with a responsibility for education. Issues will fall always upon them, since it is understood that the professionals are educators.-Participants: when families are involved in the education of their children, collaborating actively with the professionals. A particularity of this model is that families take the initiative and make proposals.
Partners: This entails the greatest family participation, because they believe that the education of their children must be addressed in a collaborative manner with the teaching staff.
The purpose of this research is to explore family participation in primary schools. It has two objectives: • a: Understanding families' responses to offers of cooperation made by schools. • b: Identifying motivations and conceptions that lead parents of students to participate in the school This research uses a survey-type descriptive design with a quantitative methodological approach. The sample used contained 110 participant families; the sampling took the form of stratified clusters. 22.7 were answered by the father, 45.5 by the mother, and only 12.8 by both parents (Tables 3 and 4).
The following factors stand out among families' motives for participating in the school: • Because teachers recommend it • Because it allows me to suggest ideas • Because it is essential for the academic success of my child

School attendance and functional diversity among parents
The importance of education is reflected by a better quality of life. The factors associated with dropping out can be categorized as internal (those which can be attributable to the students or to their homes) and as external (those which relate to schools). The present research was carried out by means of a probit model with instrumental variables fed by data provided through the application of a questionnaire. The questionnaire was applied to 400 households in a Mexican municipality; it comprised 36 multiple-choice closed responses. In line with the findings of other studies, school attendance is prioritized according to the household's socioeconomic status. The presence of parents with functional diversity has a significantly damaging impact on school attendance when the mother is the individual with functional diversity [30]. It is interesting to note that most of the results feature the mother as the focal point.
This study's findings provide two important conclusions. First of all, they confirm the results of other studies related to dropping out of school in terms of the socioeconomic status of the home and professional activities. Second, they emphasize the presence of the mother in the home.
The family's affective dimension: relevant variables for the psychological welfare of adolescent students The objective of this work is to study how adolescents' perception of certain aspects of the school context-for example, the level of communication and expression of ideas; support in different life situations; the intensity of relationships; and situations of conflict or disagreement-can help us to predict adolescents' psychological wellbeing. Moreover, affective security (which is indispensable in shaping a healthy personality) is linked directly to the emotional support received from parents.
This research has the following objectives: • To analyse to what extent and in what way the affective dimension of the family context is capable of anticipating psychological wellbeing in adolescents. • To understand participants' perception of the affective dimension of the family context. • To observe whether there are differences based on sex and age.
• To analyse which of the variables considered to define the affective dimension of the family context are relevant in the prediction of adolescents' psychological well-being. The research involved 170 students of both sexes and used discrete sampling.
The affective dimension was measured using Social Environment Scale (FES), and the xxxxx was also adapted. To assess psychological well-being, we used three subscales. One was oriented toward measuring life satisfaction; another assessed positive affect; and a third aimed to assess negative affect.
The affective dimension arises from consideration of the following subscales: • Cohesion: the degree to which members of the family are attuned one another and help each other • Expressiveness: the extent to which the members of the family are able and encouraged to act freely and to directly express their feelings. • Expression of conflict: the degree to which anger, aggression and conflict are expressed openly among family members. • Support: subjects' perception of another person as a source of assistance in different life situations • Depth: the intensity or the extent to which individuals believe that the specific personal relationship has an impact or comes about, in this case with regard to fathers, mothers and siblings-Conflict: perception of clashes or disagreements in relation to the people already specified in the relationship.
of age. With respect to psychological well-being, six variables were considered to have sufficient predictive capacity: cohesion, expressiveness, expression of conflict, support, conflict and depth. Based on the analysis conducted, it can be ascertained that the cohesion and conflict variables are very good predictors of adolescents' life satisfaction. In short, high levels of appreciation of cohesion and low levels of perception of conflict in the family allow us to predict good life satisfaction among adolescents.

School attendance and functional diversity among parents
School dropout rates are exacerbated by the presence of socioeconomic problems, and they harm young people by limiting their knowledge and future development. The literature has investigated school attendance as well as the difficulties faced by children with functional diversity, but it has not yet been considered if school attendance is affected when a parent has such limitations. This study analyses this problem based on a sample of 598 young people between the ages of 14 and 17 in the municipality of San Andrés Cholula (Mexico). The estimates of the probit model with instrumental variables emphasize the importance of the maternal figure due to the fact that dropping out of school is more likely to occur if the mother is functionally diverse or has a low educational level. However, young people who live in households in which the mother is the head of the family tend to exhibit a greater level of school attendance.

How family education is researched
For the researcher, understanding the results of an investigation is as important as the methodological criteria under which it was carried out. We will therefore now set out the most widely used methods in each of the investigations that we analysed; we cannot clearly discern a single method, but we can highlight a principal one (Table 5).
In short, we can summarize in these terms. We believe that it is now clear what research has been done on the family in Spain and how it has been conducted. The data here are approximate or referential, although research, in fact, usually has many faces or perspectives, as is the case in relation to this particular subject (  Table 1: Below we provide nominal information on particular aspects related to each journal and the subject under analysis here.

Review
"the general term for any attempt to summarize the results of two or more publications related to a given subject"

Systematic
"When a review strives for exhaustive identification through all the literature on a given topic, appraising its quality and synthesizing its results"

Meta-analysis
"When a systematic review incorporates a specific statistical strategy to bring together the results of several studies in a single appraisal"