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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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What are the benefits and challenges of sharing assessment data with preschool families? How can you do so effectively? A preschool teacher writes about her experiences, and provides valuable tips on how to share data with families in preparation for kindergarten.
How can you turn daily bedtime and mealtime routines into learning opportunities for young children? How can commuting, shopping, and other everyday activities offer vibrant learning moments for children? Read about the Let’s Play app to learn how!
How do families spend time supporting their children’s informal and formal learning beyond the school day and across settings? Find out how educators and institutions are helping families promote their children’s learning experiences anytime, in school and beyond.
Through a resourceful museum-preschool-family partnership involving cultural institutions across the city, an organization in New York City is providing rich anywhere, anytime learning opportunities for young children from low-income households. Learn how the Literacy Through Culture program hopes to increase families’ enthusiasm and appreciation for learning in a variety of contexts and build strong parent–child interactions around fun learning activities.
Through innovative and engaging family activities, the Maryland Library Partnership is playing a crucial community role by promoting learning anywhere, anytime and reaching out to parents to help them with their children’s learning, improve literacy, and close the vocabulary gap between low-income learners and their peers.
Explore the world of anywhere, anytime learning with us! Read how researchers and practitioners are helping to close the opportunity gap by creating innovative spaces, developing strategic collaborations to ensure children’s success, and engaging families and children as partners in meaningful learning experiences, both in and out of school.
HFRP director Heather B. Weiss examines how families and others involved with children and youth can ensure that children obtain the access, supports, and opportunities that they need to get the full benefits of digital media for learning.
Through connected learning, says Mizuko Ito, schools, museums, and libraries are employing innovative strategies, leveraging digital media to make learning more relevant and engaging to youth, and linking the crucial spheres in a learner’s life—peers, interests, and academic pursuits.
Dynamic Pittsburgh! Hundreds of the city’s PreK–12 educators, artists, technologists, and families are working together to remake learning.
Culture expert Marsha L. Semmel notes that museums and libraries are increasing their offerings for families in support of such vital 21st-century learning skills as problem solving, digital media literacy, and creativity. Learn how these institutions play important roles in addressing our children’s digital learning needs.
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.
Three experts reflect on their work in engaging families in a digital learning environment. We asked them to address the question, How can institutions offer relevant and useful guidance to parents and families about scaffolding their children’s digital media use?
We are committed to keeping you up to date on family engagement news. The resources in this section highlight the latest tools and discussions from HFRP and review recent findings in the areas of family engagement policy, strategies, and research, along with family engagement and digital learning.
Are you interested in using social media to find out how families can navigate digital media to enhance children’s learning? Start here—we guide you to organizations and individuals that bring the latest DML research into public focus!
These resources look at issues related to digital media and learning in early childhood and focus on such topics as children’s media use in the 21st century, family perspectives on children’s media use, and research-based guidance for practitioners and parents.
This teaching case explores the complex issues surrounding the transition to kindergarten and the importance of family engagement in the process. Three expert commentaries and discussion questions are included. An interactive version is also available.
Free. Available online only.
Incorporating the use of HFRP research-based teaching cases and theoretical perspectives, this revised book looks at family engagement issues from the early years through pre-adolescence.
This resource highlights tools, publications, and reports that provide examples of promising practices for and guidance on data sharing for afterschool and expanded learning programs and systems.
Free. Available online only.
In this paper, we draw on the experiences of national organizations and a set of community schools that have built learning partnerships, and examine seven key elements that we find to be essential in building them. Our paper serves as a guide to school districts and their partners as they consider whether and how to implement a partnerships for learning model. It also informs those who have already established these partnerships and wish to reflect on how to maximize partnership—and student—success.
Free. Available online only.
This brief provides examples of year-round learning programs along with recommendations for policymakers looking for ways to increase youth engagement in learning,
Free. Available online only.
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.
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.
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.
Harvard Family Research Project’s Senior Research Analysts Heidi Rosenberg, Erin Harris, and Shani Wilkes explore how the relationship between families and afterschool is shifting from a focus on increasing afterschool program participation toward a focus on parents’ supporting children’s learning and development in afterschool settings.
Samantha Grant, a program evaluator at the University of Minnesota Extension Center for Youth Development, and a parent, offers guidance to families looking to make good decisions about their children’s out-of-school time activities.