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.
Raising Expectations for Out-of-School Time
Samantha Grant, a program evaluator at the University of Minnesota Extension Center for Youth Development, and a parent, offers guidance to families looking to make good decisions about their children’s out-of-school time activities.
Raising Our Future: Families, Schools, and Communities Joining Together
This book provides one of the most thorough and complete analyses of innovative family support and education programs to date. Seventy-three profiles taken from around the country vividly illustrate the key elements of a successful program, while detailed charts, tables, and cross-referencing indexes give quick and easy access to information.
Hard copy out of stock.
Re-thinking Family Engagement: Moving Beyond the Program Model Toward Systemic Engagement that Promotes Student Learning
Anna Hinton, Director of Parental Options and Information in the Office of Innovation and Improvement for the U.S. Department of Education, shares her vision for transforming family engagement at the federal, state, and local levels.
Reaching More Parents Through a Complementary Learning Approach
Lisa St. Clair and Barbara Jackson describe how the Nebraska State PIRC connects with 21st Century Community Learning Centers to foster family involvement.
Reaching out to the Only One out There
Brian is struggling with his sexual orientation and confronts Jacob, a teacher whom he suspects is gay. Jacob reveals his sexual orientation to Brian and when Brian reports this information to his mother, Jill, she demands her son to withdraw from extracurricular activities led by a gay teacher. How can Jacob, knowing the risks of suicide among gay youth, best support Brian and gain Jill's confidence?
Free. Available online only.
Reaching Results in Different Ways
Diane Schilder of Harvard Family Research Project identifies key issues in the successful design of RBA systems.
Reading Interactive Math Storybooks
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.
Reading, Writing, and Reform in the Bronx: Lessons for Community Engagement in Schools
Five community-based education organizing groups use various strategies to build trust and commitment among parents and teachers.
Free. Available online only.
Ready for Success: Creating Collaborative and Thoughtful Transitions into Kindergarten
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.
Redefining Family Engagement for Student Success
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.
Redefining Family Engagement in Education
Heather Weiss and Elena Lopez discuss the need to develop a broader definition of family engagement—one which focuses on the multiple contexts in which children grow and learn, from birth through adulthood—in this era of changing federal policy.
Reference and Resource List for Family Engagement in Libraries: A Design Thinking Activity
Reference and Resource List for Family Engagement in Libraries: A Design Thinking Activity
Watertown Public Library, September 27, 2016
Reflecting on the Past and Future of Evaluation
This tenth-year-anniversary-issue of The Evaluation Exchange features reflections on some of the trends (both good and bad) that have occurred in the evaluation field over the past decade. Authors consider the “best of the worst”evaluator practices, changes in university-based evaluation training, and the development of evaluation as a discipline. In recognition of the need to look ahead, other articles introduce themes we will address in greater depth in the future, such as international evaluation, technology, evaluation of the arts, and diversity.
Free. 20 Pages.
Reflections on Access and Equity Implications for After School Program Evaluations
Laurie Olsen, Executive Director California Tomorrow, highlights the importance of addressing issues of access and equity in the evaluation of after school programs.
Reflections on Evaluating Strength-Based Approaches to Youth Development
Dale Blyth, Director of the Center for 4-H Youth Development, discusses evaluating strength-based approaches to youth development, which focus on developing desired traits in youth.
Reflective Assessments: A Tool for Learning
Sharon Edwards and Ira Cutler of Cornerstone Consulting Group explain how organizations can use reflective assessments to assess their progress and consider the choices ahead.
Reframing Accountability for Urban Public Schools
Based on their research with community-organizing groups, Eva Gold and Elaine Simon from Research for Action and Chris Brown from the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform describe four strategies for building public accountability for education.
Reframing Family Involvement in Education: Supporting Families to Support Educational Equity
This research review, part of the Equity Matters research initiative at the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University, argues that family involvement in education is a powerful but neglected tool to support children’s learning and development. Disadvantaged children are both more likely to benefit from increased family involvement and to come from families who face the greatest barriers to such involvement. To reframe public understanding of the benefits of family involvement in children’s education, this paper lays out a research-based definition and more equitable approach to family involvement and positions it as a key cross-cutting component of broader comprehensive or complementary learning systems.
Free. Available online only.
Reimagining the Parent-Teacher Conference
Starting meaningful conversations before the school year, focusing on student data throughout the school year, leveraging technology, and engaging families outside of school are four new trends we see transforming the traditional parent-teacher conference.
Reinventing Evaluation to Build High-Performance Child and Family Interventions
This chapter provides examples of local and state efforts to build capacity of organizations to obtain and use data that will inform and continuously improve practice and policy. Chapter by Heather Weiss in Perspectives on Crime and Justice:1999-2000 Lecture Series.
Reinventing Systems: Collaborations to Support Families
This volume provides in-depth descriptions of four initiatives that have achieved broad reforms so that social services are more unified and accessible to families. Initiatives in California, Colorado, New Mexico, and West Virginia are covered.
$7.50 . 102 Pages.
Relations Between Parenting and Positive Youth Development
This paper examines the bidirectional relationship between (a) parental involvement in education and out-of-school time (OST) activities and (b) youth participation in OST activities. Using longitudinal data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, the paper examines the direction of the parent involvement-youth participation relationship and whether youth OST participation mediates the relationship between parental involvement and youth academic and social outcomes.
Renewing Teacher–Parent Relations
This issue of the FINE Forum points to the possibilities of enriching parent-teacher and broader school-community relationships. We hope that you take away ideas for your own practice.
Free. Available online only.
Research and Advocacy Collaboration: A New Jersey Case Study
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.
Research and Evaluation of Family Involvement in Education: What Lies Ahead? (Panel Session)
This panel session at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association in Montreal, examined the current knowledge base and future directions for family involvement research and evaluation. Heather Weiss identified priority areas for future research and evaluation and criteria for selecting these areas. Panelists Kathleen Hoover-Dempsey, William Jeynes, Joyce Epstein, and Anne Henderson discussed research and evaluation on parent–child and parent–student–school relationships, home–school communication and parental expectations, school-based partnership programs, and community organizing, respectively.
Free. Available online only.