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.
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Q & A with Laura Overdeck of Bedtime Math: Helping Families and Children Cuddle Up to Math
In this Q & A with Laura Overdeck, learn how Bedtime Math is giving families and children comfort in talking about numbers in their daily lives, and helping families and afterschool programs get children excited about math in the world around them.
Q & A With Lori Takeuchi: Research Findings From Learning at Home: Families’ Educational Media Use in America
Lori Takeuchi, Joan Ganz Cooney Center Research Director, discusses the Center’s report findings on families’ and children’s educational-media use, including families’ selection of educational media for their children and ways that practitioners can support families in their choices. Takeuchi notes some of the following findings: when parents use media alongside their children, the educational value of the experience is enhanced; educational-media use varies based on the age of the child; and children are applying what they learn from educational media to nonmedia activities.
Q & A With Rebecca Parlakian: Learn Anytime With the Let's Play App
How can you turn daily bedtime and mealtime routines into learning opportunities for young children? How can commuting, shopping, and other everyday activities offer vibrant learning moments for children? Read about the Let’s Play app to learn how!
Q & A With Susan Leger Ferraro and Fran Hurley: Learning Through Technology-Infused Play
Creative anywhere, anytime learning experiences take center stage at Imajine That Museum and Educational Play Space, where families bring their children to play, socialize, and learn together as a family. Read this exciting Q and A with Susan Leger Ferraro and Fran Hurley, about how Imajine That provides an array of innovative learning opportunities to enthusiastic families.
Questions & Answers: Robert Pianta Talks About Kindergarten Transition
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 this Q+A, Robert Pianta, professor of Clinical and School Psychology at the University of Virginia, shares his recent research on children's transitions and gives tips on how to support families during this time.
Quilting Stories of Innovation in Family Engagement
A collection of innovative family engagement practices with a link for you to share with us your family engagement story!
Racing to the Top: Maryland's Promising Practices in Family Engagement
Maryland is embedding a new family engagement definition statewide as a foundation of policy and infrastructure. Through comprehensive partnerships, the state brings to scale family engagement approaches and launches new initiatives.
Reading Interactive Math Storybooks
Researchers from Teachers College, Columbia University, explore how a relatively new type of book– interactive math storybooks – can help parents appreciate and foster their child’s mathematical thinking.
Ready for Success: Creating Collaborative and Thoughtful Transitions into Kindergarten
Because early social performance and academic achievement are predictors of later school success, ensuring that children get off to a good start in kindergarten is critical. This brief, by Harvard Family Research Project's Christine Patton and Justina Wang, examines important elements of high-quality kindergarten transition strategies and profiles promising practices from six states that take an integrated and collaborative approach to helping kindergartners enter school ready for success.
Research and Advocacy Collaboration: A New Jersey Case Study
Too often vital research in the early care and education field does not get used effectively for advocacy purposes. While researchers and advocates often share the same goals, they tend to operate on separate tracks. This brief explores how research and advocacy can be bridged for greater effect using strategic communications. By definition, strategic communications means a deliberate plan or tactics for using communications as a channel for achieving a certain result. Collaborative work in the state of New Jersey around the goal of achieving a comprehensive and quality early care and education system is used as a backdrop for learning about effective practice.
Research Spotlight: Families and Digital Media in Young Children's Learning
These resources look at issues related to digital media and learning in early childhood and focus on such topics as children’s media use in the 21st century, family perspectives on children’s media use, and research-based guidance for practitioners and parents.
Resource Guide for Family-Centered Child Care
This guide offers ideas and resources for implementing family support principles in child care, and an annotated bibliography of up-to-date publications and training materials that child care providers can use to improve their efforts to support families.
Sharing Assessment Data With Preschool Families in Preparation for Kindergarten
What are the benefits and challenges of sharing assessment data with preschool families? How can you do so effectively? A preschool teacher writes about her experiences, and provides valuable tips on how to share data with families in preparation for kindergarten.
Something Borrowed, Something New: Libraries as Learning Hubs
We share several resources on libraries - modern, evolving community spaces of education and support for families and children.
Successful Family Engagement in the Classroom: What teachers need to know and be able to do to engage families in raising student achievement
HFRP invited the Flamboyan Foundation—a private foundation focused on improving educational outcomes for children in Washington, DC and Puerto Rico—to share its classroom family engagement rubric with FINE. This rubric, and accompanying article, provides districts, school leaders, and teachers with a clear picture of what effective family engagement looks like in the classroom through concrete descriptions of how teachers demonstrate strong family engagement through their conversations and daily practice.
Taking the Lead in Family Engagement: A Message to Our Followers on Presidents’ Day
Presidents’ Day is a time to reflect on the importance of leadership. Learn how policymakers, researchers, and practitioners are leading the field of family engagement.
Teaching the Teachers: Preparing Educators to Engage Families for Student Achievement
Harvard Family Research Project and the National PTA® have teamed up to bring you the third brief in our ground-breaking series about family engagement policy, highlighting the need for teacher education programs to prepare teachers to better work with families.
Text, Play, and Tech: Partnerships Promoting Early Learning Opportunities
As we celebrate the Week of the Young Child, learn how families can support creative play with young children in a variety of ways and settings.
The Challenges of Evaluating State Family Support and Education Initiatives: An Evaluation Framework
This paper provided an evaluation framework to analyze four state initiatives that provide multi-generational family support and education programs. The paper documented preliminary findings and was presented at The Public Policy and Family Support amd Education Programs Colloquium in Annapolis, MD, April 26-28, 1989.
The Countdown to Kindergarten: A Collaborative Approach
Sonia Gómez-Banrey, Director of Countdown to Kindergarten (CDtoK) for Boston Public Schools (BPS), and Katherine (Kacy) Hughes, Senior Project Manager for Early Childhood and Family Learning at Boston Children’s Museum, highlight key components of the collaboration between BPS and the Museum as part of the CDtoK program to help BPS families better prepare their children for kindergarten.
The Transition to Afterschool: One City’s Approach to Connecting Young Children and Their Families to Learning and Enrichment Opportunities
What steps can programs take to help families successfully transition to school and afterschool? How can families make informed choices about afterschool opportunities? What information do families need in this process? This video demonstrates how Cambridge, Massachusetts, is addressing these and related questions to help connect families to afterschool learning and enrichment opportunities prior to school entry.
The Transition to Kindergarten: A Review of Current Research and Promising Practices to Involve Families
This brief offers a synthesis of findings based on a review of current research on the transition to kindergarten, especially the important role that families play in the transition. It focuses on promising transition practices and how schools can get involved in their implementation.
Transmedia Activities: Engaging Families to Improve Children's Early Mathematics Achievement
Make way for mathematics digital media! New research reveals that regular use of digital games and hands-on mathematics activities at home, along with parent training around digital media for learning, can improve mathematics outcomes for young children.
Understanding Family Involvement in the Preparation of Graduate Students: Measuring Family-Centered Beliefs, Skills, Systems, and Practices
Family-centered practices by professionals serving families and their young children with disabilities have become a cornerstone of personnel preparation programs in early childhood intervention (ECI) and early childhood education. Our research project sought to develop a measure to examine the family-centered beliefs, skills, work systems, and work practices of ECI and ECE graduate students.
Valuing Families as Partners
Elena Lopez explores the benefits of creating strong partnerships between early childhood programs and families.