The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.
FINE Newsletter Special Anniversary Issue: Celebrating 10 Years
Special Issue, December 2010
Dear FINE Members,
This issue marks an exciting milestone for us at HFRP as the Family Involvement Network of Educators, a.k.a. "FINE," turns 10 years old! To celebrate, we have created a special anniversary issue that both draws from the past and offers a glimpse into the future. This issue of the FINE Newsletter includes a handful of our favorite FINE resources from the last 10 years, all of which are related to some of the content areas we will be exploring in greater depth during FINE’s 2011 anniversary year: teacher preparation/professional development, early childhood education, data use and technology, and evaluation. Meanwhile, this special issue’s commentary reflects on how the field of family, school, and community engagement has evolved over the past decade, and outlines the upcoming projects in the field that HFRP aims to showcase through FINE in the coming year.
In November 2000, FINE launched as a compilation of research reports and articles to help inform readers’ understanding of family engagement in education. As our membership has grown to over 11,000 in the last 10 years, the format and content of FINE has also changed, becoming more dynamic and varied to meet the needs of our expanding readership. FINE was originally created to provide a clearinghouse of research and best practices to support teacher preparation. As our audience expanded beyond teacher education faculty, we created a FINE email newsletter to share an expanded set of resources reflecting the interests of our new members, which included schools, districts, researchers, and community-based organizations.
We have continued to refine FINE over the years, making it more web-friendly and taking cues from you to enhance the content and accessibility of this resource. In 2009, the FINE Newsletter transformed into the more comprehensive form it takes today, featuring original content from researchers at HFRP and experts in the field. The FINE Newsletter now includes a variety of material created just for FINE, including guest commentaries, research briefs, tips and tools from HFRP (such as our Teaching Cases series), and Voices from the Field (highlighting first-person accounts from practitioners in schools and out-of-school time programs across the country), in addition to the news and updates listings that our members have always found so valuable. And we continue to look forward: In 2011 we plan to increase the interactivity of FINE by expanding onto social networking platforms, allowing FINE members to connect with us and one another and providing a forum for discussions around our many resources. Stay tuned!
As always, we invite your feedback on the topics we explore in this FINE Newsletter, and encourage you to pass on this issue to interested friends and colleagues. We've made it even easier to share FINE content with your social networks: Find the "share" button on the left of every page and send interesting articles via email or through other platforms such as Facebook or Twitter.
Harvard Family Research Project Commentary
Family Engagement: Looking Back and Moving Forward
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In this issue’s commentary, Heather Weiss, M. Elena Lopez, and Heidi Rosenberg honor FINE's 10th anniversary by looking at the growth and learning in the family engagement field over the last decade. Family engagement is shifting from a “random acts” approach—numerous social, fundraising, and educational activities that lack broad and deep connections to school improvement goals—to a more systemic, integrated, and sustainable framework of true family engagement. This commentary discusses what that means for HFRP and FINE in 2011 and beyond. |
| Ten Years of FINE Resources In the coming year, Harvard Family Research Project and FINE will continue to help the field evolve to adopt approaches that reflect a reframed definition of systemic, integrated, and sustained family engagement. We will also be expanding our work in areas of critical importance to education reform: teacher preparation/professional development, early childhood education, data use and technology, and evaluation. HFRP has long been involved in building the knowledge base in all of these content areas. In this anniversary issue, we offer a look back over some of our favorite FINE resources that still hold relevance as we prepare to address new challenges and opportunities within each of these areas. |
Teacher Preparation and Professional Development
FINE Forum No. 1: Teacher Preparation (2000)
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This resource represents the premier issue of FINE Forum, the precursor to today’s FINE Newsletter; and the beginning of HFRP’s Family Involvement Network of Educators (FINE) initiative. The issue profiles the Family as Faculty program at the University of South Florida, Tampa, which provides pre-service teachers in the College of Education with opportunities to learn about the barriers and keys to effective involvement of families in their children’s learning. |
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In this Member Insight installment—once a regular FINE feature—Sherick Hughes, Assistant Professor in the College of Education at the University of Toledo, discusses the importance of helping PreK–16 teachers develop competencies in working with diverse families. Hughes discusses “teacher diversity capital,” which refers to the skills and drive that teachers possess to seek opportunities and develop ideas for building positive relationships with students and families from culturally diverse backgrounds, and which affords teachers the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to sustain a commitment to meeting the needs of culturally diverse students and families. |
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The 2004–2005 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher found that new teachers consider engaging and working with parents as the area they are least prepared to manage. In this Member Insight, Julia Johnson Rothenberg and Peter McDermott, professors at the Sage Colleges School of Education, discuss the need to include family engagement training in pre-service teacher education programs, providing novice teachers with opportunities to develop effective family engagement strategies before they are in the position of managing their own classrooms. The authors also discuss how meaningful attention to engaging families in pre-service programs can help novice teachers break social and ethnic barriers and foster understanding and respect between families and schools. |
Early Childhood Education
Q+A: Robert Pianta Talks About Kindergarten Transition (Spring 2002) from FINE Forum No. 4: Early Childhood Education
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Transition is a key component of school readiness. Ensuring children’s smooth transition from early education programs to kindergarten requires that attention be paid to the resources and linkages among schools, child care and early education services, and families. In the FINE Forum’s Questions and Answers section, Robert Pianta, professor of Clinical and School Psychology at the University of Virginia, shares his research on children’s transitions and gives tips on how to support families during this time. |
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This research brief from HFRP’s Holly Kreider presents preliminary evidence that family involvement in young children’s education may contribute not only to a smooth transition to elementary school for children, but also for parents, by helping to prepare them for later involvement in their children’s learning. This brief draws from the literature on transition, findings from the School Transition Study at Harvard Family Research Project, and recommended practices from early childhood professionals. |
Data Use and Technology
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This research digest from HFRP’s Suzanne Bouffard examines the first large-scale study to investigate the usage and benefits of Internet-based family–school communication, which has implications for family involvement during adolescence and raises concerns about educational equity. The study used a nationally representative data set that included several measures of family educational involvement, including communication with schools via email and websites. Given concerns about educational equity coupled with the increasing use of the Internet in many aspects of American life, the findings of this study have important implications for both practice and policy. |
FINE Resource: Logged In: Using Technology to Engage Families in Children’s Education (October 2010) from FINE Newsletter, Vol. II, No. 3: Using Student Data to Engage Families
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How is technology being used to strengthen family engagement? Based on research of promising practices in school districts and communities, this resource identifies a variety of technological innovations that have the potential to boost key dimensions of family engagement: positive parent–child interactions, home–school communication, and parent responsibility for a child’s learning. Although the digital divide continues to be a challenge, schools and communities that are committed to using technology for family engagement are working to address accessibility and training issues. |
Evaluation
FINE Resource: Evaluating Family Support: Thinking Critically, Thinking Intentionally (Keynote Address) (September 2004) from the April 2005 FINE Newsletter
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In 2004, HFRP founder Heather Weiss delivered the keynote address at the Thinking Critically, Thinking Intentionally conference sponsored by Family Support America and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Weiss issued a call to action regarding the need for evaluation to help the family support field use data to demonstrate its value. Noting that, at the time, the family support field did not have the evaluation base, evaluation strategy, or demonstrated capacity to get and use data for continuous improvement and accountability—all of which are critical for the field to demonstrate its value and survive—Weiss outlined some of the ways that successful evaluation efforts could help the field sustain and advance its work. |
FINE Resource: How to Develop a Logic Model for Districtwide Family Engagement Strategies (November 2009)
from FINE Newsletter, Vol. I, No. 4: Family Engagement as a Shared Responsibility
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This resource is a step-by-step guide to help you understand and develop a logic model for districtwide family engagement efforts. This evaluation tool clarifies the steps between family engagement efforts and better learning outcomes for children and youth. In addition, it provides a sample logic model based on promising practices highlighted in a companion brief, Seeing is Believing: Promising Practices for How School Districts Promote Family Engagement (see below), as well as lessons learned from research and evaluation studies that shape the outcomes of family engagement. |
Reframing Family Engagement
In addition to highlighting the best of FINE over the last 10 years, this special issue is an opportunity to look at Harvard Family Research Project’s and FINE’s efforts to offer policymakers and advocates the research base to develop effective policies promoting family engagement. Most recently, these efforts were evident at the U.S. Department of Education’s National Policy Forum for Family, School, and Community Engagement, which HFRP helped to organize. In addition, our continued work with the National PTA has led to policy briefs, such as Seeing is Believing, focused on family engagement in education. In early 2011, we will be releasing two additional family engagement briefs with the PTA, focusing on data use and professional development.
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This paper, authored by Harvard Family Research Project, served as the foundation for panelists' discussions at the November 2010 National Policy Forum for Family, School, and Community Engagement, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. Beyond Random Acts provides a research-based framing of family engagement and examines the policy levers that can drive change in promoting systemic family, school, and community engagement. |
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In 2009, HFRP teamed up with the National PTA to create this ground-breaking policy brief that examines the role of school districts in promoting systemic family engagement. The brief highlights promising practices to ensure quality, oversight, and impact from districts’ family engagement efforts, and proposes a set of recommendations for how federal, state, and local policies can promote systemic district-level family engagement efforts that support student learning. |
Contact Us
If you experience a problem reading this newsletter or have questions and comments concerning our work, we would love to hear from you. Please send an email to fine@gse.harvard.edu.
Happy Holidays,
The FINE Team at Harvard Family Research Project