School, Family, and Community Partnerships, Student Economy Edition

Preparing Educators and Improving Schools

Joyce Epstein

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780813350257
• eBook ISBN: 9780429972768
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book encourages more professors of education, sociology, psychology, and related fields to prepare the next generation of education professionals to understand and implement programs and practices of family and community involvement to increase student success in school.

PART ONE

Understanding School, Family, and Community Partnerships

1

Introduction

WHOSE DREAMS ARE THESE? Children will like school; work hard; do the best they can; graduate from high school; continue their education; gain employment; and become good citizens, friends, and members of their families. Countless surveys and projects with thousands of educators, families, and students reveal that these are common goals and dreams. Too often, though, these ideals are unattained by this nation’s children. How can more students be helped to meet these goals?

To answer questions about goals, we must ask questions about roles: What should families do, what should schools and communities do, and what should students do to reach their common objectives for children’s success in school and in the future? These questions are the reasons for studying, implementing, and improving school, family, and community partnerships.

MATCHING RHETORIC WITH PRACTICE

No topic about school improvement has created more rhetoric than parental involvement. Everyone says that it is important. In study after study, teachers, parents, administrators, and even students from elementary through high school say that parental involvement benefits students, improves schools, assists teachers, and strengthens families. There are basic beliefs and agreements about the importance of families and the benefits of parental involvement.

There also are some clearly expressed hopes and wishes for parental involvement. Teachers would like families to assist, guide, and influence their children to do their schoolwork. Families want teachers to let them know how to help their children at home. Students wish their families were knowledgeable about their schools and helpful to them on school matters at home. These desires are expressed in numerous studies with diverse samples, in varied communities, and at all grade levels.

There is some confusion and disagreement, however, about which practices of involvement are important and how to obtain high participation from all families.

Some educators expect parents to become involved in their children’s education on their own. If they do, they are “good” parents. If not, they are irresponsible, uninterested, or “bad” parents. Some educators and parents expect the school to “tell parents what to do” and that parents will simply respond. Neither of these approaches—waiting for involvement or dictating it—is effective for informing or involving all families.

Research shows that partnership is a better approach. In partnership, educators, families, and community members work together to share information, guide students, solve problems, and celebrate successes. Partnerships recognize the shared responsibilities of home, school, and community for children’s learning and development. Students are central to successful partnerships. They are active learners in all three contexts—at home, at school, and in the community. They link members of these groups to each other. Students are not bystanders but contributors to and actors in the communications, activities, investments, decisions, and other connections that schools, families, and communities conduct to promote children’s learning.

What should programs of partnership look like? How can they be developed and sustained? How could teachers, administrators, parents, other family members, and others in communities be prepared to initiate and maintain productive relationships in their work to benefit students? How would teachers, administrators, and others who work with children and families put the best knowledge and practices to work? How must practices change over time as students proceed through the grades? How can research address these questions to continue to increase knowledge and improve practices? These are the questions this book will address. Research, to date, informs the answers; new research will enrich, confirm, or redirect practice.

THE NEED

All teachers and administrators have one thing in common, whether they are in Maine or California; work with students in grade 1 or grade 12; teach Anglo, Latino, African American, Asian American, Native American, or other students; or have advanced or struggling students: All teachers’ students have families.

Students’ families, however, are not all the same. Some students live with two parents, and others have only one parent at home. Some parents are employed, and some are unemployed; some speak English, and some speak other languages at home. Students come from many different family structures. Indeed, there are important variations in the characteristics and situations of students, families, schools, and communities.

However configured, however constrained, families come with their children to school. Even when they do not come in person, families come in children’s minds and hearts and in their hopes and dreams. They come with the children’s problems and promise. Without exception, teachers and administrators have explicit or implicit contact with their students’ families every day.

All students and their families live in communities, whether close to or distant from schools, that are diverse in geography and history and in economic and social characteristics. Wherever they are located, all communities include individuals, groups, and organizations that care about children; share responsibility for children’s futures; and are potentially valuable resources for children, families, and schools. Children, families, and schools also are valuable resources for their communities.

Educators need to understand the contexts in which students live, work, and play. Without that understanding, educators work alone, not in partnership with other important people in students’ lives. Without partnerships, educators segment students into the school child and the home child, ignoring the whole child. This parceling reduces or eliminates guidance, support, and encouragement for children’s learning from parents, relatives, neighbors, peers, business partners, religious leaders, and other adults in the community.

THE GAP

Teachers learn to teach reading, math, science, and other specialties. They learn to teach students in kindergarten and in all other grade levels. Administrators learn how to manage the school as an organization, create schedules, and supervise many tasks and many people. Most teachers and administrators, however, are presently unprepared to work positively and productively with one of the constants of life in school—their students’ families.

Consequently, many educators enter schools without adequately understanding the backgrounds, languages, religions, cultures, histories, structures, races, social classes, and other characteristics and goals of their students and families. Without such information, it is impossible for educators to communicate effectively with the people who matter most to the children in their schools, classrooms, and communities (Bryk and Schneider, 2002).

Few educators enter their profession with an understanding of how they and their colleagues can develop and maintain partnership programs that inform and involve all families every year that children are in school. Without such programs, it is impossible for all families to remain active in their children’s education and development.

Few educators are prepared to work with businesses, agencies, and institutions in their students’ communities to promote student success in school and beyond. Without these connections, students are underserved and disconnected from opportunities that enrich their schoolwork and prepare them for the future.

An early survey conducted in the southwest region in 1980 found that only 4 to 15 percent of teacher educators taught a full course or part of a course on parent involvement, and only 37 percent of the teacher educators included even one class period on the topic. In the same region, just about all of the practicing teachers and administrators who were surveyed agreed that teachers needed to be better prepared to understand and work with families. And over 70 percent thought that there should be a required course on the topic in undergraduate education (Chavkin and Williams, 1988).

Another early study of elementary school teachers in Maryland indicated that few attributed their practices of partnership to their formal education. Most teachers who had even one class on the topic of parental involvement specialized in early childhood or special education or took administrative or other courses as part of an advanced degree. Sometimes the topic was limited to families’ legal rights and responsibilities to make specific decisions about children with special needs (Becker and Epstein, 1982; see Reading 3.1).

Little change occurred in the 1980s and 1990s in preparing educators to understand and work with families and communities to support their children’s education, despite considerable progress in research, policy, and practice. An informal survey of six campuses of the University of California that prepared teachers found that few courses or even classes-within-courses were offered on family and school partnerships (Ammon, 1990). In Minnesota, more than half of the 27 colleges and universities with degree-granting undergraduate education programs offered no course related to parent involvement for prospective teachers of kindergarten through grade 12, and only one had a required course on the topic (Hinz, Clarke, and Nathan, 1992). Most courses that were offered were for future teachers in early childhood education or special education. Only 6 of 1,300 course listings focused on comprehensive programs of school, family, and community partnerships.

A companion study of the 50 states indicated that no state required an entire course in family involvement for the certification or licensing of teachers. According to these reports, nine states required coverage of the topic in some course, with a few more specifying that requirement for teachers of early childhood (11 states) and special education (15 states). Approximately one-quarter of the states identified the need for elementary educators to show competence (however attained) in school, family, and community partnerships. Fewer states expected middle or high school educators to have competence in family involvement. Only seven states required principals or central office administrators to study parent involvement or demonstrate proficiency in promoting parent involvement in their schools. No state included this competency in recertification or renewal of certification, thereby reducing the likelihood that practicing educators will update their family and community involvement skills (Radcliffe, Malone, and Nathan, 1994).

A study of official certification materials from all states in 1992 found similar patterns and concluded that parental involvement was not a high priority in state certification (Shartrand, Weiss, Kreider, and Lopez, 1997). The researchers conducted follow-up inquiries with leaders of about 60 teacher education programs in 22 states that mentioned family involvement in their certification requirements. The results indicated that teacher education programs responded to state policies by teaching topics of parental involvement in some courses. Only nine of the universities in that sample reported having a required course on family involvement, usually for teachers of young children.

At the start of the new decade, a study of 161 deans and chairpersons in schools, colleges, and departments of education in the United States examined courses offered to prospective educators and leaders’ perspectives of the need for change (Epstein and Sanders, 2006). About 70 percent of the leaders strongly ag...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Part One Understanding School, Family, and Community Partnerships
• Part Two Applying Research on School, Family, and Community Partnerships
• Index