This contribution presents the research project "Educational Family Styles (EVALEF): Instrument Design Validation and Lineament to Family Intervention Programs," which runs until 2014, funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación de Spain under VI Plan Nacional de Investigación Científica, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica. The research was coordinated by the University of Valencia, and involving five other Spanish universities.

In the last decade, social development has been characterized by an extension and diversification of the concept of family having as a consequence a deeply impact on educational family styles. Likewise, research in education and studies on evaluation from different national and international organizations (PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS and diagnostic evaluations) have stated the influence of family styles on student’s performance.

However, there is a need for a description on actual educational patterns in families. Thus, it is relevant to provide reliable and validated instruments in order to diagnose educational family styles taking into consideration traditional perspectives on research family styles as well as new family styles emerged from social and family changes.

There is a long tradition in the study of relationships between parents and children. The international research shows that the traditional model of family socialization analysis had certain character of exclusivity and of unidirectional view. Authors who are based on this model classified the parents according to the dimensions of affection, communication and control requirements into four types: democratic, authoritarian, neglectful and permissive.

In 1999 Palacios presents a new approach in the way of understanding the familiar relationships, named Model of Joint Construction or of Multiple Influences. From this perspective, stand out two fundamental assumptions: a) the parent-child relationships are bidirectional, and b) The educational practices are effective only if they are adapted to the age of the children and promote their development (Ceballos and Rodrigo, 1998). This new model calls for the development of measurement tools that incorporate these new aspects.

On the other hand, given the shortage of teaching styles questionnaires constructed in our country, Spanish researchers have had to adapt or translate the questionnaires validated with other populations in many cases (Tori Lopez, 2008; Castro, Toro, Van Der Ende and Arrindel, 1993).

The investigation that we are going to develop these three years tries to design an instrument to analyze the educational familiar models (educational family styles) to identify them, and to provide diagnostic quality (from validation studies) to orientate the lines of intervention adapted to the distortions that could be demonstrated, while providing relevant information of the familiar context of the pupils to his educational formal environment.

 Objectives.

1. To define the educational styles appropriately to the familiar current models

2. To design a reliable and valid measurement instrument.

3. To develop uses of the instrument that provide evidences of instrument validation and that allow to initiate exploratory studies on family educational styles and other variables

4. To develop implementation strategies that allows the improvement of family educational styles, and analyse this strategies in the European context.

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