Research and Resources in Family Involvement

Research and Resources in Family Involvement

The Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP)

The Harvard Family Research Project helps stakeholders develop and evaluate strategies to promote the well being of children, youth, families, and communities. HFRP's work focuses on early childhood education, out-of-school time programming, family and community involvement in education, and evaluation.

Features of the Harvard Family Research Project include:

The Family Involvement Network of Educators (FINE) is a national network of over 8,000 people who are interested in promoting strong partnerships between children's educators, their families, and their communities. FINE offers the following resources online:

• What's new - monthly announcements of current ideas and new resources
• Resources - research, evaluation, and training tools
• E-newsletter (FINE Forum) - program models and perspectives on family involvement
• Member insights - opinions about topics of interest

The Evaluation Exchange, HFRP's quarterly periodical, contains new lessons and emerging strategies for evaluating programs and policies, particularly those focused on children, families, and communities.

HFRP Publications provide research on early childhood care and education; family, school and community partnerships; evaluation and accountability; and professional development. Many of the publications are available free of charge.

The National Center for Family and Community Connections with Schools

SEDL's National Center for Family and Community Connections with Schools supplies research-based information and resources that can be used to effectively connect schools, families, and communities. The Center provides three primary types of resources to assist researchers, practitioners, families and community members with finding and utilizing research based information people need to take action and make connections between schools, families, and communities.

Connection Collection: Publications Database includes annotations for 395 research studies, articles, monographs, and other literature related to school, family, and community involvement in education.

Research Syntheses, developed in partnership with leaders in the field, contain the latest research and the most innovative thinking about family and community connections with schools.

Strategy Briefs are short summaries of a concept from the research on family and community connections with schools. They include research resources and suggestions for next steps for practitioners interested in implementing these ideas. Also included are Interactive Strategy Briefs, Online interactive modules that allow users to explore family involvement concepts and related research-based strategies.

The National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education (NCPIE)

The NCIPE is a Coalition of advocacy groups in support of family-school partnerships. The NCPIE Web site includes information about family involvement, resources, and an extensive list of family involvement related organizations.

The National Network of Partnership Schools at John Hopkins University

Established in 1996, NNPS uses research-based approaches to organize and sustain excellent programs of family and community involvement that will increase student success in school.

Based on more than two decades of research on parental involvement, family engagement, and community partnerships, NNPS's tools, guidelines, and action team approach may be used by all elementary, middle, and high schools to increase involvement and improve student learning and development. NNPS also guides district leaders to help their schools develop goal-oriented programs of family involvement and community connections, and to meet NCLB requirements for parent involvement. In addition, NNPS assists state departments of education and organizations to develop policies and take actions that will support districts and schools in strengthening their partnership programs.

The National Parent Teacher Association (PTA)

As the largest volunteer child advocacy association in the nation, the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA) offers useful information and support to many thousands of parents to help them stay involved in the lives of their children. The National PTA reminds our country of its obligations to children and provides parents and families with a powerful voice to speak on behalf of every child while providing the best tools for parents to help their children be successful students. National PTA does not act alone. Working in cooperation with many national education, health, safety, and child advocacy groups and federal agencies, National PTA collaborates on projects that benefit children and that bring valuable resources to its members.

The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory's School-Family-Community Partnerships Team

The School-Family-Community Partnerships team develops and disseminates resources for schools in the region on a variety of related topics. These publications are written for various audiences (such as early childhood care providers; elementary, middle, and high school staff; parents; community members). These products include three major resource and training manuals, as well as supplementary booklets.

Building Relationships for Student Success

PDF: www.nwrel.org/partnerships/cloak/booklet2.pdf

This booklet draws from current research and school experiences to give teachers, parents, and administrators examples of successful partnership strategies. Teachers, parents, and staff at six high-poverty, high-minority schools were interviewed to provide their perspective on what research-based methods look like in practice. Together, these voices of committed educators and families help deepen our understanding of family involvement practices, teaching us much about their diversity and creativity. They tell us how various kinds of schools and families work to build partnerships in ways that increase student achievement.

Classroom to Community and Back

www.nwrel.org/partnerships/c2cb/c2c.pdf

This manual is a practitioner's guide to strategies that draw on the knowledge, skills, experiences, and culture of family and community members in order to meet academic standards and enhance learning for all students. The guide focuses on how educators can tap into the culture of the students' family and community in ways that enrich teaching and learning, increase their relevance to students, and engage the entire community. This guide introduces culturally responsive, standards-based (CRSB) teaching and provides ideas and planning tools to implement it in the classroom or within a program. CRSB Teaching looks at the convergence of practices in three areas: culturally responsive teaching, standards-based teaching, and family-community partnerships. The implementation of these research-based, effective strategies in all three areas will enhance student engagement and motivation, create academic rigor and challenging curriculum, and improve school-family-community partnerships (intermediate outcomes), which in turn will increase student achievement and youth success (ultimate outcome).

Partnerships by Design

www.nwrel.org/partnerships/cloak/booklet-one.pdf

This guide helps schools and programs assess their current approaches to involving families and community members, and assists them in implementing more effective strategies. It is based on the assumption that many educators have been actively seeking to involve families, but are not getting the results they desire. It is designed to help educators move beyond relying on typical family involvement activities toward building more effective and meaningful school-family-community partnerships within their classrooms, programs, or schools. It is a practical, realistic tool, focused on working with families and the community, and provides easy-to-read information and an efficient planning process. It contains simple forms, worksheets, and activities that help schools and organizations write their own school-family-community partnership plan. It also includes "Ideas for Action"-hints, tips, and practical suggestions for putting the plans into action.

Planning for Youth Success

www.nwrel.org/partnerships/pubs/pfys-pdf.html

This resource and training manual provides a positive way for members of a school community (school staff, students, families, and community members) to form or strengthen partnerships that will help to ensure success for their youth. The manual outlines how parents and community members can work with school staff and students to answer the questions:

• How do we define youth success?
• How can we measure youth success?
• What community resources can promote youth success?
• What project shall we undertake to promote youth success, and how can we engage the community and measure the results of this project?

The process outlined in the manual enables school community members to ask themselves, "What do we have to build on?", and then helps them to design a project that builds on those strengths with support from the community's existing resources and assets.