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 DEVELOPMENT PERIODS |
COMPLEMENTARY LEARNING CONNECTIONS
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Transition as a Shared Responsibility: The Bridging Worlds Reader’s Theater
By coupling the Bridging Worlds case with a Reader’s Theater, we helped students examine the complexities involved in sharing responsibility for student learning during the transition to school.
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 and Evaluating Family Engagement in Out-of-School Time (Workshop)
Engaging with families is one of the many strategies that out-of-school time (OST) programs use to create quality, adult-supervised experiences for youth during nonschool hours. This workshop introduced participants to the latest research and evaluation findings on family involvement in OST programs, and shared strategies for engaging with families, using two case studies to illustrate these practices in context.
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.
University–Community Partnerships
This FINE Forum features the Jane Addams School for Democracy, a university-community partnership in which Hmong and Latino immigrants, professors, high school teachers, parents, and students all work together on public issues.
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.
Valuing Families as Partners
Elena Lopez explores the benefits of creating strong partnerships between early childhood programs and families.
Valuing Parents as Co-Educators: A Teacher-Parent Partnership Project in Cyprus
A classroom-based family involvement project in Cyprus offers multiple roles for parents in the classroom, and benefits students, parents, and the teacher.
Voices from the Field: How Can Elementary Teachers Collaborate More Effectively with Parents to Support Literacy Learning?
In this FINE Newsletter Voices from the Field article, Carol St. George, EdD, a visiting assistant professor at the University of Rochester and Title I Family Involvement Coordinator for the Greece Central School District in New York, discusses her use of the Collegial Circle, a professional development activity that engages teachers with parents.
We Were a "Hard-to-Reach" Family
Former Head Start parent, Nikia Parker, started out as a “hard-to-reach” parent but developed a strong, positive relationship with her family’s Early Head Start home visitor, which enabled her to not only effectively support her own children, but also take on advocacy and leadership roles within the larger Head Start community.
Webinar Brief: Data Driven—Making Student and School Data Accessible and Meaningful To Families
This is a briefing on the third webinar in the series Achieving Excellence and Innovation in Family, School, and Community Engagement brought to you by the U.S. Department of Education in partnership with United Way Worldwide, National PTA, SEDL, and Harvard Family Research Project. The webinar, which took place on August 10, 2010, featured Kevin Jennings from the U.S. Department of Education and a number of speakers from across the country discussing examples of how data can be used to engage families in programs, schools, and school districts.
What About the Parents?
Katie Salen Tekinbaş outlines strategies and activities that New York City public school Quest to Learn has implemented to ensure that families are engaged in the digital learning life of students.
What is Complementary Learning?
This short publication will give you a quick overview and some concrete examples of complementary learning. It includes information about what complementary learning looks like, some examples of complementary learning systems in practice today, and a description about what is different about complementary learning from traditional programs and services. Finally, we'll introduce you to Marcus, a fictional teenager whose story illustrates how complementary learning can positively affect the lives of students from birth through adolescence.
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?
What's Going on With Tomasito?
Tomasito's embarrassment at having his parents drop by the school limits the development of a strong, trusting, and communicative parent-teacher relationship. Shy and quiet Tomasito does not share information about his home life with his teacher who in turn holds many misconceptions about his home context. How can teacher and family communicate better?
Why Thinking of Family Engagement as Continuous Across Time Matters
A key principle in the definition of family engagement is that it is continuous across time. In this commentary, we explore why thinking of family engagement in this way matters, and we learn about tools educators can use to develop the skills to promote it.
Why We Need a Human Centered Approach to Family Engagement
Cultivating empathy can inspire educators to respond with more inclusive and equitable practices to engage families.
Why We Need to Slow Down When It Comes to Evaluation
Read about lessons HFRP has learned from supporting evaluation efforts in the field. This commentary highlights the value of investing time to carefully consider the theory behind a program for evaluation to yield usable and actionable information.
Working It Out: The Chronicle of a Mixed-Method Analysis
Chapter in Discovering Successful Pathways in Children's Development: Mixed Methods in the Study of Childhood and Family Life. Edited by Thomas S. Weisner. Published by University of Chicago Press. This chapter chronicles a mixed-method analysis of family involvement in children's learning, drawing observations about the process and added value of combining methods.
Working With Families in the Rural South: Findings From the REA-Funded Promising Readers Program
In an elementary school in the rural south, parents, preservice teachers, and others come together to strengthen children's literacy and learn from their experiences with children and one another.
Young Latino Infants and Families: Parental Involvement Implications from a Recent National Study
This study provides a deeper understanding of how cultural practices combine with other factors to shape parenting behaviors among families in the United States in the first year of children's lives. Several findings provide information about ways in which practitioners and Latino families can more effectively engage with young Latino children to influence their cognitive, social, language, and literacy development—and therefore facilitate their school readiness.
Youth Out-of-School Time Participation: Multiple Risks and Developmental Differences
This paper examines whether youth who are at risk, according to child-, family-, school-, and neighborhood-level factors, are less likely to participate in out-of-school time activities, and whether the predictors depend on youth's age or socioeconomic status. Findings reveal that child- and family-level risks are most consistently related to youth's OST participation. However, these relationships emerge only in early and late adolescence, when youth have more autonomy in their decisions about non-school time use. For certain types of activities, namely those that require fees and financial commitments, contextual risks are more strongly associated with OST participation for higher SES families than for lower SES families.
“As Long as I Got Breath, I'll Fight”: Participatory Action Research for Educational Justice
A participatory action project in the South Bronx explores how young people, their parents, and community members have mobilized for educational resources, opportunities, and the fulfillment of their dreams.
“Daddy Says This New Math Is Crazy”
Beth Martin, a fourth grade teacher, finds her students respond well to the new mathematics curriculum she is using in her class, but at home parents struggle to understand the new math and help their children with homework. How should Beth and her colleagues respond to parents' skepticism about the new curriculum and support their involvement at home?
“Do Your Best and Make Us Proud”: Family Engagement and Latino Students’ Decisions About College
Sylvia Acevedo, chair of the Early Learning Subcommittee of the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, writes about the struggles first-generation students and their families face when making decisions about college, interwoven with her own personal story.