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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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Researchers from Teachers College, Columbia University, explore how a relatively new type of book– interactive math storybooks – can help parents appreciate and foster their child’s mathematical thinking.
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.
Too often vital research in the early care and education field does not get used effectively for advocacy purposes. While researchers and advocates often share the same goals, they tend to operate on separate tracks. This brief explores how research and advocacy can be bridged for greater effect using strategic communications. By definition, strategic communications means a deliberate plan or tactics for using communications as a channel for achieving a certain result. Collaborative work in the state of New Jersey around the goal of achieving a comprehensive and quality early care and education system is used as a backdrop for learning about effective practice.
Free. Available online only.
This web only version of the Theory & Practice section features an expanded article from Harvard Family Research Project that explores connections between workforce development and child outcomes in four human service sectors.
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 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.
This guide offers ideas and resources for implementing family support principles in child care, and an annotated bibliography of up-to-date publications and training materials that child care providers can use to improve their efforts to support families.
$4.50 . 27 Pages.
Charles Bruner of the Child and Family Policy Center outlines three factors of good family strengthening programs that evaluators are not adequately measuring in their evaluations.
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.
Tony Berkley of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation describes the application of a theory of change to a complex initiative to facilitate team learning, strategic management, and program improvement.
HFRP invited the Flamboyan Foundation—a private foundation focused on improving educational outcomes for children in Washington, DC and Puerto Rico—to share its classroom family engagement rubric with FINE. This rubric, and accompanying article, provides districts, school leaders, and teachers with a clear picture of what effective family engagement looks like in the classroom through concrete descriptions of how teachers demonstrate strong family engagement through their conversations and daily practice.
Anna Lovejoy, from the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, describes how the organization keeps governors informed about emerging issues in early childhood.
Plan for your upcoming parent-teacher conferences and beyond! Use our list of five of our favorite resources to support ongoing conversations about each student’s progress.
Presidents’ Day is a time to reflect on the importance of leadership. Learn how policymakers, researchers, and practitioners are leading the field of family engagement.
Harvard Family Research Project and the National PTA® have teamed up to bring you the third brief in our ground-breaking series about family engagement policy, highlighting the need for teacher education programs to prepare teachers to better work with families.
Free. Available online only.
HFRP's Director and Founder Heather Weiss testified at the United States House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor's hearing on the "Education Begins at Home Act," on June 11, 2008.
Barbara Gebhard of Build describes the initiative's interactive evaluation approach.
This paper provided an evaluation framework to analyze four state initiatives that provide multi-generational family support and education programs. The paper documented preliminary findings and was presented at The Public Policy and Family Support amd Education Programs Colloquium in Annapolis, MD, April 26-28, 1989.
Hard copy out of stock.
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.
Lisa Klein, guest editor for this issue, reflects on the progress made inthe early childhood field over the past 40 years and on the work that still has to be done.
Heather Weiss, HFRP director, describes a consortium of national organizations working to improve home visitation models.
Jana Martella, from the Council of Chief State School Officers, describes a data-driven approach to developing and integrating policy into the nation's school systems.
What steps can programs take to help families successfully transition to school and afterschool? How can families make informed choices about afterschool opportunities? What information do families need in this process? This video demonstrates how Cambridge, Massachusetts, is addressing these and related questions to help connect families to afterschool learning and enrichment opportunities prior to school entry.
How can you create a resource to help families of young children successfully transition to afterschool? What questions should be addressed? This video looks at one city’s approach to helping connect families and their young children to afterschool enrichment opportunities.
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.
Free. Available online only.