Regards croisés sur la relation école-famille et la réussite scolaire d’élèves à l’école fondamentale en Haïti

This research analyses the following problematic: school-family collaboration and school success in Haiti. By contrasting cases of diverse social and academic profiles, it examines the points of view of various actors involved in education, as much at the formal as at the informal level: 14 students, 7 teachers, 7 members involved in school leadership, 2 pedagogical counselors, and 6 others involved in schools (priests, psychologists, sociologist, doctor). A multiple-case ethno-biographical approach based on depth interviews allowed for the cross-referencing of these actors concerning the academic course of 14 students found in 8 different schools from both the private and public sectors, and with as many cases of success and of failure among the 14 students. In line with the problematic given at the beginning of this thesis, the participants in our research all confirmed the vulnerability of the Haitian social context and its repercussions on the school system: sociopolitical instability and insecurity, and socio-economic precariousness.  This situation has transformed familiar structures.  The school system, mostly private, is limited in its capacity to absorb students, in its human resources, in its material infrastructures, and in its programs for initial and ongoing training of its personnel. As such, it is a school system that can only support with difficulty the learning of its students. Besides that, the double-language situation (creole-french) found in society and in schools slows somewhat the progress of students.  Over and above what actors evoke as social elements that are at stake here, daily life in school appears, according to their conversations, as a place of resilience for the students, a place that inspires change and one that is key to all future social mobility.  Nevertheless, education is part of a societal project wherein school success should mobilize the collaboration of all actors. There follows a need for a greater mobilization of the young themselves regarding the task of a student, and of shared understanding of parenting among protagonists. Results also show the importance of social synergy around school, one based on the cooperation of all to the benefit of student learning.  In Haiti, school-family collaboration is more complex that in other national contexts.  Here, to begin with, families are the most important financial source of education in the country because of the hegemony of private schools and of the insufficient State support for the functioning of schools. Also, parents of students and their children, even those experiencing academic difficulty, place great trust in the school and have great hope of improving their lot thanks to success in school. However, objective constraints of all kinds prevent the majority of parents from following students academincally at the level of the needs of the students and of the expectations of the school.  Congruent with research in other national contexts, school-family collaboration is shown to be more complicated in the case of parents distant from the school culture, and the most problematic school histories of students are those where parental support and concern seem to be the weakest. In the Haitian context, one fact remains as a major preoccupation: the incapacity of schools to compensate for the precariousness of the lives of students and parents by an efficient mobilization of their capital (commitment of personnel to the success of students; availability of material, pedagogical, and didactic infrastructures, ongoing training of teachers, etc.). We note, too, the differing levels of expectations reciprocally formulated.

Keyphrases: School-family relationship, At stake in schools, Students experiencing success, Students experiencing failure