The incidence of school failure in the minority groups adopts an uneven pattern, both in Spain and in other recipient countries of immigration and with the presence of differentiated ethnic groups. While the acquisition of the school language is a challenge, and it has developed strategies of compensatory education, the linguistic distance does not explain at all the differences between cultural groups in the incidence of school failure, which acquires its higher figures in gypsy pupils and students of African origin.

The study of the gaps between values, motives and educational goals, as well as the practices in which underpin, among the families of certain minority groups and the school, is a way of research to explain the differences and to develop alternatives to the educational intervention. Among the different approaches, the analysis about minorities in the United States made from the ecological-cultrual theory of Ogbu provides us with a useful model, but that cannot be transferred to Europe without investigating intercultural relations, the processes of social inclusion of minorities and socialization of children that occur in our territory.

The ultimate aim of this project is the design of programs to improve relations between school and families of those minority groups whose members show high difficulties in the inclusion school. This involves two phases in the research work. The first is the study of the discontinuities family-school in two very different groups but with similar socio-linguistic status: gypsy families and Ecuadorian ones. We will use discussion groups and in-depth interviews for obtaining data about the practices of socialization, educational goals, expectations and representations about the school. In order to analyse these indicators, speech will be categorized by the program ATLAS.ti.

The second phase is the use of the information obtained in the first one for the development of programs to articulate the relations between school and minority families. Following a methodology of action-research, we will develop specific programs for schools with the participation of teachers in primary and secondary. Likewise, this phase of the investigation expects introduce significant activity aimed at targets for professionals.

Bakthin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Berry, J. W. (2001). A Psychology of Immigration. Journal of Social Issues. Vol 57, No 3, p 615-631 Cole, M. (1998). Can Cultural Psychology Help Us Think About Diversity? Mind, Culture & Activity, 5(4), 291-304. Crespo, I.; Lalueza, J. L. & Pallí, C. (2002): Moving communities: a process of negotiation with a gypsy minority for empowerment. Community, Work and Family. Vol. 5, N. 1: 49-66 Crespo, I.; Lalueza, J. L.; Portell, M. & Sánchez, S. (2005). Communities for intercultural education: Interweaving microcultures. In M. Nilson and H. Nocon (Eds.): School of Tomorrow. Teaching and Technology in Local and Global Communities. Berna: Peter Lang Glaser, B &; Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for qualitative research. New York: Aldine. Greenfield, P.M. & Cocking (Eds.) (1994): Cross-cultural Roots of Minority Child Development. Hillsdale: LEA. Gregory, E. y Williams, A. (2000). City Literacies. Learning to Read across Generations and Cultures. London: Routledge.. Hedegaard (2002). Strategies for dealing sith conflicts in value positions between home and school: Influences of ethnic minority student’s development of motives and identity. Culture & Psychology, Voll 11(2), 187-205. Lalueza, J. L. & Crespo, I. (2009). Voices in the “Gipsy Developmental Project”. Mind, Culture & Activity. 16:3, 263-280 Ogbu, J.U. (1994): From Cultural Differences to Differences in Cultural frame of Reference. In Greenfield, P.M. & Cocking (Eds.) (1994): Cross-cultural Roots of Minority Child Development (365-391). Hillsdale. LEA. Siqués, C. y Vila, I. (2007). Linguistic plurality and the learning of the school language. En P. Cuvelier, T. du Plessis, M. Meewis y L. Teck (Eds.), Multilingualism and Exclusion. Policy, practice and prospects (pp. 181-196). Pretoria: Van Schaik. Wertsch, J. (1991). Voices of the mind. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.