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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Family Involvement News: September 2013
We are committed to keeping you up to date on what's new in family engagement. View our list of links to current reports, articles, resources, and events in the field.
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.
Creating Conditions for Effective and Ongoing Family Engagement
In this Commentary, Harvard Family Research Project’s Senior Research Analyst, Heidi Rosenberg, looks at the ways in which schools, programs, and other community institutions can help facilitate continuous family engagement to help children succeed.
Helping Families Pave the Path to College: Supporting the Developmental Processes That Facilitate College Readiness
Mandy Savitz-Romer is director of the Prevention Science and Practice Program and a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Suzanne Bouffard is a research project manager and writer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In this article, Bouffard and Savitz-Romer discuss findings from their recent book, Ready, Willing, and Able: A Developmental Approach to College Access and Success.
A New Approach to Transitions: Welcoming Families and Their Ideas into Kindergarten Classrooms
Ken Smythe-Leistico is the director of Ready Freddy: Pathways to Kindergarten Success at the University of Pittsburgh’s Office of Child Development. In this profile, Ken discusses the Ready Freddy program—created in collaboration with Pittsburgh Public Schools, families, and community partners to increase the likelihood that children will have a successful kindergarten year.
The Family Engagement for High School Success Toolkit: Planning and implementing an initiative to support the pathway to graduation for at-risk students
The Family Engagement for High School Success Toolkit is designed to support at-risk high school students by engaging families, schools, and the community. Created in a joint effort by United Way Worldwide and HFRP as part of the Family Engagement for High School Success initiative, the toolkit consists of two parts—Part 1: Planning, and Part 2: Implementation.
Resource Guide for Early Childhood Transitions: Annotated Bibliography
This annotated bibliography provides a selected listing of journal articles, research briefs, and reports that focus on early childhood transitions and school readiness. They cover a variety of topics central to the issue of early childhood transitions, including family engagement and home–school and program–school partnerships. Because the Head Start program is one of the most frequently studied early childhood initiatives, many of the resources focus on the transition from Head Start to preschool/kindergarten.
Resource Guide for High School Transitions: Annotated Bibliography
This bibliographic resource provides a selected listing of journal articles, research briefs, and other resources that focus on the transitions into and out of high school as well as general high school and college readiness. These resources address a variety of topics related to high school transitions including family engagement, school practices, and student outcomes.
Book Review: Inviting Families into the Classroom: Learning from a Life in Teaching
This book by Lynne Yermanock Strieb provides readers with insights on family engagement from the perspective of someone with 31 years of experience teaching kindergarten and first and second grade in Philadelphia public schools. While Inviting Families into the Classroom discusses parent–teacher relationships more broadly, this book review focuses on its valuable lessons on building relationships with families whose children are transitioning into elementary school.
Kindergarten Home Visit Project
The need for home–-school collaboration begins even before a child’s the first day of school. Researcher Amy Schulting shares data from a recent evaluation study to describe how one home visiting project eases children's transition to kindergarten.
Family Involvement News: January 2009
We at Harvard Family Research Project are committed to keeping you up-to-date on what's new in family involvement. View our list of links to current reports, articles, events, and opportunities in the family involvement field.
Promoting Parent–School Relationships During the Transition to Kindergarten
Amy Schulting from Duke University explores the role of teacher outreach to families during the transition to kindergarten.
Family Involvement in Middle and High School Students' Education
This research brief synthesizes the latest research that demonstrates how family involvement contributes to adolescents' learning and development. The brief summarizes the latest evidence base on effective involvement—specifically, the research studies that link family involvement during the middle and high school years to outcomes and programs that have been evaluated to show what works.
Family Involvement in School and Low-Income Children's Literacy Performance
This groundbreaking study demonstrates that when families' involvement in school increases over the elementary years, children's achievement increases. Furthermore, the authors show that family involvement in school matters most for children whose mothers have less education.
Bridging Multiple Worlds: Building Pathways From Childhood to College
Students' pathways through school can be seen as moving through an academic pipeline to adulthood. The Bridging Multiple Worlds model focuses on how diverse youth, beginning in their middle childhood years, navigate across their worlds of families, peers, schools, and communities as they move along their pathways to college, careers, and family roles in adulthood.
Taking a Closer Look: A Guide to Online Resources on Family Involvement
This comprehensive resource guide compiles a wealth of information about family involvement from over 100 national organizations. It contains Web links to recent (published in and after 2000) research, information, and tools.
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.
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.
Parents Come to Kindergarten: A Unique Junior Kindergarten Program for Four Year Olds and Their Families
A preschool parenting and readiness program in Canada results in higher school readiness among program children and families, as well as family readiness among teachers.
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.
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.
Getting Parents “Ready” for Kindergarten: The Role of Early Childhood Education
This research brief presents preliminary evidence that family involvement in young children's education may contribute to a smooth transition to elementary school for children, and also helps parents remain involved in their children's learning in school.
A Mixed Method Approach to Understanding Family-School Communication
This paper presents the initial findings from an ethnographic case study, focusing on the mixed-method research strategy used in the MacArthur Comprehensive Child Development Project Follow-up Study. The aim of the study was to expand the understanding of children's developmental trajectories as they traverse the elementary school years. This paper presents three case study vignettes of children in the second grade, each highlighting a different aspect of family-school communication from the perspective of the children's parents, and highlights the methodological strengths of ethnography. The third vignette uncovered the complexity and contradictions and race, racism, and informal communication between home and child for one African-American child. (Available in ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED422111)