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www.HFRP.org

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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Dear FINE Member,

Here are this month's FINE member announcements. Please feel free to forward this information to friends and other education colleagues.

New on the FINE Website

  • FINE Forum e-Newsletter on Social Capital, Issue 8, Spring 2004

    Social capital, or the networks of trust and reciprocity among groups of people, can be a powerful force to transform education. Today's educational policies tend to focus almost exclusively on what happens within school walls. However, when families, schools, and communities come together they can enrich children's learning and social development opportunities. This issue of the FINE Forum features several examples of how the connections among family, school, and community are doing just that. This issue includes:

    • Questions & Answers
      Robert Putnam, professor of public policy at Harvard University, describes the educational policies that affect social capital in schools, and shares his ideas about the role of extracurricular activities in the formation of social capital, school-community connections to support students and families, and within-school relationships to create a positive school climate.

    • Program Spotlight
      Parent Services Project in California illustrates how a community-based organization can serve as a catalyst of social capital by bringing together families and school people, and by facilitating their dialogue and goal setting.

    • Parent Perspective
      One parent describes how she and other parents organized a before school and after school homework club with the help of the Parent Services Project.

    • Teacher Talk
      A Taiwanese elementary school teacher helps families connect to each other through a series of learning activities involving parents and their children.

    • Lessons From Leaders
      Four program directors of a citywide after school program in Columbus, Ohio, share their ideas for connecting families to after school programs and to other community resources.

Reports

  • America After 3PM: A Household Survey on Afterschool in America

    Results from this recent Afterschool Alliance survey of children's after school arrangements show that 67% of K–12 youth are regularly cared for by a parent or guardian, while 25% are responsible for taking care of themselves. Only 11% of K–12 youth participate in after school programs. Of those children in self-care, 26% would be likely to participate in an after school program if one was available.

Journal Articles

  • Educational Leadership: Schools as Learning Communities

    This issue includes several articles on parent participation. One describes partnering with families and communities using the National Network of Partnership Schools framework. Another describes the Training Innovative Educators (TIE) Project in New York City, which provides workshops to parents on the writing process and strategies for motivating their children to write. A third article describes the Parent Partnership for Achieving Literacy (PAL) in Massachusetts, which help parents understand the literacy practices of the school while making teachers aware of the strengths that exist within culturally diverse families. Each article is available for purchase from the publisher at the link above.

  • The Family-School Partnership: An Opportunity to Promote the Learning Competence of All Students

    In this article in School Psychology Review (2004, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 83–104) Christenson encourages school psychologists to prioritize family-school partnerships by collaborating with school personnel to (1) apply principles from systems-ecological theory to children's learning; (2) maintain an opportunity-oriented, persistent focus when working with youth and families living in challenging situations; and (3) attend to the process of partnering with families. She also describes specific examples of family-school partnerships.

  • Exploring Connections Between the Construct of Teacher Efficacy and Family Involvement Practices: Implications for Urban Teacher Preparation

    This article in Urban Education (2004, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 290–315) describes a study of 110 elementary schoolteachers in a large urban school district. It revealed that teacher efficacy was significantly correlated to, and was a predictor of, five different types of family involvement practices as reflected in Epstein's typology of home-school and community partnerships. In the article Garcia discusses implications for effective teacher preparation and the types of experiences that foster teacher efficacy beliefs in the area of home, school, and community.

  • Parents as Professionals in Early Intervention: A Parent Educator Model

    One of the goals of a family-centered approach in early intervention is to involve family members as active and equal partners with professionals. In this article in Topics in Early Childhood Special Education (2004, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 5–13), Gallagher, Rhodes, and Darling describe a state model that employs parents of young children with disabilities as parent educators. Qualitative focus group data revealed parent educators' changing perceptions about their roles as well as their challenges and successes. Parent educators ultimately came to see themselves as “professionals” working to bring a family perspective to the early intervention system.

  • Relationships Between Parent-Teaching Activities and Emergent Literacy in Preschool Children

    This article in Early Child Development and Care (2004, Vol. 174, No. 3, pp. 215–228) describes a study that investigated how parent-led direct teaching activities impact emergent literacy. The authors, Haney and Hill, found that children receiving direct instruction from parents scored higher on most emergent literacy tasks. However, they only found statistical significance in a few areas, including direct teaching of alphabet knowledge and writing words. The authors discuss the implications for family literacy and for future research.

  • Early Father's and Mother's Involvement and Child's Later Educational Outcomes

    Based on longitudinal data from the National Child Development Study, in this article in the British Journal of Educational Psychology (2004, Vol. 74, No. 2, pp. 141–153), Flouri and Buchanan explore the role of early father involvement in children's later educational attainment. Father involvement independently predicted education attainment by age 20 and was not moderated by mothers' involvement, family structure, or child gender.

  • Putting Parents in Charge

    In this article from the summer issue of Education Next, U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander argues for Pell Grants for Kids—federal scholarships based on the model of higher education grants, which could be used by low-income families to cover tuition or other expenses at any accredited public or private school.

Policy

  • Parental Involvement: Title I, Part A, Non-Regulatory Guidance

    Parental Involvement Guidance, published by the U.S. Department of Education, is designed to help states, districts, and schools meet parental involvement mandates and communicate with parents the provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act.

  • TutorsforKids.org

    The American Institutes of Research's Supplemental Educational Services Quality (SESQ) Center has launched a website to help parents of children attending public schools “in need of improvement” take advantage of free tutoring opportunities provided by NCLB. Tutorsforkids.org provides information and tools for parents, educators, policymakers, and program providers to ensure that eligible children get the free, extra academic help they need.

Public Opinion

  • Teaching Interrupted: Do Discipline Policies in Today's Public Schools Foster the Common Good?

    Public Agenda surveyed 725 middle and high school teachers and 600 parents about their perceptions of disciplinary issues in schools and what remedies they support. Both teachers and parents support a variety of remedies, including stricter enforcement of existing rules of conduct, alternative schools for chronically disruptive students, and limiting parents' ability to sue schools over disciplinary decisions.

Toolkits

Evaluation

  • Evaluating the Co-Construction of the Family, School, and Community Partnership Program in a Low-Income Urban High School

    The latest issue of New Directions for Evaluation (2004, Vol. 101) presents the Talent Development (TD) evaluation framework—an approach to evaluating urban school reform interventions that emphasizes the engagement of stakeholders, co-construction, responsiveness, cultural and contextual relevance, and triangulation of perspectives. In a TD evaluation of a family, school, and community partnership program, LaPoint and Jackson (pp. 25–36) describe the processes and lessons learned from training students, teachers, family, and community members to become assistant evaluators.

  • Promising Program: Father/Male Involvement Preschool Teacher Education Program

    The Father/Male Involvement Preschool Teacher Education Program provided teachers with the knowledge and skills needed to successfully plan, implement, and evaluate specific activities that encourage program involvement by fathers and other males who serve as father figures for school children. The evaluation of the program revealed that fathers and males participated in parent involvement activities at a significantly higher rate at the preschool with the training program than at comparison preschools.

Event

  • Family Involvement Summer Institute

    The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff sponsors a Family Involvement Summer Institute on June 15–16, 2004. Workshop topics include working with families across cultures, creating parent centers, writing the parent involvement plan, and effective communication with teachers and others. Teachers, administrators, and parents are welcome.

Contact Us

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Enjoy!

FINE - The Family Involvement Network of Educators

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Published by Harvard Family Research Project