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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.
Kathe Johnson shares her experience from her work with the Women and Poverty Public Education Initiative, outlining four lessons she learned from this project, which connects professional academic and low-income women.
Simulations, virtual learning communities, web conferences, text-based chats, and interactive cases are all ways that blended professional learning methods are supporting educators’ ability to engage families. Learn more in this commentary that explores new opportunities for blended professional learning in family engagement.
Heidi Rosenberg of HFRP and Helen Westmoreland of the Flamboyan Foundation spoke with three evaluators, who share lessons from their experiences in evaluating programs as they went to scale, to discover how evaluation can inform and assess scaling efforts.
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.
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.
Culture expert Marsha L. Semmel notes that museums and libraries are increasing their offerings for families in support of such vital 21st-century learning skills as problem solving, digital media literacy, and creativity. Learn how these institutions play important roles in addressing our children’s digital learning needs.
This paper examines how communication campaigns with different purposes (individual behavior change and policy change) have been evaluated. It offers a discussion of theories of change that can guide evaluation planning, along with five case studies of completed campaign evaluations. Each case study includes lessons from the evaluation and the paper finishes with a set of cross-case-study lessons gleaned from these evaluations and others.
Free. Available online only.
Michael Quinn Patton of the Union Institute and Ricardo Millett of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation look at criteria that distinguish casual/informal notions of lessons learned from “high quality” lessons learned.
This article in the Spring 2004 edition of Afterschool Matters (pp. 15–23) uses information in our Out-of-School Time Program Research and Evaluation Database to examine how community-based organizations and schools can work together to build and leverage resources in creating successful after school programming.
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.
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.
Kathrin Walker and Reed Larson from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign explore the dilemmas adult leaders in youth programs face and how they address them to improve program quality.
Julie Bott reviews the strategies she and her colleagues use to link the Gardner Extended Services School's after school program with the school day.
Melissa Marschall’s study on Latino parents’ participation in school governance underscores this issue’s theme of the importance of coconstructing family involvement.
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.
JuNelle Harris of HFRP outlines the basics of designing logic models.
Julia Coffman of HFRP describes one approach OST programs can take to develop a logic model.
Cindy McMahon of the YWCA of Ashville, North Carolina, shares how YWCA as a whole, and her after school program as a part of it, used a logic model to show they make a difference for women and families.
David Chavis outlines the "best of the worst" evaluator practices that impede building good relationships with evaluation consumers.
Jane Werner and Lisa Brahms, from the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, discuss the Museum’s innovative MAKESHOP studio space, which invites children and families to co-create projects and transforms the traditional museum visit experience.
Claudia Castillo is Marisela’s mother. Claudia has big hopes for her daughter, but as a single mother she is concerned about not having Marisela around to help with the younger siblings.
At Palmdale High School, Jonathan Stewart is the only guidance counselor for 550 students. Based on the little he knows about Marisela, he wonders if she should stay local to help her mother with her siblings.
Marisela’s biology teacher, Linda Ruiz, can really relate to Marisela. From her own story of deciding whether to go away to college or stay home, Linda has advice she’d like to offer Marisela.
Marisela is at the center of the Making a Decision About College Interactive Case. A senior in high school who dreams of becoming a doctor, Marisela is conflicted about whether to go away to college or stay close to home for her education.
One of Johns Hopkins University’s admissions counselors is Ricardo Vargas. Ricardo works with students in the admissions process. He describes his personal experience with college as needing to “get away from my family.”