How to promote effective participatory schools in the managerial era: The case of successful democratic schools in Europe

In this paper we present the outcomes of INCLUD-ED project, Strategies for inclusion and social cohesion in Europe from education; the largest European research project on schooling funded by the European Commission. In this research, the consortium composed by fourteen research centres identified different types of family participation that some effective schools are carrying out and how specific family and community participatory processes are related with equity and with closing the achievement gap. These cases have strong policy implication because most of these schools are placed in low-income neighbourhoods with high percentage of ethnic minority –mostly Roma- and immigrant population. Thus, INCLUD-ED outcomes reflect how social justice can go hand in hand with democratization processes in an era where managerial and bureaucratic rationales are hegemonic. The success of these experiences depends not only on mere participation of parents, students and community but also on how this participation promotes a set of Successful Actions such as Interactive groups, tutored libraries, dialogic literacy gatherings and mixed committees for curriculum and school evaluation. In this paper, we analyse how these practices affect to school administration, curriculum, teaching practices and especially students’ outcomes. These real utopias are not mere particularities of their context neither product of institutional monocropping but they are institutions where transferable successful actions have been applied through a participatory and deliberative process. These cases go beyond the traditional limited family participation in schools to attend meetings and conferences and receive information.