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.
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.
$7.00 . 25 Pages.
Credibility, Relevance, and Inescapable Truths: Effective Messages for Youth
Tim Mask describes three strategies for improving the effectiveness of behavior change campaigns that were used with success by the Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi.
Culture Clash at Intermediate School #91
Disciplinary problems at an intermediate school in the Bronx are compounded by the lack of experienced teachers whose race and class backgrounds differ from their students'. When two students get into a fight, the new teachers seek solutions that sharply contrast with the norms of the students and their families. How can teachers come to understand the families and communities in which they teach?
Free. Available online only.
Current Issue - Scaling Impact
This issue of The Evaluation Exchange explores the promising practices and challenges associated with taking an enterprise to scale, along with the role that evaluation can and should play in that process. It is the second in our “hard-to-measure” series, which we inaugurated with our Spring 2007 issue on evaluating advocacy.
Free. 24 Pages.
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.
Data for Measuring Growth: Poway Unified School District
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.
Data on Data: A Resource Guide to Engaging Families with Student Data
This resource from HFRP offers a compilation of articles on families’ use of data to support, guide, and advocate for student achievement and schoolwide improvement. Resources are grouped into three categories: Perspectives that offer lessons learned from family and community use of data, program examples that illustrate what it takes to make data actionable for families, and tools that help everyone understand how data can be analyzed.
Data Sharing Resources for Afterschool and Expanded Learning Programs and Systems
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.
Data Sharing Through Parent Portals: An Exploration of Parental Motivation, Data Use, and the Promise of Prolonged Parent Involvement
In this Research Digest, Barbara Starkie highlights key findings from her recent study that examined why and how parents use online parent portals to view student data.
Defining “Fine”—Communicating Academic Progress to Parents
Molly is surprised when her son's teacher recommends he attend summer school. She thought he was doing just fine and the family had been doing a lot to make the home a rich reading environment. How can teachers better communicate academic progress with parents? How can administrators support teachers in this effort?
Free. Available online only.
Democratic Evaluation
This issue of The Evaluation Exchange periodical focuses on democratic evaluation. At the forefront of the discussion are equity and inclusion in the evaluation of programs for children, families, and communities, as well as evaluation to promote public accountability and transparency. Katherine Ryan leads off the issue by presenting major theoretical approaches to democratic evaluation. Several contributors examine these different strands, highlighting the importance of power sharing. Jennifer Greene emphasizes the importance of broad inclusion of stakeholder perspectives in evaluations, while Saville Kushner offers guidelines for people and communities to help evaluation reposition itself as a collaborative effort and thereby begin to address the crisis in public trust between the professional bureaucracy and citizens. Kathleen McCartney and Heather Weiss focus on public accountability, especially the conduct of flagship evaluations to maintain their scientific integrity while also serving the public good. Several contributors provide practical methods and tools to promote democratic evaluation, including the facilitation of dialogue, the training of youth researchers, the use of photovoice and cell phone technology, and access to interactive information through the Internet.
Free. 20 Pages.
Democratic Evaluation Approaches for Equity and Inclusion
Katherine Ryan, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois, describes three approaches to democratic evaluation and argues that they can provide field-tested methods for addressing equity and inclusion issues in evaluations of programs for children, youth, and families.
Democratic Evaluation in Practice
Cheryl MacNeil, an evaluation consultant, describes the asymmetries of power in evaluation and her efforts to make her evaluation practice more democratic.
Demographic Differences in Patterns of Youth Out-of-School Time Activity Participation
This paper examines whether demographic differences exist in getting youth “in the door” of OST activities, as well as in the number of activities and the amount of time youth spend in activities. Results from two nationally representative datasets show that disadvantaged youth were less likely to participate in a variety of activities than their peers and that they participated in fewer activities.
Demographic Differences in Youth Out-of-School Time Participation: A Research Summary
This 2-page Research Summary synthesizes findings from two HFRP publications that examine demographic differences in children's OST participation. This summary, which contains a subset of findings contained in the Fact Sheet, presents key findings on differences in multiple dimensions of participation in a range of OST activities and among youth from varying family income levels and racial and ethnic groups.
Free. Available online only.
Design Thinking: Catalyzing Family Engagement to Support Student Learning
Design Thinking cultivates fertile ground for promoting deep understanding and action-oriented partnerships between families and educators to support student learning. Discover five steps that enable families and educators to create meaningful strategies for family engagement.
Designing Evaluations to Match Program Development
E. Kinney Zalesne reveals how College Summit since its inception has used evaluation techniques that correspond to the different stages of the program’s development.
Designing Quality Assessment Tools in Early Childhood Education and Youth Development
Ted Jurkiewicz and Charles Hohmann from the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation describe the design of High/Scope's new Youth Program Quality Assessment tool.
Detangling Data Collection: Methods for Gathering Data
This Snapshot describes the common data collection methods used by current out-of-school time programs to evaluate their implementation and outcomes.
Free. 6 Pages.
Developing a Parent-Derived Measure of Latino Family Involvement
Christine McWayne and Gigliana Melzi from New York University’s Department of Applied Psychology discuss their investigation of Latino family involvement in early childhood education.
Developmental Stages for Evaluating Scale
Sarah-Kathryn McDonald of the University of Chicago describes a conceptual model designed to demonstrate the role of evaluation in the scale-up process.
Discovery Youth: A Museum-Based Program Connecting Youth With Community
Jessica Intrator from the Children's Discovery Museum describes a program that connects youth with a community institution to promote technology skills, health awareness, and positive social and academic outcomes.
Diverse Communities
This issue of the FINE Forum provides some promising approaches to preparing teachers to partner with diverse families and communities.
Free. Available online only.
Do Educational Programs Increase Parents' Practices at Home?: Factors Influencing Latino Parent Involvement
Latino parents become more involved in their children's education when they understand the school system and know how to help their children.
Free. Available online only.
Do You Really Want to Be Accountable for Results? Musings on Georgia’s Learnings
Janet Bitner of the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia, draws on the experiences of Georgia to share some insights about engaging assistance in the development of RBA systems.