The paper examines sixty titles related to the topic of Education and Participation in Brazil produced by universities from the Southeast Region. The works were grouped, according to the approach adopted here, into two dimensions: a) participation at school; b) democratic administration in school reform programs. The first group of works puts more emphasis on one of the following aspects: teacher participation; community participation; formal mechanisms of participation; parental participation; student participation. Works from the other group focus on: school supervision; teacher participation; community participation; formal mechanisms of participation. As a conclusion, this work identifies gaps that could be filled by new research in a variety of issues, such as: the relationship between teacher participation and that of other groups; initiatives supported both by the upper administrative bodies and by social organizations; features of the work of those bodies; experiments bringing together mobilization and innovative conceptions in education; comparisons between schools as to their financial autonomy; the ability of the category "parents" to display collective behavior; how do teachers treat parents and how the latter treat their children; the sharing of functions among different educational agents; the collaboration offered by parents to the school according to pupil's age and wealth; rigorous comparisons between public and private schools; student participation according to age group and topics of interest; participation in other types of public services; influence of poor job stability and of volatility of teams at school; participation in evaluation (of projects, schools and policies).
Participation; School; Education; Parents