Introduction
In this study, we understand the family-school relationship as the links that exist between people belonging to institutions who meet, socialize, and communicate with each other, with the purpose of supporting the school educational path of a child or adolescent (hereinafter referred to as CA). Various studies have acknowledged the importance of this relationship for school learning (Jeynes, 2005, 2017; Tan, Lyu, & Pen, 2020).
Approaches to understand the relationship between families and schools range from perspectives that emphasize the community aspect (Ortega & Cárcamo, 2018) to more individualistic viewpoints, supported by Epstein’s model of the school-family partnership, where the perspective is more focused on the needs of schools (Epstein, 2010; Baquedano-López, Alexander, & Hernández, 2013).
The way in which this relationship is shaped will vary according to the material conditions and origin of the families, with class and race being important factors for their possibilities of interaction with schools (Vincent, 2014). Similarly, neoliberal orthodoxy has changed both the ways of conceiving the other in schools (Riquelme, 2015) and the way in which we understand childhood (Peña, Ibarra, & Del Solar, 2014; Vergara-del Solar, Peña, Chávez, & Vergara 2015; Chávez & Vergara, 2017), parenthood (Faircloth & Rosen, 2020), and filial relationships (Vergara-del Solar, Chávez-Ibarra, Peña-Ochoa, & Vergara-Leyton, 2016; Vergara-del Solar, Sepúlveda, & Salvo, 2019).
Research focused on the family-school relationship is justified because of the relevance of this relationship to school learning and due to the complexity of the power relationships that run through it and the cultural changes that affect it. In the case of Latin America, it is important to be aware of the studies associated with this topic and, although there are some, at the date of submission of this paper and after a detailed review, we observed that there are no bibliometric studies that allow analysis of academic production on this field in Spanish in the last decade. For this reason, the aim of this study was to analyze the scientific production in Spanish that examines the family-school relationship.
The need for a bibliometric study of the family-school relationship
In the last decade, the academic production of research on the family-school relationship appears to have grown more rapidly. This is partly due to the scope of institutional scenarios in which families and schools have become the object of study in the education field (Egido Gálvez, 2015; De León Sánchez, 2011; Bolívar, 2006). In the Spanish-speaking world, we can find a disciplinary field that addresses the family-school relationship from different perspectives, such as those of the families, teachers, and other school actors (Gubbins, 2014, 2016; Precht, 2016, 2018; Rodríguez-Triana, 2018; Cárcamo & Garreta, 2020), which reveals that there is an active academic community. Some of the previous research has focused on investigating to what extent the way in which parents educate their children is being studied (Ruíz-Marín & Hernández-Prados, 2016), on describing the evolution of family participation in the school when students have specific requirements for educational support (Ruíz-Marín & Hernández-Prados, 2016), or on characterizing the evolution of family participation in schools when there are students with specific educational support needs (Navarro, Sánchez, & Gómez, 2020).
There is a prevalence of meta-analytic research addressing the factors that affect parents’ involvement in their children’s school education (Jafarov, 2015; Fan & Chen, 2001). Other studies examine the concept of agency in students and families regarding sociocultural adaptation to new school contexts (e.g., Castrillón-Correa, Cossio-Bolaños, Cudina, Gómez-Campos, & Precht, 2020) and the impact of family-school relationships on the educational inclusion of students (Carmona-Santiago, García, Máiquez, & Rodrigo, 2019), as well as the family-school relationship in Spain (Gálvez, 2020).
Analysis of academic production on the family-school relationship has been carried out locally, with Castelli and Pepe (2008) conducting a bibliometric-descriptive analysis of English-language academic production, registered in this field in the CSA (formerly Cambridge Scientific Abstracts) database from 1966 to 2005. For their part, Avila and Moreno (2020) research the way in which the family-school relationship was addressed in Colombian academic papers in 2012-2017.
Although these studies are an important precedent, it is essential to review the most recent academic production, since there is a lack of studies examining the dynamics of research in this field. Specifically, the question arises as to the characteristics of academic production in Spanish over the last decade, since this is the language used by most Latin American educational actors, to the detriment of English (http://www.ef.se/epi). It is the responsibility of these educational actors to design or implement specific policies regarding the family-school relationship. From this perspective, contributions in this field are mediated by access to the language, even though some decision-makers do have access to English-language academic production.
By analyzing scientific production on the family-school relationship in Spanish, this study aims to provide information on the dynamics of research in this area in the region. In order to do this, we decided to use a bibliometric method rather than systematic meta-analytical analyses. Specifically, it is important to look into the status and characteristics of this academic production over the last decade, especially regarding: a) the impact of the academic production, b) the co-authorship networks established between countries and researchers, c) the academic communities that are formed, and d) to raise general awareness of the most cited research that addresses the family-school relationship. As a consequence, the objective of this study was to analyze the scientific production on the family-school relationship in Spanish.
Method
We conducted an analysis of academic production on the family-school relationship indexed in the Scopus, WoS, and SciELO databases in 2008-2018. For this purpose, we used the bibliometric method, which allows us to understand the research dynamics formed within the field of knowledge in the framework of a social and historical context that makes its development possible (Mingers & Leydesdorff, 2015; Millán, Polanco, Ossa, Béria, & Cudina, 2017). This enables us to assess the impact of research and reveal indicators of production, circulation, collaboration, and citation. These give an insight into the trends established within the discipline (Mingers & Leydesdorff, 2015). An indicator that is traditionally used to assess scientific activity is associated with the productivity that emerges within an area of knowledge (Gómez-Morales; 2015; Tomás-Gorriz & Tomás-Casterá, 2018). Although bibliometric methods do not guarantee—with accuracy and precision—a complete picture of research activity, they do provide resources and techniques to analyze academic production in large volumes of data (Abramo & D’Angelo, 2011).
We present an overview of the academic production in the field of research on the family-school relationship with respect to publications in Spanish, this being the main language in Latin America. In order to reduce the gap in academic production in Spanish indexed in the WoS and Scopus databases, we decided to include SciELO, since this database contains a larger number of peer-reviewed indexed journals in Latin America, as well as significant academic production in Spanish. SciELO has bibliometric indicators that allow us to understand its production dynamics at the regional level in this part of the world. In addition, we carried out a content analysis of 12 of the most frequently cited papers in the database.
Corpus
The empirical corpus of this study is the academic production of research papers in Spanish that address the family-school relationship in the WoS, Scopus, and SciELO databases in the areas of education, social sciences, and psychology. The search heuristics used to scrutinize the empirical corpus, in Spanish and English, were the following: ["relación" or "school-family relationship" or "school-family relationship" or "familia-escuela" or "school-family"] Most journals ask for keywords to be included in English, even if the paper is in Spanish, so we incorporated these into the search in order to avoid missing information. The search was carried out on April 10, 2019. To determine the papers published in Spanish, we took the publications declared and indexed in Spanish. A total of 564 papers form the empirical corpus of the study and are distributed as follows: WoS (n=88), Scopus (n=277), and SciELO (n=199).
Procedure and analysis
Once the empirical corpus was formed, the database was built, which includes: authors, year of publication, citations, countries, and journals. We then analyzed the academic production. In order to determine the indicators of impact and consumption, the data were cleaned up manually. There were 28 journals that shared indexation with at least two databases, so 43 papers were excluded. We used two selection criteria for filtering: 1) papers that have the highest number of citations in the databases; 2) for papers that had the same citation indicator or which had no citation record, we prioritized the highest indexation, in the order WoS, Scopus, and SciELO. Based on these inclusion criteria, we obtained a total of 564 indexed papers, constituting the corpus for the analysis of this study. We used bibliometric techniques (Cudina & Ossa, 2016; Salas et al., 2018), specifically academic social network analysis (Maltseva & Batagelj, 2019), to map academic communities and identify collaborative networks established in the field between researchers and countries.
We used scientific collaboration networks as an object of analysis to reveal the academic communities that are formed based on co-authorship between two or more authors (Meadows, 1998). Scientific communication involves the flow of communication established between a group of researchers—authors of original research—with clear work activities and objectives (Borgman & Furner, 2002). We used the VOSviewer 1.6 software to analyze these networks (Van Eck & Waltman, 2010; Kooij & Waltman, 2019). This software allows the construction of academic networks to represent knowledge structures. The analysis of scientific collaborative networks is a crucial element to address the knowledge structures emerging from the research dynamics of family-school studies. The graphs shown constitute the co-authorship networks established between countries and authors. These networks make it possible to group, classify, and determine academic communities within family-school studies, as well as to establish differences between the dynamics of scientific production indexed in databases. The set of collaborative networks is a communication vehicle that allows us to account for fundamental knowledge structures (Esquivel, Carbonelli, & Irrazabal, 2011), where the dynamics of academic production of studies in the area take place. Finally, a sample of the most cited research was taken to conduct a detailed review of the way in which studies on the family-school relationship are carried out.
Results
The academic production in terms of studies on family-school relationships in Spanish in the last decade is 564 papers. The distribution of this production over time does not show a clear trend of growth (Figure 1), but instead indicates variable production. The years 2012 and 2017 were the periods with the highest increases in the numbers of papers, with 62 and 72, respectively. On the other hand, 2008 and 2010 were the years with the lowest number of publications on this subject, with only 31 and 33 papers, respectively.
|
|
Figure 1. Academic production of family-school studies in 2008-2018.Source: Prepared by the authors. |
When analyzing this decade, the average number of papers published per year does not exceed 56. However, when observing the average annual rates of publication in each of the databases, we can see that there are differences in the academic production of studies between the three databases. While in Scopus the annual average was 27.7 papers during this decade, SciELO showed an average of 19.9, and WoS had an average of only 8.8 papers per year.
Impact of the academic production
The impact of the academic production on this theme is generally low. A significant portion of this production (42.9%, n=242) has never been cited, while 15.8% (n=89) of the research has been cited only once. Thus, 58.7% of the publications had minimal or no impact. A quarter of the remaining production on the subject had between two and five citations (22.3%) and 19% of the papers had between six and 36 citations for the period (Table 1).
Table 1
|
|||||||
|
Frequency |
SciELO |
Scopus |
WoS |
Total |
|||
|
N |
% |
N |
% |
N |
% |
||
|
0 |
123 |
61.8 |
92 |
33.2 |
27 |
30.7 |
42.9% |
|
1 |
41 |
20.6 |
40 |
14.4 |
8 |
9.1 |
15.8% |
|
2-5 |
23 |
11.6 |
83 |
30.0 |
20 |
22.7 |
22.3% |
|
6-10 |
9 |
4.5 |
29 |
10.5 |
13 |
14.8 |
9.0% |
|
11-15 |
3 |
1.5 |
20 |
7.2 |
12 |
13.6 |
6.2% |
|
16 - 20 |
-- |
-- |
2 |
0.7 |
4 |
4.6 |
1.1% |
|
21- 30 |
-- |
-- |
7 |
2.5 |
3 |
3.4 |
1.8% |
|
31- 36 |
-- |
-- |
4 |
1.4 |
1 |
1.2 |
0.9% |
|
Total |
199 |
100 |
277 |
100 |
88 |
100 |
100 |
|
Source: Prepared by the authors. |
|||||||
As can be seen in Table 1, there are significant differences with regard to citation in the databases: Scopus is the database with the greatest impact in family-school studies, followed by SciELO and finally WoS in terms of citation frequency. However, it should be noted that, in percentage terms, the papers published in Scopus and WoS have a much higher citation rate (>2) than in SciELO. Meanwhile, SciELO has double the percentage of papers with only one or no citations compared with Scopus and WoS. We should also point out that, during the period reviewed, public policies for scientific promotion in most of the countries of origin tended to encourage the publication of journals indexed in the first two databases (WoS and Scopus) to the detriment of SciELO, which may be one of the variables explaining this situation.
Where is this production being carried out?
In order to answer this question, the results are presented in accordance with the countries and academic communities that have stood out in academic production of studies on family-school relationships depending on the research dynamics in each of the databases.
Academic production by country
In total, 27 countries showed some production on the topic. Figure 2 shows the co-authorship networks by country identified in the academic production on family-school studies, differentiated by database. It should be noted that the network presented in Figure 2 shows the countries of institutional affiliation of researchers who have written studies on family-school relationships.
|
Scopus |
|
|
|
WoS |
|
|
|
SciELO |
|
|
Figure 2. Networks of co-authorship between countries, 2008-2018Source: Prepared by the authors. |
Figure 2 shows the research dynamics in terms of co-authorship by country according to the databases, highlighting three important aspects: a) Scopus is the database with the largest co-authorship network, b) the research published in Scopus seems to point to the formation of academic communities of researchers made up of an average of three authors, and c) publications in Scopus are led by Spanish researchers and collaborative relationships are formed particularly with researchers based in Latin American countries such as in Mexico, Chile, Colombia, and Argentina.
Secondly, the academic production recorded in WoS does not show the formation of a strong collaborative network. Publications are concentrated almost exclusively in Spain and relations with other countries in Europe and Latin America are not well developed. Thirdly, SciELO shows a significant pattern of collaboration between Latin American countries and there are fewer contributions from Spanish researchers. However, although there is visible participation on the part of Latin American researchers, the networks indicate the formation of academic communities of researchers comprised of an average of three authors, where collaborative networks are not evident.
Generally speaking, when examining the research dynamics in the three databases, we find points of convergence that we should be aware of. On the one hand, Latin America represents the continent with the largest number of countries contributing to academic production of family-school studies. The Latin American contribution in Scopus is 57% (n=12), in WoS it is 44% (n=4), and in SciELO it is 52% (n=11).
On the other hand, although it is true that Latin America is the continent with the greatest representation of countries—when we review the general frequency of publications—we find that Europe is the continent that contributes most to academic production, with Spain being the country with the greatest number of contributions. European academic production represents 54.4% of the total (n=320); Latin American, 43.0% (n=253); North American, 1.2% (n=7); African, 0.9% (n=5), and Asian, 0.5% (n=3).
In this regard, we should mention the record of Spanish-language research in African nations, including Angola (n=4) and Cape Verde (n=1), and Asia, with Israel, Taiwan, and South Korea making one contribution each. The five countries with the largest contributions are: Spain (n= 292), Mexico (n= 66), Chile (n=66), Argentina (n=39), and Colombia (n=37). The contributions of these countries accounts for 84.5% (497) of the total academic production. However, it should be noted that these same countries also lead the overall academic production in science in Spanish.
Academic communities
The number of authors linked to academic production of family-school studies is 1479. By database, the figures are the following: Scopus 48.5% (n=708), WoS 17% (n=248), and SciELO 34.5% (n=503). Figure 3 shows the network of co-authorship that appears between authors who have contributed at least two family-school studies.
|
Scopus |
|
|
|
WoS |
|
|
|
SciELO |
|
|
Figure 3. Networks of co-authorship between researchers in Family-School studies, 2008-2018Source: Prepared by the authors. |
Figure 3 shows the details of the academic communities of researchers who work in collaboration. As seen in the collaborative network by country, Scopus is the database where the largest collaborative networks are observed. Although we can see the formation of research niches comprised by an average of three authors, it should be noted that the communities that comprise these niches do not display collaborative work connections with other communities. Table 2 presents the details of the country of origin of the researchers who form academic communities for family-school studies.
Table 2
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|||
|
Database |
Researcher |
Institution |
Country |
|
Scopus |
Hernández-Ávila, C. A. |
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México |
Mexico |
|
Martínez, A. D. |
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México |
Mexico |
|
|
Robles, J. N. |
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México |
Mexico |
|
|
Torres, C. S. |
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México |
Mexico |
|
|
Varela, H. F. |
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México |
Mexico |
|
|
López, E. E. |
Universidad de Valencia |
Spain |
|
|
Ochoa, G. M. |
Universidad Pablo Olavide |
Spain |
|
|
Pérez, S. M. |
Universidad Católica San Vicente Mártir |
Spain |
|
|
Ruiz, D. M. |
Universidad de Valencia |
Spain |
|
|
Musitu, G. |
Universidad de Pablo Olavide |
Spain |
|
|
Scopus |
Povedano, A. |
Universidad de Pablo Olavide |
Spain |
|
Sánchez-Sosa, J. C. |
Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León |
Mexico |
|
|
Villarreal, M. E. |
Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos |
Mexico |
|
|
Del Rey, R. |
Universidad de Sevilla |
Spain |
|
|
Gómez-Ortiz, O. |
Universidad de Córdoba |
Spain |
|
|
Ortega-Ruiz, R. |
Universidad de Córdoba |
Spain |
|
|
Etxeberria, F. |
Universidad del País Vasco |
Spain |
|
|
Intxausti, N. |
Universidad del País Vasco |
Spain |
|
|
Joaristi, L. |
Universidad del País Vasco |
Spain |
|
|
Martínez-Ferrer, B. |
Universidad de Valencia |
Spain |
|
|
Murgui-Pérez, S. |
Universidad de Valencia |
Spain |
|
|
Estévez, E. |
Universidad de Sevilla |
Spain |
|
|
Jiménez, T. I. |
Universidad de Sevilla |
Spain |
|
|
Collet-Sabé, J. |
Universidad de Vic |
Spain |
|
|
Tort, A. |
Universidad de Vic |
Spain |
|
|
Guitart, M. |
Universidad de Girona |
Spain |
|
|
Vila, I. |
Universidad de Girona |
Spain |
|
|
González, M. M. |
Universidad de Sevilla |
Spain |
|
|
López, F. |
Universidad de Sevilla |
Spain |
|
|
García, A. R. |
Universidad Católica de Murcia |
Spain |
|
|
Hernáez, L. L. |
Universidad Católica de Murcia |
Spain |
|
|
Ramos-Díaz, E. |
Universidad del País Vasco |
Spain |
|
|
Rodríguez-Fernández, A. |
Universidad del País Vasco |
Spain |
|
|
WoS |
Cerezo, F. |
Universidad de Murcia |
Spain |
|
Cordero-Ferrera, J. M. |
Universidad de Extremadura |
Spain |
|
|
Gil-Flores, J. |
Universidad de Sevilla |
Spain |
|
|
González, M. |
Universidad de Sevilla |
Spain |
|
|
Ibabe, I. |
Universidad del País Vasco |
Spain |
|
|
Martínez-Ferrer, B. |
Universidad de Valencia |
Spain |
|
|
Scielo |
Varela, R. |
Universidad Pablo de Olavide |
Spain |
|
Forte, A. L. |
Universidad Católica Boliviana Tarija |
Bolivia |
|
|
Soto-Montenegro, C. |
Universidad Católica Boliviana Tarija |
Bolivia |
|
|
Valencia, C. |
Universidad Católica Boliviana Tarija |
Bolivia |
|
|
Van der Valk, A. |
Universidad Católica Boliviana Tarija |
Bolivia |
|
|
García, V. |
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México |
Mexico |
|
|
Martínez-González, C. |
Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales |
Mexico |
|
|
Ramírez-Pérez, J. A. |
Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos |
Mexico |
|
|
Martínez, E. A. |
Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Cajeme |
Mexico |
|
|
Valdés-Cuervo, Á. A |
Instituto Tecnológico de Sonora |
Mexico |
|
|
Vera-Noriega, J. Á. |
Centro de Investigación en Alimentación y Desarrollo A.C. |
Mexico |
|
|
Jiménez-Figueroa, A. |
Universidad de Talca |
Chile |
|
|
Navarrete-Acuña, L. |
Instituto Diego Portales |
Chile |
|
|
González-Tornaría, M. |
Universidad Católica del Uruguay |
Uruguay |
|
|
Jiménez, T. I. |
Universidad de Zaragoza |
Spain |
|
|
Melipillán, R. |
Universidad de Concepción |
Chile |
|
|
Razeto, A. |
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile |
Chile |
|
|
Vargas-Valle, E. D. |
El Colegio de la Frontera Norte |
Mexico |
|
|
Vercellino, S. |
Universidad Nacional de Río Negro |
Argentina |
|
|
Source: Prepared by the authors. |
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In Scopus we see the formation of eight research groups that have produced a line of family-school studies: cluster 1 (in red), led by C.A. Hernández-Ávila et al., and clusters 2 and 3 (in blue and orange, respectively), led by G. Musito et al. and E. T. Jiménez et al., constitute the most representative communities.
On the other hand, as we can see in Figure 3, there are no strong collaborative links between researchers in the WoS database, with the publications in this database consisting of contributions from a single author. Finally, unlike WoS, SciELO has a significant dynamic of research in networks. We can identify three academic communities that have become consolidated in production of family-school studies, namely: cluster 1 (in red), represented by G. Musito, M. E. Villarreal-González, and J. C. Sánchez-Sosa; cluster 2 (in yellow) represented by Á. A. Valdés-Cuervo, J. A. Vera-Noriega, and E. A. Martínez; and cluster 3 (in green), represented by A. Van der Valk, C. Valencia, A. L. Forte, and C. Soto-Montenegro.
Finally, when we review the frequency of authors who sign research on family-school studies, we see that 72.5% (n=408) of the academic production is registered with one to three authors per paper, as follows: 19.5% (n=110) of papers are signed by one author, 27.2% (n=153) are signed by two authors, and 25.8% (n=145) are signed by three authors. Table 3 shows the frequency of authors who signed research on family-school studies.
Table 3
|
|||
|
Number of Authors |
Nº of Papers |
Total citations |
Average citations |
|
1 |
110 |
70 |
0.6 |
|
2 |
153 |
79 |
0.5 |
|
3 |
145 |
89 |
0.6 |
|
4- 6 |
148 |
103 |
0.7 |
|
7 -10 |
7 |
4 |
0.6 |
|
29 |
1 |
-- |
0 |
|
Total |
564 |
345 |
3.0 |
|
Source: Prepared by the authors. |
|||
As can be seen in Table 3, 72.5% (n=408) of the academic production is signed by a range of one to three authors, as stated above, and 27.5% (n=156) of the remaining academic production is distributed in a greater range of co-authorships. However, this aspect does not demonstrate a clear tendency that would allow us to state that family-school studies are carried out with a logic of hyperauthorship, which is characteristic of the new dynamics of scientific production (Cronin, 2001). In this respect, it should be noted that the number of authors is not related to an increase in citations, unlike other studies that indicate that greater citation is due to collaboration between authors (Garner, Hirsch, Albuquerque, & Fargen, 2018).
Representative authors
The volume of papers on family-school studies per researcher does not exceed four. This is similar in each of the databases consulted. This shows that authorship within the area of family-school studies is still highly incipient in terms of its consolidation. Table 4 shows the most representative authors in family-school studies according to the volume of papers published.
Table 4
|
||
|
Author |
Nº of papers |
Database |
|
Jiménez, Teresa |
4 |
Scopus |
|
Sánchez-Sosa, Juan Carlos |
4 |
SciELO |
|
Villarreal-González, María Elena |
4 |
SciELO |
|
Cerezo, Fuensanta |
3 |
WoS |
|
Gil-Flores, Javier |
3 |
WoS |
|
Martínez-Ferrer, Belén |
3 |
WoS |
|
Musitu, Gonzalo |
3 |
Scopus |
|
Hernáez, Lara L. |
3 |
Scopus |
|
Parra Martinez, Joaquín |
3 |
Scopus |
|
Povedano, Amapola |
3 |
Scopus |
|
Jiménez-Figueroa, Andrés |
3 |
SciELO |
|
Valdés-Cuervo, Ángel |
3 |
SciELO |
|
Note: Papers in more than one database were eliminated according to lower indexing (see Method section). Source: Prepared by the authors. |
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Among the authors shown in Table 4, some 58% of them are men and 42% are women. These authors represent 7.4% (n=42) of the academic production in the area. This aspect is an example that explains the heterogeneity and dispersion of the academic communities that have been forming within this field in the Latin American context.
Journals where the papers are published
The flow of scientific communication on academic production of family-school studies is based around a significant number of journals. A total of 564 papers published in 184 specialized journals in various areas of social sciences, education, and psychology demonstrates the importance of journals as a channel of scientific communication for academic communities (Buela-Casal & López-López, 2005; Madrid, Jiménez-Fanjul, León-Mantero, & Maz-Machado, 2017; Salas et al., 2019). In addition, they also consolidate their responsibility to optimize visibility in local, regional, and national academic production (Cudina, Millán, & Ossa, 2017; Polanco, Beria, & Klappenbach, 2017; Polanco-Carrasco, Gallegos, Salas, & López-López, 2017).
The number of journals varies according to their indexing in the databases as follows. In Scopus there are (n=103) journals registered, in WoS (n=20), and in SciELO (n=89). Figure 4 shows the 10 journals that publish the most studies on family-school relationships. It should be noted that these journals account for 36.5% (n=206) of the academic production.
|
|
Figure 4. Representative journals in family-school studies, 2008-2018Source: Prepared by the authors. |
Figure 4 shows that publications on family-school studies appear in journals with different areas of specialization, with 50% (n=5) in journals on the psychosocial and mental health area, where there is frequent use of scales to measure family, school, and participatory social climate. The other 50% (n=5) are published in culture and education journals, focused on educational studies with cultural perspectives, depending on the context. It is important to note that there is no evidence that the higher frequency in publications observed in the figure above is due to special issues on the subject.
What do the most frequently cited papers address?
Table 5 shows the 10 most cited papers in Scopus and Wos, to which are added the two most cited papers in SciELO, giving a total of 12 papers that make it possible to identify the main variables included in the studies.
Table 5
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|
Author/Year/Country |
Title of paper |
Citations |
Database |
|
Cordero, Crespo, & Pedraja. (2013) – Spain |
Logros educativos y determinantes en PISA: una encuesta de literatura española |
36 |
Scopus |
|
Jiménez, Musitu, & Murgui. (2008) –Spain |
Funcionamiento familiar y uso de sustancias en adolescentes. El papel mediador de la autoestima |
33 |
Scopus |
|
Castaño, Gómez, & Bouachra. (2008) – Spain |
Población inmigrante y escuela en España: un balance de investigación |
31 |
Scopus |
|
Ruiz, López, Pérez & Ochoa. (2009) – Spain |
Relación entre el entorno familiar y el escolar: el papel de la empatía, la actitud ante la autoridad y la violencia. |
29 |
Scopus |
|
Povedano, Hendry, Ramos, & Varela. (2011) – Spain |
Victimización escolar: ambiente familiar, autoestima y satisfacción con la vida desde una perspectiva de género |
26 |
Scopus |
|
Cerezo, Sánchez, Ruiz, & Arense. (2015) – Spain |
El papel de los adolescentes y preadolescentes en el acoso escolar y su relación con el clima social y los estilos de crianza |
23 |
WoS |
|
Martínez-Ferrer, Murgui-Pérez, Musitu-Ochoa, & Monreal-Gimeno. (2008) – Spain |
El rol del apoyo parental, las actitudes hacia la escuela y la autoestima en la violencia escolar en adolescentes |
22 |
Scopus |
|
Gázquez, Pérez, & Carrión. (2011) – Spain, Hungary, Austria, and Czech Republic |
Clima escolar y resolución de conflictos según los estudiantes: un estudio europeo |
22 |
WoS |
|
Gómez-Ortiz, Del Rey, Casas, & Ortega-Ruiz. (2014) – Spain |
Estilos parentales e implicación en bullying |
21 |
Scopus |
|
Hernando, Oliva, & Pertegal. (2012) – Spain |
Variables familiares y rendimiento académico en la adolescencia |
21 |
Scopus |
|
Sánchez-Sosa, Villarreal-González, Musitu, & Martínez. (2010) – Spain |
Ideación suicida en adolescentes: un análisis psicosocial |
13 |
SciELO |
|
Uribe, Orcasita, & Aguillón. (2012) – Colombia |
Bullying, redes de apoyo social y funcionamiento familiar en adolescentes de una institución educativa de Santander, Colombia |
10 |
SciELO |
|
Source: Prepared by the authors. |
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Of the studies listed in the table above, 92% were carried out in Spain (in different cities around the country) and 8% in Colombia. When we examine the content of these studies regarding the conceptual reference of the family-school relationship, only one of them refers to the fact that these relationships are considered to be one of the most important factors in the school integration of students (García-Castaño, Rubio-Gómez, & Bouachra, 2008), which, while not defining the concept, does directly contextualize the relationship as important. The other studies do so indirectly without making definitions, when, for example, they indicate that research focuses on the study of the joint relationship between the family and school contexts, without specifically defining it.
The research focuses on various objects of study related to the family-school relationship, examining areas associated with family functioning, family climate, family context considering situations experienced in educational spaces such as academic performance, self-esteem, consumption of psychoactive substances, suicidal ideation, school bullying, incorporation of migrant students, or school climate. These studies understand the family as an explanatory variable of the student’s comfort or discomfort and their relationship with the school.
In this research, the objects of study have been analyzed by means of variables, including measurement of the socio-family and school climate as a fundamental aspect, when wishing to position and quantify the characteristics of this relationship. Although the studies do not state this directly, it is possible to consider the usefulness of this aspect to locate and position the family-school relationship, assessing the characteristics included in these scales. Likewise, some studies include the assessment of parenting styles, focused on parental educational styles, which conceive family participation as an important characteristic based on its link to adolescents in school processes. These scales are formulated based on the disciplinary area of psychology.
General notes on family-school research in the Latin American context
When carrying out a detailed review of the panorama of academic communities that are formed through co-authorships between researchers, we observe that 43% are Latin American researchers. As we can see, the work niches are made up of an average of three researchers, with no clear evidence of collaborative work relationships with other research communities. The institutional affiliation and countries of origin of those who form these research niches in the Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas are as follows: in Scopus there are five authors from Mexico; in WoS, no authors were found; and in SciELO, there were 11 authors (Bolivia, 4; Chile, 4; Uruguay 1; Argentina 1). In the case of Chile, the contributions of scholars such as Andrés Jiménez-Figueroa, Lucina Navarrete-Acuña, Roberto Melipillán, and Alicia Razeto stand out.
It should be noted that, given the inclusion criteria selected for the heuristics, it is possible that some authors with important academic careers who have contributed to advancing family-school research in the Chilean context, such as Verónica Gubbins, Gabriel Otero, Héctor Cárcamo, Alejandra Santana, and Taly Reininger, have not been recognized in these network maps, since the keywords in the field are not standardized, meaning there is a diverse range of terms used.
Conclusions
This work made it possible to identify the scientific production in studies that address the family-school relationship, with various important findings emerging from this study.
Academic production on studies of the family-school relationship in the period analyzed (2008-2018) does not show clear growth, since the largest increases took place in 2012, with 62 publications, and in 2017, with 67. This shows that production has fluctuated, with both increases and decreases in publication and no stable trajectory. This is an invitation to consolidate this thematic area with research in Spanish.
With respect to the origin of the publications and the authors, we found that the largest production is from Europe, accounting for 54.5% of the studies, followed by Latin America with 43%. The main sources of production, in order, are Spain, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, and Colombia. However, others such as France, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States are also identified as producing publications in Spanish, which could be related to the presence of Spanish-speaking authors in those countries (Avila-Toscano, 2017). Of these, 58% of the authors are men and 42% are women, which is higher than the 30% world average of women in science (Unesco, 2020).
On the other hand, the formation of research networks in this field has made it possible to identify academic communities, where 72.5% of the publications have between one and three authors and 27.5% have four or more authors. The most representative authors do not exceed four published papers, which probably explains that authorship is an incipient aspect in this field. This could explain the dispersion of the academic communities, as we also observe authors who publish independently and do not form scientific collaboration networks in the field studied. When papers are authored by more than two academics, there is a tendency to cite each other, which may explain the reason for the existence of isolated communities. This is a challenge for greater collaboration for research teams in this area.
With respect to the differences seen in citation between the databases, we found that Scopus is the database that has the greatest impact on family-school studies, followed by SciELO and lastly WoS in terms of citation frequency. These results are consistent with Bravo (2013), who found that Scopus is the scientific literature database with the highest coverage in all areas of science and concluded that Scopus is a scientific database and tool that has greater coverage than WoS.
When reviewing the most cited works, the analysis shows that these studies do not define the construct being investigated, the family-school relationship. The researchers acknowledge the importance of family and school contexts and their relationship, but do not define it. In this respect, it can be considered that, in the research, the family-school relationship as a concept is implicitly described in the development of the study and they do not consider it necessary to make an explicit definition of the concept. Therefore, for future research, we propose to state a position of the concept, which allows us to understand the theoretical and epistemological perspectives with which the issues of this relationship are addressed.
When it comes to identifying relevant teams and authors of Latin American and European research in the field of school and family studies, some of the limitations of this work are related to the fact that: (a) by exclusively looking at publications in Spanish it does not include research that Spanish-speaking teams may have published in other languages; (b) excluding publications in Portuguese renders invisible the work done in Brazil, such as that produced by the Center for Study of Society, the Family, and School (NESFE-UFOP) or the Family-School Sociological Observatory (OSFE-UFMG), who have been conducting research in the field for some time; c) other research products, such as proceedings, theses, books, or papers published in other databases were not considered; and, d) the keywords were intended to be sufficiently broad given the diversity of research in the area. However, there is a varied range of keywords used, often only once. This is not only an obstacle to carry out the review, but also makes it difficult to identify the research and include it in a bibliometric study such as this one, with such specific search criteria.
With regard to the strength of the study, it allows a first approach to understanding the field of studies of the family-school relationship, enabling us to visualize scientific communities in Spanish-speaking countries with an average of three authors, where collaboration networks with other communities are not evident. This is consistent with other trends, such as in the Social Sciences, where an absence of hyperauthorship is observed as a characteristic of the current logics of production and circulation of knowledge (Cronin, 2001).
It also allows us to identify that—based on the interest in understanding the field of study of the family-school relationship—new research paths have been opened up; firstly, to define and position the construct referring to the family-school relationship; secondly to strengthen the construction of research and production communities in the field of studies on family-school relationships that will result in publication, which could be a challenge to consider the family-school relationship in Latin America; and thirdly, it will be important to conduct a study that includes indicators of collaboration like Subramanyam (1983), Lawani (1981), and other measures of concentration of production, such as Lotka (1926), all of which will allow us to gain a more detailed understanding of issues associated with collaboration and productivity in the family-school field.
Finally, bibliometric studies have indisputable importance to find out about the state of the art of a topic and its overall understanding (Gálvez, 2016; Kock, Tulla, & Azevedo, 2016). The information provided by this work offers a representative framework of how the field of the family-school relationship has been researched from 2008 to 2018, as a basis for future research, as well as the indicators presented by the study, the possibility of addressing this field of study from other theoretical lines, including reviews in other languages, and the pressing need to build academic communities that strengthen the field of investigation, in order to consolidate and strengthen research.
Funding: This research has been funded by the National Association for Research and Development (ANID) through the Fondecyt Regular Project 1181925 and National Doctorate Scholarship 2021 - ANID Folio N° 21212239.