STAKEHOLDERS’ UNDERSTANDING OF FAMILY ENGAGEMENT IN AN URBAN SCHOOL: A QUALITATIVE STUDY

Family involvement and engagement in children\u27s education has been a part of the educational landscape in the US for several decades. Research indicates family engagement, broadly defined as activities carried out by an adult in support of a child\u27s educational development, has many benefits such as individual student achievement, as well as less traditional outcomes such as behavioral and mental health benefits, better school attendance, high school graduation rates, and secondary school enrollment. Family engagement has been included in federal education policy since the 1960s and continues in today\u27s policies. However, teachers and parents often maintain different perspectives and report differing experiences with family engagement. If research and policy position family engagement as critically important in education, what then accounts for the discrepancy between the policies and how family engagement is carried out in practice? This qualitative inquiry uses an adapted grounded theory approach to co-construct an understanding of how families and school personnel understand and enact family engagement in education in one urban school. Findings suggest there is little to no awareness of formal federal policy, and formal state and district policies have only slightly more influence. Teachers\u27 choices about family engagement practices appear to be more individualized, based instead on their personal experiences and informal policy, the practices and attitudes of colleagues, and the principal\u27s expectations. This research suggests the lack of knowledge about family engagement policy, coupled with a teacher culture that is ambivalent about family involvement, results in individualized approaches—inconsistent and varied from year to year, teacher to teacher, and family to family. Resources at the school appear inadequate to meet the school\u27s needs, which also affects family engagement efforts. Conclusions from this inquiry are situated in a proposed working theory, and considerations for future practice are offered

Ideabook: Libraries for Families

The IDEABOOK is a research-based framework to guide and broaden family engagement in libraries.The framework helps libraries move beyond thinking of family engagement as random, individual activities or programs, but rather as a system where library leadership, activities, and resources that are linked to goals. The framework represents a theory of change that begins with a set of elements—leadership, engagement, and support services—that build a pathway for meaningful family engagement beginning in the early childhood years and extending through young adulthood.This IDEABOOK was developed for anyone who works in a library setting—from library directors and children's and youth librarians, to volunteers and support staff—and shares many innovative ways that libraries support and guide families in children's learning and development