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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.
In this issue’s commentary, Heather Weiss and M. Elena Lopez from Harvard Family Research Project and Deborah Stark, Commissioner of First 5, Alameda County revisit the new definition of family engagement—as a shared responsibility, across multiple settings, from cradle to career—as applied to student data use. They discuss how data can effectively bring families, teachers, and administrators to the table, and engage everyone around student learning and performance.
Harvard Family Research Project completed a a case study evaluation of Sports4Kids, a school-based program that that provides opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play at elementary schools. This study examined one program site in Boston, to provide data to test whether Sports4Kids was implemented as planned and achieved its intended outcomes. Data were collected through a variety of instruments, including observations, interviews, and surveys and from a variety of sources, including from teachers, the principal, students, and the program site coordinator.
Explore how libraries are taking a leading role in learning, discover ways to reimagine learning in your community, and learn how parents—through policy and advocacy—are being empowered to engage in their children’s learning.
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.
Based on research of promising practices in school districts and communities, Harvard Family Research Project has identified a range of technological innovations that have the potential to boost key dimensions of family engagement: positive parent–child interactions, home–school communication, and parent responsibility for a child’s learning.
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?
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.
To honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of freedom and justice, we highlight key messages from our contributors about transforming family engagement to promote educational equity.
We are committed to keeping you up to date on what's new in family engagement. View our list of links to current reports, articles, resources, and events in the field.
A human-centered design approach – an approach that is based on observation, empathy, optimism, collaboration, and experimentation – opens new possibilities for educators to motivate and sustain family engagement.
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.
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.
This report identifies four conceptual dimensions of family involvement
Free. Available online only.
This presentation by HFRP staff was part of a conference entitled “Family–School Relations During Adolescence: Linking Interdisciplinary Research and Practice.” The conference was held July 20–21 and was hosted by the Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University, sponsored by the American Psychological Association. The goal of the conference was to establish better links among research, practice, and policy related to family educational involvement during adolescence, particularly for families from ethnically and socioeconomically diverse backgrounds.
Free. Available online only.
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.
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.
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!
Are you looking to break free of traditional strategies for promoting family-school-community partnerships? Discover how video games, human-centered design thinking, and digital media resources are making this happen!
Engaging families in education holds tremendous potential for boosting children's achievement, but also ranks among educators' greatest challenges. Staff at Harvard Family Research Project paired up with staff at the Institute for Responsive Education at Cambridge College to make the case for family involvement to educators. Research and evaluation findings on the benefits, challenges, and effective strategies in family involvement were reviewed and illustrated with descriptions of established program models and exemplary practices from local schools.
Free. Available online only.
We at Harvard Family Research Project are committed to keeping you up to date on what's new in family involvement. This list of links to current reports, articles, events, and opportunities will help you stay on top of research and resources from HFRP and other field leaders.
This paper offers an expanded definition of family engagement based on research about children’s learning and the relationships among families, schools, and communities in support of such learning. The topics presented in this paper were originally introduced as commentaries in the August 2009, November 2009, and April 2010 issues of the FINE Newsletter.
As told to the FINE team by Linda Foote, Technology Integration Specialist for Poway Unified School District, this article discusses how data helps students create their learning goals and helps parents create family goals to support their children’s learning. The article also shares ideas for how to build community around data.
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.
As we celebrate the Week of the Young Child, learn how families can support creative play with young children in a variety of ways and settings.
Engaging with families is one of the many strategies that out-of-school time (OST) programs use to create quality, adult-supervised experiences for youth during nonschool hours. This workshop introduced participants to the latest research and evaluation findings on family involvement in OST programs, and shared strategies for engaging with families, using two case studies to illustrate these practices in context.
Free. Available online only.