From border to threshold. Homework between school and family

Abstract

This paper focuses on the school-family relationship by using the threshold concept
which, unlike a border, gives recognition to a space of interconnection between the two
elements. At an operational level, there are certain practices for looking at the actual relationship
established between parents and teachers; these practices, thanks to their
strategic positioning, can be both an access point to foster a new alliance or a pretext for
new contrasts. Homework belongs to this class because it is sent out and comes back
from the school place to the family home both physically and figuratively, positioning itself
at the limit. Using the border perspective, the risk is that everyone sees and reads
homework only on the basis of their own point of view, generating mutual closures and
widening distances; by contrast, the threshold interpretation allows different actors to
share an educational concern by putting at the centre the child/pupil’s right to a harmonious
development.