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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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WORKING WITH TEACHERS AND FAMILIES DEVELOPMENT PERIODS
COMPLEMENTARY LEARNING CONNECTIONS

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.

Christine Patton , Justina Wang (September 20, 2012) Research Report

Now is the Time: Helping States Prepare Students for Success from the Very Start

Jacqueline Jones, Senior Advisor on Early Learning to the Secretary of Education at the U.S. Department of Education, highlights the Department’s new Race to the Top–Early Learning Challenge competitive grant program and the decision to make family engagement an integral part of the grant criteria.

Jacqueline Jones (March 15, 2012) Research Report

New Offices, New Programs, New Interventions: A Look at New Developments in Early Childhood Education

In this FINE Newsletter Commentary, HFRP’s Christine Patton explores how new developments in early learning research, policy, and practice reflect a national “coming together” around the importance of early childhood experiences and their role in later school success.

Christine Patton (March 15, 2012) Research Report

Service is Everything: How Home Visiting Service Delivery Impacts Family Outcomes

Anne Duggan is Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Duggan reflects on what she has learned from nearly 20 years of evaluative research on home visiting—particularly looking at what factors influence service delivery and family outcomes—and how that research can be applied to practice.

Anne Duggan (March 15, 2012) Research Report

The Effects of a Responsive Parenting Intervention on Parent–Child Interactions during Shared Book Reading

This installment in our Family Involvement Research Digest Series features Susan Landry discussing a recent study—conducted by Landry and her colleagues at the Children’s Learning Institute at the University of Texas—about a mother–child intervention aimed at improving the use of responsive parenting techniques.

Susan Landry , Karen E. Smith, Paul R. Swank, Tricia Zucker, April D. Crawford, & Emily Solari (March 15, 2012) Research Report

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.

Ken Smythe-Leistico (March 15, 2012) Research Report

Family Engagement in Early Childhood: A Resource Guide for Early Learning Challenge Grant Recipients

To support Race to the Top—Early Learning Challenge grant recipients’, HFRP produced this selective list of resources about engaging and supporting families with young children. This list of journal articles, practical guides, webinars, and presentations may also be helpful for any other states, districts, and local programs interested in expanding their family engagement work.

Harvard Family Research Project (January 2012) Bibliography

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.

Harvard Family Research Project (January 2012) Research Report

Parent, Family, and Community Engagement Framework: Promoting Family Engagement and School Readiness from Prenatal to Age 8

This framework is a vital tool for early childhood education and care providers seeking to build effective family engagement strategies. It was developed by the Office of Head Start with the assistance of the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement for the Office of Head Start

Office of Head Start (August 2011) Research Report

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.

Harvard Family Research Project , Briana Chan (April 2011, updated September 2011) Bibliography

Ongoing Child Assessment and Family Engagement: New Opportunities to Engage Families in Children’s Learning and Development

This paper by the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement, a new center formed by HFRP and Brazelton Center at Children's Hospital Boston and other partners for the Office of Head Start, focuses on child assessment data as a tool for parent and family engagement in the early childhood arena. It is the first in a series that will help early childhood care and education programs identify ways that they can share information in order to strengthen partnerships and work toward common goals.

National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement (March 2011) Research Report

Making Data Come Alive for Families through Young Children’s Play

Amy Horenbeck, training director from the Tools of the Mind program based at the Center for Improving Early Learning at the Metropolitan State College of Denver in Colorado, discusses a different approach to early childhood education and using children's work as a unique type of student data to track development and share children's progress with parents.

Amy Horenbeck (October 2010) Research Report

Valuing Families as Partners

Elena Lopez explores the benefits of creating strong partnerships between early childhood programs and families.

M. Elena Lopez (January 2010) Research Report

Complementary Learning Connections With Out-of-School Time Programs in Nebraska

When families, schools, and out-of-school supports work together, children are more likely to succeed. Lisa St. Clair writes about how the Nebraska State Parental Information and Resource Center is using a complementary learning approach to link family support programs with schools, early childhood programs, and out-of-school time programs.

Lisa St. Clair (August 2009) Research Report

Data Collection Instruments for Evaluating Family Involvement

As evidence mounts that family involvement can support children's learning, there is an increasing call in the field for common data collection instruments to measure home–school communication and other aspects of family involvement. This resource from Harvard Family Research Project compiles instruments developed for rigorous program impact evaluations and tested for reliability.

 

Helen Westmoreland , Suzanne Bouffard, Kelley O'Carroll, Heidi Rosenberg (May 2009) Research Report

Family Involvement News: May 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.

Harvard Family Research Project (May 2009) Research Report

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.

Amy Schulting (January 2009) Research Report

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.

Harvard Family Research Project (January 2009) Research Report

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.

Michael L. Lopez , Sandra Barrueco, Erika Feinauer, Jonathan C. Miles (June 2007) Research Report

Changing the Conversation About Home Visiting: Scaling Up With Quality

The purpose of this paper is to determine what the evidence and conventional wisdom say about scaling up home visiting as one of the best ways to support parents and promote early childhood development. To answer this question, we examined the available research evidence, interviewed leaders from six of the national home visiting models, and interviewed researchers who have studied home visiting. The area of interest for guiding future research, practice, and policy is whether home visiting can be delivered at broad scale and with the quality necessary to attain demonstrable, positive outcomes for young children and their parents.

Heather Weiss , Lisa Klein (May 2007) Research Report

New Research on Family Involvement and Academic Achievement (Symposium)

This multiple paper symposium at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association followed up on our panel session in 2005. It featured four research studies that used nuanced definitions of family involvement and cutting-edge methodologies to address processes of family involvement and academic outcomes for disadvantaged children across the developmental continuum.

Heather Weiss , Kathleen Hoover-Dempsey, Wendy Barnard, Suzanne Bouffard, Eric Dearing, and Christine McWayne (April 11, 2006) Conferences and Presentations

Family Involvement in Early Childhood Education

This research brief synthesizes the latest research that demonstrates how family involvement contributes to young children's learning and development. The brief summarizes the latest evidence base on effective involvement—specifically, the research studies that link family involvement in early childhood to outcomes and programs that have been evaluated to show what works.

Heather B. Weiss , Margaret Caspe and M. Elena Lopez (Spring 2006) Research Report

Family Support Services Promote School Readiness

This study demonstrates that a wide variety of parent and child factors are linked to school readiness and that parenting education and support services promote family activities that relate to positive child outcomes.

Shari Golan , Donna Spiker, Carl Sumi (December 2005) Research Report

Society for the Study of Human Development Annual Meeting

This presentation, Supporting Children's Development in and out of the Classroom, examined parenting behaviors and their associations with one another and with children's outcomes in early and late adolescence.

Sandra Simpkins , Suzanne Bouffard, Eric Dearing, Holly Kreider, Chris Wimer, Pia Caronongan, Priscilla Little, Heather Weiss (October 28, 2005) Conferences and Presentations

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.

Angie Giallourakis , Kristie Pretti-Frontczak, Bryan Cook (September 2005) Research Report

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