THE ROLE OF THE SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKER IN IMPROVING PUPIL’S ACHIEVEMENT THROUGH A SYNERGISTIC PARENT-PUPIL-TEACHER CONTEXTUAL COMMUNICATION

Pupil's level of achievement is enhanced by bridging the gap between learning spaces and facilitating the transfer of knowledge, behaviours, skills, values, preferences and understandings from one context to another. An important part in this process is the exchange of information between home and school through an improved parent-pupil-teacher communication assisted by the school's social worker. The research focus of this paper is to identify the challenges pupils face in relation to their learning spaces and to establish the role of the school social worker in improving pupil's achievement through a contextual communication model of maintaining the collaboration between family, school and community. The research methodology included (1) a questionnaire applied to 110 pupils from one Romanian high-school with ages between 12-15 years; (2) semi-structured interviews with social workers, school teachers, a school psychologist, educational experts and parents and (3) synthesis and comparisons of the psychological and didactical relations between pupils and the context studied. Using the results of the survey and the interviews, this research identified the areas of discrepancy between pupils and their learning spaces, and mapped the role of the social worker in improving pupils' level of achievement and school adaptation. This mediator role is exemplified through an innovative synergistic model of parent-pupil-teacher contextual communication.