The article analyses the development and performance a virtual community of practitioners in the field of parent counselling as part of a blended professional development program. This is part of the ‘Education Priority Areas - EPA’ project (2011-2012) funded by UNICEF in partnership with the Ministry of Education, Research, Youth and Sports (MERYS), Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the network of County Centres for Resources and Educational Assistance (CCREA) aiming to support families with pupils in risk of drop-out. The training program (both face–to-face and at distance) is part of the methodological approach proposed by the IES based on the EPA model implemented earlier in UK and France, adapted for Romanian disadvantaged communities. The direct beneficiaries of the program are school counsellors and teachers working in schools with a high rate of drop-out. Parents’ counselling is an important piece of an integrated intervention program (management, didactics, counselling) to support schools, families and pupils in preventing school drop-out. By the mean of the IES online training platform (training.ise.ro) a virtual learning community was built in order to facilitate the communication between the practitioners, the peer learning and to support them through online tutoring and coaching for parent counselling activities. We start by presenting the aim, structure, type of learning and coaching activities, then we analyse the developed community of practice against a set of social, psycho-pedagogical, technical and managerial criteria according to an integrated model adapted after Conole (2007), Lesser & Storck (2003), McDermott (1999), Palloff & Pratt (1999). Conclusions are drawn in respect with improvement measures of the virtual community in order to better support the recurrent EPA parent counselling interventions.

virtual learning community, parents guidance and counselling, e-learning