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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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Creating high-quality early childhood systems necessitates a strong focus on family engagement. Check out how Oregon is adopting an equity lens and building a strong foundation to engage families by leveraging federal funds, community leadership, and philanthropic investments.
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.
Dynamic Pittsburgh! Hundreds of the city’s PreK–12 educators, artists, technologists, and families are working together to remake learning.
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.
Free. Available online only.
This annotated bibliography compiles recent publications on complementary learning and related concepts, demonstrating a growing national momentum for connected nonschool supports.
This new book on family involvement in out-of-school time (OST), edited by former HFRP staff members Holly Kreider and Helen Westmoreland, includes information on promising practices, benefits, and concerns related to family involvement in OST, and features a chapter written by former HFRP staff members Suzanne Bouffard, Kelley O’Carroll, Helen Westmoreland, and Priscilla Little.
While evaluation needs may vary, all organizations can benefit from utilizing theory-based evaluation tools to frame evaluation efforts. This article explores how three organizations developed their program’s theory of change and logic model.
Field experience in evaluation inquiry is a promising approach to preparing the next generation of evaluators. Learn what one group of student consultants and organizations did to make a field experience in evaluative inquiry a positive one.
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.
This research brief synthesizes the latest research that demonstrates how family involvement contributes to elementary-school-age children's learning and development. The brief summarizes the latest evidence base on effective involvement—specifically, the research studies that link family involvement during the elementary school years to outcomes and programs that have been evaluated to show what works.
Free. 12 Pages.
Examine how effective family-strengthening interventions can positively impact families and children in this practitioner-friendly brief from Harvard Family Research Project. Lessons From Family-Strengthening Interventions: Learning From Evidence-Based Practice is based on our review of interventions that have been rigorously evaluated through experimental and quasi-experimental studies. We offer educators, service providers, and evaluators recommendations for creating successful programs and evaluations.
Free. Available online only.
To be successful, children need a strong science, technology, engineering, and math foundation. Learn how Iridescent, a project funded in part by the National Science Foundation, connects families, engineers, and children to develop these skills early on in school.
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.
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.
Free. Available online only.
This course will address the identification and utilization of community resources and the creation of family engagement partnerships, community linkages, and collaborative efforts to provide for the educational, cultural, health, lifelong learning, vocational, and out-of-school needs of students and citizens in a community.
Free. Available online only.
Engagement in afterschool programming is one way to keep middle and high school youth engaged in their education. Learn about how the Everett Boys & Girls Club located just outside of Boston, uses intentional informality to keep students coming back and wanting more.
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.
Maryland is embedding a new family engagement definition statewide as a foundation of policy and infrastructure. Through comprehensive partnerships, the state brings to scale family engagement approaches and launches new initiatives.
Class sessions address system-level issues in working with children and their families. Attention is given to strategies and tactics used by school districts, community groups, and private sector organizations to support academic, health, and social goals for children and their families.
Free. Available online only.
Ellen Lettvin from the U.S. Department of Education highlights how the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program is collaborating with various federal agencies to bring STEM into out-of-school time learning.
This four-session discussion guide by the Everyday Democracy (formerly the Study Circles Resource Center)is intended for communities trying to close the achievement gap in their schools.
Free. Available online only.
Public Library Association (PLA) president Felton Thomas Jr. writes about the importance of public libraries in engaging families, and how PLA and Harvard Family Research Project have begun a journey together to support libraries in this work.
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.
Free. Available online only.
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.
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.