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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All Publications & Resources WORKING WITH TEACHERS AND FAMILIES
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COMPLEMENTARY LEARNING CONNECTIONS
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How Teachers Come to Understand Families
Two key processes whereby teachers working in a low-income rural New England town come to understand families include gathering information and meaning making.
Bilingual Voices and Parent Classroom Choices
Ines, a Spanish speaker feels responsible for her daughter's trouble in an all-English first grade classroom. Based on advice from her daughter's teacher, who believes a bilingual placement might be best, Ines reads with Nina in Spanish, but is uncertain this is the right thing to do. How can parents and teachers reconcile their differences about bilingual education?
Update: New Skills for New Schools
Since the 1997 publication of New Skills for New Schools by HFRP, the education reform landscape has changed, making it necessary to align teacher preparation and professional learning for family engagement with the goals of a twenty-first century education. Harvard Family Research Project is working to gather information about promising teacher education practices to prepare teachers to partner with families for student success. A preview of these practices—to be published in our forthcoming policy brief—is summarized in this update.
Staying on the Path Toward College: One Boy at the Crossroads
Paulo Domínguez is an intelligent sixth-grade boy who has recently become disengaged from schoolwork and is hanging out with peers whom his teachers and parents fear are a bad influence. How can community programs, schools, and families work together to keep Paulo on the path towards college as he transitions to middle school? An interactive version is also available.
Engaging Families in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Project-Based Learning
To be successful, children need a strong science, technology, engineering, and math foundation. Learn how Iridescent, a project funded in part by the National Science Foundation, connects families, engineers, and children to develop these skills early on in school.
Family-School Partnerships for Students' Reading Success
Written by Sandy Christenson for the Minnesota Reading Excellence Act training sessions, the two modules in this workshop focus on home-school strategies to enhance students' reading success.
Making a Decision About College: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Marisela Castillo, a high school senior, looks forward to going to a good college to prepare her for medical studies, but she knows that she will have to leave her family in order for that to happen. Should Marisela forgo her dreams for the sake of a family who depends on her household contributions? Should she leave her family to pursue those dreams? An interactive version is also available.
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.
Partnering With Parents and Communities: Are Preservice Teachers Adequately Prepared?
This study examines how the topic of school, parent, and school partnerships are incorporated into preservice teacher education. Preservice teacher comfort levels with parent involvement is documented.
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.
Accomplished Teachers and Their Interactions With Parents: A Comparative Analysis of Strategies and Techniques
This study found that teachers with National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification have more positive attitudes, are more tenacious in their approaches, and have more strategies for engaging families than noncertified teachers.
What Words Don't Say
Martin, an African-American student struggles with peer problems at his elementary school. He experiences racism and classism. How can Martin's mother and his teacher dialogue about sensitive issues?
Preparing Teachers to Engage Parents
This research report reviews parent involvement modules created for preservice teachers focusing on parent-teacher communication and collaborating with community. The online, problem-based modules were designed by the North Texas Partnership for Parent Engagement.
Teaching Cases on Family Engagement: Early Learning (Ages 0–8)
HFRP's teaching cases involve real world situations and consider the perspectives of various stakeholders, including early childhood program and elementary school staff, parents, children, and community members. This handout provides a detailed list of our teaching cases on family involvement, focusing on the earlier years of a child's learning and development.
A Click Away: A Q&A With Chip Donohue About the Benefits of Online Distance Learning for In-Service Teachers
In this Q&A, Chip Donohue talks with HFRP about early childhood educators’ participation in online distance education courses and discusses how the topic of family engagement is being integrated into these classes.
Family Involvement News: February 2014
We are committed to keeping you up to date on family engagement news. The following resources highlight the latest tools and discussions from HFRP and review recent findings in the areas of family engagement policy as well as family-school partnerships.
Building Villages to Raise Our Children: Six Volume Set
This set of six volumes offers practical advice for establishing and managing a family support program.
Diverse Communities
This issue of the FINE Forum provides some promising approaches to preparing teachers to partner with diverse families and communities.
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.
Building Villages to Raise Our Children: Staffing
Written for program administrators and staff, this guide offers practical advice for providing professional development to staff supporting family programs.
Early Childhood Education
As we celebrate the Week of the Young Child, the FINE Forum presents some innovative ideas and practices in family involvement in early childhood education.
Family Involvement in Mathematics
This issue of the FINE Forum focuses on promising practices to engage families and communities in supporting students' mathematical proficiency.
Teaching the Bridging Worlds Case
Cases are a powerful tool to support teacher preparation in family engagement. Read how five faculty members facilitated the case Bridging Worlds: Family Engagement in the Transition to Kindergarten and learn how the case influenced both students and faculty.
Renewing Teacher–Parent Relations
This issue of the FINE Forum points to the possibilities of enriching parent-teacher and broader school-community relationships. We hope that you take away ideas for your own practice.