Full Description
Family Engagement in Education is a timely and powerful text that emphasizes the transformative power of strong, collaborative partnerships between families and teachers as essential to creating inclusive, equitable learning environments for students.
Drawing on the lived experiences of educators, family members, counselors, administrators, and community activists, this book explores how schools can tap into the vast knowledge, energy, and resources that families offer. Through authentic stories of successful collaborations and research-backed educational practices, it provides theoretical overviews and practical strategies for building reciprocal and positive family-teacher relationships. The book begins with appreciative inquiry as a strengths-based framework to examine practices that deepen our understanding of why these partnerships are key to promoting equity in education and to advancing a relational pedagogy. The authors' collective insights urge educators and families to work in tandem to support all students, creating school communities where every voice is valued and heard.
Essential reading for educators and school administrators, Family Engagement in Education is a roadmap to creating family-centered schools where students thrive and every family is an integral part of the educational journey.
Contents
Part 1: Foundational Understandings for Inclusive Family Engagements 1. Creating an Inclusive and Affirming School Environment for Families 2. The Psychological Dimensions of Family-Teacher Interactions 3. Culture, Identity, and Power in Family-School Relationships 4. Collaboration: The Heart of Family-Teacher Relationships 5. Stress and the Relational Work of Teaching: Understanding Families in Context 6. Building Trust Through Communication and Conflict Navigation 7. Effective Family-Teacher Team Meetings Part 2: Stories from the Field: Possibilities for Family-Teacher Collaboration 8. Dwelling in Relation: How Family Research Transformed Our Teaching 9. Balancing Roles: A Parent's Story of School Engagement, Advocacy, and Shared Governance 10. Centering Families, Building Bridges: Supporting Multilingual Children through School-Community Partnerships 11. Cultivating Family-Teacher Relationships Using Personal Storytelling: Transformative Curriculum Making 12. From Label to Liberation: Challenging the Misrepresentation of Black Students in Special Education 13. Partnering with Families: Communicating Effectively about Student Behavior and Academic Concerns 14. Enhancing Educator-Family Collaboration: Integrating the Johari Window and Myers-Briggs for Self-Awareness and Effective Communication 15. Building Trusting Relationships Between Families and Schools 16. Immigrant Family Stories of Navigating Public Schooling in Canada: Re-writing Asian Parent Narratives 17. Stories about Valuing Diverse Cultural, Linguistic, and Family Experiential Knowledge 18. Integrating Families into Classrooms and Schools 19. Stories about Navigating Family-Teacher Relationships 20. Building Blocks: The Importance of Educator-Family Relationships in Early Childhood Education 21. Showing Up Matters: A Learning Journey Between a Student Teacher and Teacher Educator Part 3: Fostering Relationships with Families 22. Toward Relational Safety in Schools: Mentalization and Epistemic Trust with Families 23. Building Family-Centered Schools
