Over the last decades, educational policies have been implementing a shared regulation of education in several European educational systems through processes that redistributed responsibilities among central governments and local communities. Shared regulation of education brought light to new roles for both teachers and parents – partners (Sá, 2000), stakeholders (Sliwka & Instance, 2006) and clients (Ball, 1994; Estevão, 1998) – that reconfigured school-family relationship. Theoretical background a model to analyze the new roles and the relationship between teachers and parents are the theory of the morphogenetic cycle of Margaret Archer and the theory of structuration of Anthony Giddens. The main two objectives of this study are (1) to explain how teachers and parents appropriate their new roles and (2) to identify different types of relationships, considering that they belong to a specific educational system and a specific school cultural context. Methodology is based in a multiple case study choosing six schools from different geographical locations and characterized by distinct socio-economic contexts. This methodological option was considered the most fit to study a contemporaneous phenomenon with a huge amount of data that was collected: a) strategic documents from schools; b) semi-directed interviews applied to school deans, presidents of parents’ associations, teachers and parents; c) non-participant observations of school and class boards. In a first step the documents, transcripts of interviews and field-notes of observation were categorized and analyzed by MAXqda. In second step all categories created through content analysis were transformed into variables (with two modalities: presence or absence of each attribute) that allowed to apply a multiple correspondence analysis supported by SPSS. Findings and Discussion: Results show that teachers’ and parents’ relationships tend to differ between schools with different locations and socio-economic contexts and also according to the opinions of school leaders about the roles that teachers and parents must act according to. Four types of relationships between teachers and parents were identified: a) limited relationship; b) collaborative relationship; c) guided/regulated relationship; d) distanced relationship. Both teachers and parents appear to be reluctant about assuming some of their new responsibilities, especially when it comes to create effective partnerships.

Archer, M. (1979). Social Origin of Educational Systems. London : Sage Publications. Ball, St. (1994). Education Reform: A Critical and Post-Structural Approach. Buckingham : Open University Press. Sá, V. (2000). Políticas educativas e participação dos pais na escola: novos direitos ou velhos deveres? Comunicação apresentada no IV Congresso Português de Sociologia Passados Recentes, Futuros Próximos. Coimbra. Sliwka, A., & Istance, D (2006). Parental and Stakeholder ‘voice’ in schools and systems. European Journal of Education, 41(1), 29-43.