Transcript Families, Educators, and the Family

Families, Educators, and the FamilySchool Partnership: Issues or
Opportunities for Promoting Children’s
Learning Competence?
Sandra L. Christenson
2002 Invitational Conference:
The Future of School Psychology
November 15, 2002
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Our progress. . .
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The effect of and contributions by families to
educational outcomes
Models for family involvement
Importance of establishing shared goals and
monitoring child/adolescent progress
Characteristics of collaborative relationships
Home- and school-based activities to engage
families in education
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Our job is not done. . .
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Extreme social and physical distance between
families and educators in some schools
Diminished resources for implementing
family-school programs
Challenges in reaching all families
Challenges in addressing the needs of ELL
Far too little focus on the interaction process
that yields a strong family-school relationship
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Some essentials . . .
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Goal of family-school connections is
competence enhancement – the academic,
social, emotional, and behavioral learning
Affordance value of the learning context –
how home and school provide supports and
opportunities for the child to meet the
challenges and demands of schooling
Effect of macrosystemic influences – current
landscape of educational reform
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Different foci. . .
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Currently have a primary emphasis on
involving families
Refocus connection in terms of enhancing
learning competencies
Benefits of collaboration for student success
extend far beyond the notion of involving
parent in activities
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To create and sustain productive familyschool relationships. . .
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Systems thinking
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Opportunity to learn in and out of school
Assessment-intervention link empowers parents and
educators to help students meet the demands of school
Opportunity-focused attitudes and actions
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Is the change in ethnic diversity, an issue, one that implies
a barrier and/or a problem for which a solution must be
found?
Is this an opportunity to embrace the richness of culture
and to learn ways to enhance the success of all students?
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Family involvement for what purpose?
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To create a culture of success – one that enhances
the learning experiences, progress, and success of
students
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Academic engagement
Cognitive engagement
Behavioral engagement
Psychological engagement
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70.4 million children under age 18 – 26%
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Describe the changing population and family
context in which American children are living
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Increases for children with a foreign born parent
Increases in ethnic diversity
75% of poor children live in working families
Sharp increase in families headed by unmarried
partners
Less than a quarter of American households
consist of nuclear families
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Some statistics represent challenges for
already stressed schools
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Number of non-English speaking children has
doubled since 1979
Supports for families vary; often less than
desirable.
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Affordable child care – 25% of children in grades
4-8 regularly care for themselves
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Availability of after school programs – low income
children are less likely to participate
Affordable housing and shelter - the daily average for
students living in shelters was 600
Families need support to assist their children’s
adaptation to the demands of schooling.
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High school exit exams- subgroups of students who
perform well below the rate for the total population
24% of students with grades lower than C reported
parents are unavailable to help with schoolwork
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Usefulness of the statistics. . .
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Never to be used as an attribution for poor
school performance
Allow us to identify students for systematic
intervention – those for whom there is an
achievement gap
Point to opportunities for school psychologists
to make a difference for all children – to help
children and youth develop learning
competencies
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Issues or Opportunities?
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Often hear:
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“I never see the families I want to see.”
How can we involve the “hard to reach?”
Issues/barriers for families are
overemphasized
In reality, there are reasons for families,
educators, and the family-school relationship
Some represent access; others psychological
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Issues for Families
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Structural
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Lack of role models, information, and knowledge about
resources
Child care and transportation
Linguistic and cultural differences, resulting in less “how
to” knowledge about how schools function and their role
Psychological
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Feelings of inadequacy
Suspicion about treatment from educators
Lack of responsiveness to parental needs
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Issues for Educators
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Structural
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Lack of funding for family outreach programs
Lack of training for educators on how to maintain a
partnership with families
Psychological
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Use of negative communication about students’ school
performance
Doubts about the abilities of families to address schooling
concerns
Fear of conflict with families
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Issues for the Family-School Relationships
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Structural
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Limited time for communication and meaningful dialogue
Limited contact for building trust
Lack of a routine communication system
Psychological
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Limited use of perspective taking
Limiting impressions of child to observations in only one
environment
Failure to recognize the importance of preserving the
family-school relationship across time
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Let’s focus on the psychological!
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Families: self-efficacy and role construction
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If parents do not see how they impact their
children’s learning, how does this affect
educators’ efforts to create home-school
interventions?
Educators: “fix the family”
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If educators portray an attitude that families are
“dysfunctional,” how can a constructive
partnership for children’s learning occur?
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Family-School Relationship: elements of
collaboration in assessment and intervention
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Parents as assessors and presenters of reports
Shared decision making process:
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Access – rights to inclusion
Voice – heard and listened to at all points
Ownership – satisfaction with and contribution to an
action plan affecting them
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Issues as opportunities
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Opportunity to expand our roles by creating
home-school learning environments
Opportunity to create family-school
connections to “close gaps’ in students’
educational performance
Opportunity to consult about the process for
quality family-school interactions, represented
by the “4As” in the paper
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Opportunities for Joining Families
and Educators
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Typical school-based practices are activity driven: How can
we involve families?
Perhaps we should ask: How can families and educators
partner to increase learning opportunities and supports for
students to learn?
Focusing on the socialization practices of families and
educators and the process for partnering is more important
than implementation of a parent involvement activity in
isolation.
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Students concerns do not go away with one problem solving meeting
Need sustained interaction across school years
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Approach:
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The Framework for
Interaction with Families
Parents are essential not merely desirable for
children’s optimal school performance
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Risk for school failure denoted by interface
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Low-risk: child/family and schooling system
communicate, develop shared meaning, provide
congruent messages
High-risk: child deriving messages that result in
conflicting emotions, motives, goals
Focus on time – students’ use of in- and out-ofschool time
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Opportunities for School Psychology
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Frame mental health and academic outcomes
for youth in terms of a partnership
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Educators often ask: How can schools gets
families to support their values and practices?
Families often ask: How can families get schools
to be responsive to their needs and aspirations for
their children?
Together they seldom ask . .
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How can we work together to promote the
learning experiences, opportunities,
engagement, progress, and performance of
these students and/or this student?
We can:
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Foster bi-directional communication
Enhance problem solving across home and school
Encourage shared decision making
Reinforce congruent home-school support
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Attitudes: The Values and Perceptions Held
about Family-School Relationships
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Collaboration involves:
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Equality – the willingness to listen to, respect, and learn
from one another
Parity – the blending of knowledge, skills, and ideas to
enhance the relationship, and outcomes for children
Employ constructive attitudes and behaviors:
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Listen, nonjudgmental, see differences as strengths, focus
on mutual interests, co-construct identification of referral
concern and intervention plan, ensure parents’ teachers’
and students’ needs are addressed, etc.
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Opportunities for School Psychology
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Embrace the attitude that the family-school
relationship is a priority
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How can we provide leadership in terms of creating and
implementing problem-solving structures that include
perspective taking, learning from each other, and sharing
resources and constraints of each system?
Reinforce the need to meet parents where they are,
not where we want them to be
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How can we reach out to families, to learn from them and
about their needs, to assist their children’s learning?
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Atmosphere: The Climate in Schools for
Families and Educators
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Many words describe what Comer has referred to as
a “healthful” climate: trust, respect, welcoming,
effective communication, mutual problem solving.
Of particular importance is whether educators have
examined the school climate to ensure that is
welcoming and inclusive to all families.
Schools want parents involved, but involvement
depends on parents being invited, informed (and
educators being informed by), and included,
especially for families with low cultural capital.
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Opportunities for School Psychology
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Be a resource for parents - ensure parents have needed
information to support children’s learning academically,
socially, and behaviorally
Create formal and informal opportunities to communicate and
build trust – the “essential lubrication” for more serious
intervention
Underscore all communication with shared responsibility
Remove obstacles that inadvertently decrease active
participation by parents – provide systematic information
about child’s progress and resources to assist
Embrace working with families who feel disconnected
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Actions:
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Strategies for Building
Shared Responsibility
Actions focus on the relationship between families
and educators; activities represent a more narrow
focus on how to involve families
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Garnering administrative support
Acting as a systems advocate
Implementing family-school teams
Increasing problem solving across home and school
Identifying and managing conflict
Supporting families
Helping teachers improve communication with families
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Opportunities for School Psychology
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Consult on the process for connecting home and
school – approach, attitudes, and atmosphere are the
“backdrop” of successful application of actions.
Comprehensive infrastructure for partnerships must
include school readiness
Many students need to persist in the face of learning
challenges; fostering academic and motivational
support for learning is critical
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Parents and educators must make learning a priority
Highlight motivational support for learning
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School Psychology can make a difference!
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Roles for our discipline
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Espouse thinking systemically to understand
educational outcomes. . .quite simply in and outof-school time has an impact
Opportunity-focused attitudes and actions
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Embrace with a vengeance program development and
evaluation to close achievement gaps for student
subgroups
Embrace working with – supporting and learning from
- diverse families and their children
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Roles for the school psychologist
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Systems consultants
Establish family-school teams
Implement and evaluate the effect of
contextualized family-school interventions on
students academic, social, emotional, and
behavioral learning
Determine under what circumstances a familyschool connection may not be beneficial
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In closing. . .
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There is consensus that a new social contract
between families and educators is needed.
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Represented by making “partner” a verb
As we do, I hope we are paying attention to
macrosystemic influences and the reason for
partnering –for all families
There is consensus that leadership and effort
are necessary. . .are we –school psychology ready?
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