How school judges families

Abstract

This paper analyses how school judges families studying teachers’ ordinary judgements in the first gradesof  secondary compulsory education in Spain. The study is based on an ethnographic fieldwork conductedinastatesecondaryschoolinanurbanworkingclassareaandfocusesontheschemesof perceptionand appreciation used by teachers in their discourses on families, paying special attention to social classdifferences. Teachers make judgments about families in their ordinary routines, usually referring learningdifficulties to a lack of  “implication” and “support” from families and showing ambivalences towardssocial class inequalities. The tension in their discourses between the acknowledgement of  “difficult”situations and objective disadvantages and the blaming of  families and the disqualification of  familialsocialization shows the complex relationship existing between the school system and the diverse andchanging working class families.