This article presents a reflection on some theoretical concepts of authority and hierarchy and how these concepts become elements of the school culture constructed in daily interactions, defining differentiated forms of school participation. It starts with the assumption that the school as a bureaucratic organization has a body of principles and values in its structure given by the educational system, through laws, decrees and formally established roles, and another body of principles and values constructed and re-elaborated on the inside by the participants in the educational process, forming a school culture. Thus the degree of participation in school is defined in function of the concepts that will be shared and constructed in the process of constituting the school culture.