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.
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.
Three Lessons in Developing a Systemic Approach to Family Engagement
Learn how the second-largest school district in California worked collaboratively to develop a systemic family engagement framework while putting family voice front and center.
Putting an Equity Lens on Family Engagement in Oregon
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.
Parent-Provider Partnerships
This paper discusses ways of working with children and families from diverse backgrounds and highlights some of the challenging issues raised by working with families having differing values, cultural norms, and experiences.
Interview With Dr. Gary Orfield
Dr. Gary Orfield, Professor of Education and Social Policy at Harvard University, shares his research on poverty to situate CBIs in the context of the larger social and economic factors that may affect their success.
Promising Methodologies for Evaluating CBIs
Cami Anderson and Sybilla Dorros from Harvard Family Research Project describe four new approaches and innovations of established methods for evaluating CBIs with examples.
Early Evaluation to Inform Expansion of a Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program
Roblyn Anderson Brigham and Jennifer Nahas discuss the implications of Brigham Nahas Research Associates’ evaluation of the Children’s Aid Society/Carrera Integrated School Model for expansion of the model to new school settings.
Identifying Assumptions About and Barriers to the Transition to School
Through a case discussion, the Bridging Worlds case became a catalyst for robust dialogue discussion about the assumptions teachers make during the transition to kindergarten and their potential consequences for children and families.
The Power of Community Organizing: Creating Parent Advocates to Work Toward Educational Change
Zakiyah Ansari, a parent and community organizer with the Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) in New York City, shares how CEJ empowers parents and community members to advocate for education reform at the local, state, and federal levels.
Getting Creative in Holding Officials Accountable
Dennis Arroyo describes the performance-monitoring mechanisms that nongovernment agencies use to make public officials accountable to citizens.
Lessons From Latina Teachers' Childhoods
Latina teachers' literacy practices are shaped in part by the literacy activities the teachers' own families engaged in during their early school years.
Free. Available online only.
Continuous Progress: Better Advocacy Through Evaluation
Edith Asibey and David Devlin-Foltz describe the new Continuous Progress website, which helps advocates and grantmakers collaboratively plan and evaluate advocacy efforts.
Early Head Start: Further Lessons
Catherine Ayoub and Barbara Pan, from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, describe their work collecting and analyzing longitudinal data to supplement national findings from the Early Head Start study.
Alternative Designs for Community-Based Research: Pittsburgh’s Early Childhood Initiative
Stephen Bagnato, Robert Grom, and Leon Haynes describe an evaluation design that provides scientific rigor in a community setting.
Making Voices Heard: Using Multimedia to Give Evaluation a Cutting Edge
Suresh Balakrishnan describes the use of multimedia to disseminate evaluation results in Bangalore, India.
Erik Greer
Erik's first grade teacher is concerned about his intentional aggression towards other children and communicates regularly with Erik's mother about it. Subtle differences in beliefs between Erik's mother and teacher leave both feeling unsatisfied in their attempts to help Erik. How can the two build a partnership to change Erik's behavior?
Free. Available online only.
Learning Together—Exploring a Nonprofit-Museum-Preschool-Family Partnership Model
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.
Evaluation and the Sacred Bundle
John Bare of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation explains how nonprofits can learn about setting evaluation priorities based on storytelling and “sacred bundles.”
Risk
John Bare of the Knight Foundation shares his foundation's definition of the term “risk” when it comes to investing in initiatives, borrowing from the language of money managers.
The Juvenile Justice Evaluation Project
Revery Barnes and Kaira Espinoza of Rising Youth for Social Equity share the results of their youth-run organization serving as the youth evaluation team on a project to reform San Francisco’s juvenile justice system.
Parents and Their Developing Children
This is a course about parent involvement and the relationship between homes, schools, and communities. Content is organized around how the home, family, and school influences the growth, development, and education of younger children. Students will learn how schools relate to parents and will acquire knowledge and skills to implement excellent parent involvement programs.
Free. Available online only.
Using a Framework Approach to Improve Youth Participation in Informal Learning
Megan Beckett, Sandy Berry, and Kristin Leuschner of RAND Corporation describe a framework approach for transforming research findings into a practical tool for policymakers, parents, and practitioners.
Transforming Pittsburgh Into Kidsburgh!
Dynamic Pittsburgh! Hundreds of the city’s PreK–12 educators, artists, technologists, and families are working together to remake learning.
Giving Children and Families a Head Start: Research-based Tools for Parent and Family Engagement in Early Childhood
Kiersten Beigel, Family and Community Partnerships Specialist for the Office of Head Start, discusses the recent work by the National Center for Family, School, and Community Engagement and the Center’s research-based tools designed to help Head Start and other early childhood programs reach out to parents and families.
National Learning Project Evaluation
Jay Bell of James Bell Associates describes the National Learning Project Evaluation of the United Way.