En un contexto de amplio acuerdo científico y legislativo sobre la importancia de la colaboración familia y escuela en los sistemas escolares, este estudio indaga en las nociones de colaboración que sustentan las prácticas de participación familiar en cinco establecimientos de Chile. Usando un cuestionario de involucramiento familiar y a través de entrevistas individuales y grupales, se identifican las nociones de colaboración familia-escuela, los roles, y las expectativas sobre las familias derivadas de éstas. El análisis muestra cómo las nociones de colaboración de docentes y familias privilegian cierto tipo de participación mientras invisibilizan otros. Se problematiza el hecho de que las familias, unilateralmente, sean construidas como las responsables últimas del éxito de la relación familia-escuela. Internationally there is wide scientific and legislative agreement on the relevance of school-family collaboration in education. Following this premise, this study explores the notions of collaboration that sustain participation and involvement practices in five schools in Chile. Utilizing a questionnaire based on Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler´s scales of parental involvement and individual and group interviews with teachers and families, meanings about school-family collaboration, roles and teachers´ expectations for families are explored. Results show how notions of collaboration held by teachers and families privilege certain aspects while invisiblizing others. Further results indicate accountability and blame discourses for the failure of successful school-family collaborations attributed to non-participating families by teachers and those families who do participate in school-based activities.

Utilizing Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler's (1995, 2005) theoretical framework on parental involvement, this study examined a cross-sectional sample of 516 parents of children in the first and fourth grade in municipal schools in Chile. The research sought to examine the association between parental motivational beliefs, parental perceptions of invitations for involvement, and parental perceived life context, and parental at-home and at-school involvement when controlling for child, parent, and household characteristics. Results from this study indicate that child invitations for involvement, parental sense of self-efficacy, income, and child's grade level are significantly associated with parental at home and at school involvement. Time and energy was also significantly associated with parental at school involvement. Understanding the importance of parental involvement as a protective factor in children's mental health, the article concludes with reflections on the findings for school-based mental health interventions. Specifically, the conclusions explore how to integrate family involvement initiatives and increase parental involvement, taking into account parental motivations for involvement in an international setting.

There is an extensive body of evidence to support both family involvement and students’ socioemotional development as key factors in the promotion of learning outcomes. However, there is insufficient evidence to establish exactly what this impact is when both factors are considered simultaneously. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyze the influence of family involvement and socioemotional development on learning outcomes of Chilean students, identifying the structure that most correctly identifies the influence of the predictor variables (family involvement and socioemotional development) on learning outcomes. We present the following three hypotheses that consider possible basic interrelation structures: (1) The influence of family involvement on learning outcomes is mediated by students’ socioemotional development (mediation hypothesis); (2) The influence of family involvement on learning outcomes is moderated by students’ socioemotional development (moderation hypothesis); (3) Family involvement and students’ socio emotional development directly affect learning outcomes (covariance hypothesis). The structures were evaluated by means of a structural equation model analysis. The study included 768 students who attended second and third elementary grades in Chilean schools. The children were between 7 and 11 years old ( M = 8.29, SD = 0.86); 41.3% were girls and 58.7% were boys. The results show that family involvement and students’ emotional development directly affect learning outcomes (CFI = 0.995, TLI = 0.993, RMSEA = 0.016). From the results, we can conclude that the data support the hypothesis that both family involvement and socioemotional development are predictors of learning outcomes, thereby rejecting that the impact of family involvement on learning outcomes is mediated or moderated by socioemotional development.

In Chile, the Covid-19 pandemic overlapped with a socio-political crisis that arose in response to the neoliberal model imposed during Pinochet’s dictatorship. Social workers have been key to addressing the multiple vulnerabilities the population has faced during the political uprising and pandemic. From a critical perspective that analyses precarity, precariousness and resistance as a continuum, this article examines SWs’ employment and intervention conditions during the pandemic and the resistances that have emerged in this context. Drawing upon a mixed sequential study that included an online survey (N = 872) and forty-two semi-structured (online) interviews, we identified that precarity and precariousness affecting professional interventions have persisted. However, findings indicate that (i) younger and less educated frontline SWs were most affected by worsening employment conditions; (ii) the shift towards tele-intervention has not only led to transformations in professional roles but also in the emergence of new surveillance mechanisms and (iii) new types of professional resistances emerged that have been identified as individual and spontaneous but nevertheless explicit in nature. We conclude that the pandemic and the on-going political crisis present social work with an opportunity to advocate for dignified working conditions as well as changing the historical subordinate position of the profession.

The following article revises conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in Latin America, followed by an examination of the history of poverty reduction programs in Chile since the 1960s and the installation of CCT programs in the country with a particular focus on the role of social work in their design and implementation. The article concludes with a discussion of the challenges social work faces in actively participating in the redesign and implementation of the new CCT model from a human rights and social justice focus.