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.
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.
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.
Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies: Training Child Care Providers to Support Families
Presents a framework of family-centered training.
Co-Constructing Family Engagement Roles in Federal Way, Washington
Through open communication and a mutual investment in solving a problem, one parent, school principal, and district-level family advocate helped bring about positive change in a Federal Way, Washington, middle school. Kelley O’Carroll and Angela Griffin write about the shared responsibility of co-constructing an effective solution and how this effort inspired a parent to advocate for the entire student body, not just her own child.
Coming Full Circle: Drawing On Personal Experiences to Create a Vision for System-Wide Change
Mishaela Durán, Interim Executive Director of the National PTA, sets the stage for this special issue about the emerging leaders in our field by getting at the heart of why family and community and engagement is so important in education: giving students the opportunity to succeed.
Commentary from Harvard Family Research Project on the Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund
HFRP submitted recommendations to the National Register Notice regarding the i3 fund’s proposed priorities, requirements, definitions, and selection criteria. The recommendation included an endorsement of the comments submitted by the National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group, a collaborative of leaders in the family engagement field including HFRP’s Heather Weiss, and emphasized the need to direct development and validation grant funding toward promising family and community engagement initiatives, isolate and recognize the added value of parental involvement in interventions, and take a nuanced view of effect size when selecting innovations for funding.
Commentary from Harvard Family Research Project on the Race to the Top Fund
Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP) submitted recommendations to the National Register Notice regarding the Race to the Top Fund’s proposed priorities, requirements, definitions, and selection criteria. HFRP both endorsed the comments submitted by the National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group, a collaborative of leaders in the family engagement field including HFRP’s Heather Weiss, and asserted that a priority criterion for awarding Race to the Top dollars should focus on the quality and depth of family engagement, especially to achieve the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's goal of turning around struggling schools.
Commentary from the National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group on the Extending the Grant Period for the Parental Information and Resource Centers
The National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group, a collaborative of leaders in the family engagement field including Harvard Family Research Project’s Heather Weiss, submitted recommendations for the U.S. Department of Education's proposal to extend the grant period for the National Parental Information and Resource Centers (PIRC) program. This extension period would allow the centers to operate through fiscal year 2012. The Working Group recommended that the extension place an emphasis on data collection, research, best practices, and program outcomes that will assist in the development of a strengthened PIRC program.
Commentary from the National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group on the Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund
The National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group, a collaborative of leaders in the family engagement field including Harvard Family Research Project’s (HFRP) Heather Weiss, submitted recommendations for the Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund’s proposed priorities, requirements, definitions, and selection criteria.The National Working Group’s recommendations provide a framework for the integration of family involvement into how potential recipients of i3 funds are assessed and selected, as well as how initiatives are evaluated.
Commentary from the National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group on the Promise Neighborhoods Program
The Working Group submitted recommendations to the National Register Notice regarding the Promise Neighborhoods program's proposed priorities, requirements, definitions, and selection criteria.
Commentary from the National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group on the Race to the Top Fund
The National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group, a collaborative of leaders in the family engagement field including Harvard Family Research Project’s (HFRP) Heather Weiss, submitted recommendations for the Race to the Top Fund’s proposed priorities, requirements, definitions, and selection criteria. The recommendations provide a framework for elevating and integrating family involvement into how the Race to the Top Funds are disseminated, governed, and evaluated for effectiveness.
Communication Is Key to Strong Family‒School Partnerships During the Transition to School
One way to help educators better understand how parents and teachers think and feel during the transition to school is by pairing the Bridging Worlds case with an Empathy Map.
Community Partnerships to Support High School Success
Recognizing the need for a comprehensive approach to keeping teens in school and successfully completing high school, AT&T Foundation and United Way Worldwide (UWW) started a new initiative—Family Engagement for High School Success. The goal of this grant was to identify promising family engagement strategies with a strong likelihood of raising high school graduation rates, and to share that information with communities around the country. Together with HFRP, UWW worked with communities to develop plans for high school success. This report highlights the innovative approaches developed and the early outcomes at eight of the UWW grantee sites
Community-Based Family Support in Public Housing
This book examines the history of public housing, women's key leadership roles in those communities, and the experiences of eight family support programs located in public housing developments. In-depth case studies provide lessons on how entities as diverse as public housing authorities, community-based agencies, and research institutions work to empower these often-neglected communities.
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.
Complementary Learning in Action: Jacksonville Children's Commission
This profile from the Complementary Learning in Action series describes how the Jacksonville Children's Commission aims for a coordinated system of care from birth through adolescence.
Complementary Learning in Action: The SUN Service System
This profile from the Complementary Learning in Action series tells the story of Multnomah County's (Oregon) SUN Service System, an antipoverty and prevention effort that connects educational, social, health, and other services under one umbrella.
Concepts and Models of Family Involvement
This report identifies four conceptual dimensions of family involvement
Conjoint Behavioral Consultation: A Model to Facilitate Meaningful Partnerships for Families and Schools
Researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln studied the effectiveness of a behavioral intervention model where parents, educators, and service providers work collaboratively to address children's developmental needs in a Head Start program.
Connected Educators, Connected Families
Elementary school principal and “connected educator” Joe Mazza discusses how he has integrated technology—including social media—into his school’s family engagement strategies to enhance his school’s ability to connect with families. He also stresses the importance of balancing technology-based engagement strategies with in-person relationship-building efforts.
Continuous Improvement: Being Responsive When There is Need for Change
Deborah J. Brown, external evaluator for Save the Children, discusses how continuous improvement processes have helped strengthen one of Save the Children’s language development and pre-literacy programs, Early Steps to School Success.
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.
Creating Coordination Among Families, Schools, and Communities: A Mock Team Meeting
Communication is key during the transition to school, and a mock team meeting based on the perspectives presented in the Bridging Worlds case helped school psychologists gain confidence talking with representatives from different learning settings.
Credentialing Caregivers
This paper describes why family support is essential, given current social and economic trends, and stresses the need to bridge child care and family support. The author underscores the need for accessible family support training curricula that can be adapted to audiences of child care providers.
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.