Students’ engagement in schools is constantly being shaped by their relationship with adults (Connell, 1990; Finn e Rock, 1997), whether their families or their teachers (Connell e Wellborn, 1991; Mahler, 2011). Likewise, many studies show evidence that regular communication between teachers and families, not only to solve problems but also to set goals and build common strategies to achieve common goals, can have positive effects in students’ motivation and performance (Bursztyn e Coffman, 2010; Chapman e Heward, 1982).

The OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 Project developed “an aspirational vision of education in 2030” towards future individual and collective well-being – the OECD Learning Compass 2030 – in which all stakeholders, families and teachers included, must articulate to promote students’ aptitude to “navigate by themselves through unfamiliar contexts” successfully (OECD, 2019). Because of this global goal, more than ever before, families and schools must work together and, thus, communicate better.

Looking to achieve the global goal of training students to navigate by themselves in all contexts with success but facing an internal reality of increased distance between many families and teachers, a school in the metropolitan area of Lisbon in Portugal, implemented a program of “positive communication”. The main aim was to promote a proximity between teachers and families of all students, regardless of their socioeconomic background and of students’ individual characteristics (such as diverse motivation/engagement levels, capabilities, skills, etc.), to build the proximity needed to work together for the motioned common goal.

The program of “positive communication” consisted, among other actions, on promoting a regular and positive communication based on the idea that schools/teachers must take responsibility in promoting these types of changes (Epstein et al, 2002). Every month the main teacher, responsible for each class, must send messages to all families, regardless of students’ life and performance in school; and all messages must have at least one positive note about every student, even those who are experiencing problems in school. With this strategy, the school principal, is trying to bring teachers and families close together to create the necessary environment to start working towards the mentioned common goal as defined by OECD.

The “positive communication” program started in 2018/2019, four school years ago, to implement specific communication practices among teachers: i) to communicate with parents every month using ICTs; ii) to send positive messages about every student to their families. It is one of the strategies included in the Educational Project of this school, a strategic document which is currently being evaluated to improve its implementation. This research aims to contribute to the improvement of the “positive communication” program, by offering the parents and the teachers’ perspective about the following questions: do parents notice a change in teachers communication practices? What changed? What are the positive and negative outcomes? What can be improved? Finally, can this program be implemented in other schools and how much is it worth to promote a functional proximity between teachers and families considering the current global goals?

The methodological strategy followed a mixed methods approach based on three main techniques: i) a questionnaire to a representative sample of parents/families of the schools’ students; ii) informal conversations with the school principal; and iii) semi-directed interviews with a few selected teachers to assess why they are implementing/or not the “positive communication” program (selection criteria will be defined after the conclusion of the questionnaire results’ analysis), and what are their perceptions about the program; iv) and document analysis of students' evaluation reports. The questionnaire will be applied using an online platform (Qualtrics), and results will be analysed using SPSS – Statistical Package for Social Sciences; the discourses from the school principal and teachers will be analysed with Maxqda. All analysis will abbey the same set of dimensions and analytic categories to triangulate the results. The research strategy of a mixed methods is most appropriate to minimize the subjectivity between researcher and study object (Godoy, 2005) which is, this case, very important because the researcher works with this school and school principal since 2012. And, also, because it increases the coherence and the clarification of the results (Greene, Caracelli e Graham, 1989). This research is being conducted in a specific school cluster where the research team is involved as external consultants in the context of a National Program – TEIP (Educational Territories of Priority Intervention), because it is characterized by a set specific set of indicators that the TEIP program aims to improve (low results in national exams, high rates of retention, for example) and by many students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

Based only on informal conversations with the school principal, preliminary results point to two sets of teachers: i) one that seems to have been implementing the “positive communication” program and is alert to the necessity of a higher proximity to students’ families to create common discourses and strategies adapted to each student; ii) and another set of teachers that stopped implementing the program or that found ways to do it automatically without adjusting the messages to each student/family. The latest school evaluation questionnaires point to an increase in parents’ satisfaction with the communication process, but it is unknown if that occurs because of the “positive communication” program. Curiously, the strategy of online teaching because of the confinements due to the COVID-19 pandemic, brought opportunities for a new proximity between teachers and families that communicated more often, according to the school principal. We expect to assess if this small step – the “positive communication” program - being implemented in this specific school is worth the investment that the school principal and teachers are making, and if it is the right step towards to goal of co-agency as “students are surrounded by their peers, teachers, families and communities, all of whom interact with and guide the student towards well-being” (OECD, 2019).

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