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Schools cannot work successfully in isolation from students' families and communities. Policymakers who formulated the national educational goals in 1990 recognized this inescapable fact and made family involvement in children's learning a priority area for program development. This interest in family involvement has continued. Under the leadership of Richard W. Riley, U.S. Secretary of Education, a Partnership of Family Involvement in Education has been created. The Partnership is composed of more than 700 family, school, community, employer, and religious groups who work together to promote children's learning.
Family involvement initiatives require schools of education to reexamine the skills and knowledge that teachers will need in order to work effectively in the schools of the future. Secretary Riley summarizes a new direction in teacher preparation:
Teachers must also learn new ways to involve parents in the learning process. Thirty years of research tells us that the starting point of putting children on the road to excellence is parental involvement in their children's education. (U.S. Department of Education, 1996)
Professional teacher organizations recognize the need for teachers to develop skills to involve families in their children's learning. For example, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) includes family involvement as a separate standard as well as a theme integrated into other standards for its professional teaching certificates (National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, 1993). Whereas the 1990 edition of the Handbook of Research on Teacher Education did not have any index entries about families, parents, or family involvement, the 1996 edition examines family, community, and school collaboration. Also, a new initiative by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) and the National PTA aims to provide preservice and inservice teacher training in parent and family involvement.
While policymakers and educators endorse professional development, little is known about preparing student teachers to work with families. If teachers are to link learning in the classroom and in the home, how are they being prepared to accomplish this task? What knowledge and skills do they need? How should these be taught and learned?
The Harvard Family Research Project began a study in 1991 to seek the answers to these questions by documenting the nature and scope of preservice teacher education in family involvement in children's learning. The research strategy consisted of three components: (1) a review of state teacher certification requirements to determine what states required in terms of coursework or work experience in family involvement; (2) a survey of course offerings and requirements by accredited teacher training institutions in order to establish a framework of content areas; and (3) an in-depth examination of promising and replicable models of preservice training in family involvement, with an emphasis on content and delivery (see Appendix for research methods).
The findings in this report can be implemented in three ways. They can be used to inform policymakers about trends and issues in the field in order to help influence policies that shape the future of professional development. Second, the findings offer educators a framework for designing training programs in family involvement. The report extends the knowledge base of content areas and teaching methods that will develop the attitudes, knowledge, and skills teachers need to work effectively with families. It also identifies the challenges to making family involvement an integral part of teacher preparation and the ways in which they can be overcome. Finally, the findings can serve as a source of ideas for schools and school districts. The report offers models of school collaborations with teacher training institutions, which can be developed even further for inservice and preservice training in family involvement.
The report begins with a discussion of the importance of family involvement in children's schooling and the need to prepare teachers to promote this involvement. It then examines the status of teacher preparation, providing analyses of state certification requirements and teacher education programs. A framework for teacher preparation in family involvement highlights content areas and promising training methods. This section is followed by a set of recommendations to advance teacher preparation in family involvement.
Widespread support for family involvement in education is due in part to compelling research evidence suggesting that family involvement has positive effects on children's academic achievement. The highly acclaimed book, A New Generation of Evidence: The Family Is Critical to Student Achievement, opens by stating, "The evidence is now beyond dispute. When schools work together with families to support learning, children tend to succeed not just in school, but throughout life" (Henderson & Berla, 1994, p. 1). The book advances six major conclusions:
A number of other studies also reveal that the benefits of family involvement are not restricted to student achievement. One national study, for example, resulted in a guide for successful school-based reform that recommends bringing schools and community members, including parents, together as much as possible in school reform efforts (Quellmalz, Shields, & Knapp, 1995). In Kentucky, which pioneered outcome-based educational accountability, the Pritchard Committee for Educational Excellence provides parents and other citizens information on specific components of school reform and informs them about their roles in implementing the education reform law (Heine, 1992).
Numerous important educational reforms and policies emphasize relationships among families, schools, and communities. Following are examples:
With new research and educational reform policies come new school and teacher practices, as suggested in the above examples. Some of these new school practices reach beyond the classroom. For example, realizing that students' cultural backgrounds, economic conditions, and home environments can profoundly affect their adjustment to and performance in school, schools are finding that they can best serve the needs of children by becoming more family-centered. Some schools provide nonacademic services to children and their families, while other schools make referrals to outside community agencies that provide such services. That each of these strategies is being employed demonstrates the fact that relationships between home and school are changing in fundamental ways.
Preservice programs that do not prepare teachers for educational reforms that are taking place can impede the implementation of those reforms. According to the Education Commission of the States (1993), "Elementary and secondary schools struggling to restructure are handicapped with the arrival each year of an estimated 120,000 new teachers who come from teacher education programs that operate aloof from growing public demands for reform." Connecting teacher education to the current initiatives to increase family involvement could help these reforms to be implemented successfully.
The following examples of school-based initiatives to increase family and community involvement in children's education illustrate the changing relationships between home and school:
Several major barriers to family involvement exist in public schools. First, school environments may discourage family involvement, ". . . due to lack of adequate time and training of teachers and administrators and a predominant institutional culture in the schools that places little value on the views and participation of parents" (National Task Force on School Readiness, 1991, p. 24). The traditional philosophy, still held by many public schools and teachers, concentrates largely on the needs of children, with little regard for their family life and circumstances. This narrow focus may contribute to lower levels of family involvement (Burton, 1992). In addition, large classes may preclude substantial family involvement because teachers have less time to spend with individual students during class time and their family members outside of class. Furthermore, particularly in light of the pressing demands on teachers' time and energy, a lack of administrator support (Swick & McKnight, 1989) may inhibit family involvement because teachers often need incentives such as administration recognition before they will extend themselves to family members.
Second, not all types of family involvement are equally acceptable to both parents and teachers (Krasnow, 1990). Teachers and administrators often are more comfortable with traditional family involvement activities, such as parents' supporting school programs and attending school meetings, while parents are often interested in advocacy and decision making (National PTA, 1997). These different expectations can further inhibit strong home-school partnerships.
A third barrier to family involvement in children's schooling is the negative attitude toward family involvement commonly held by both teachers and parents. Teachers often believe that parents are neither interested in participating in their children's education nor qualified to do so (New Futures Institute, 1989; Fine and Vanderslice, 1990). Parents, in turn, sometimes feel intimidated by school administrators, staff, and teachers, and feel that they lack the knowledge and skills to help educate their children (Riley, 1994). In much the same way, teachers often lack the confidence to work closely with families, especially if they have not had experience doing so. For example, Epstein (1991) found that although teachers thought that family involvement would improve student achievement, they had reservations about whether they could motivate parents to become more involved.
Fourth, changing demographics and employment patterns may further complicate the development of strong home-school partnerships (Ascher, 1988; Krasnow, 1990; Marburger, 1990). As the population becomes increasingly ethnically diverse, teachers and parents will likely come from different cultural and economic backgrounds, leading at times to contrasting values and beliefs (Murphy, 1991). In addition, the rise in the number of dual-worker families affects overall family involvement in children's education because dual-worker families have less time to spend on school involvement than families in which only one family member works. This factor, combined with teachers' many time-consuming responsibilities that often limit their availability to meet with family members outside of class, can interfere with the development of strong home-school relationships (Swap, 1990).
Finally, a lack of teacher preparation in involving family members in schooling efforts raises another barrier to effective family involvement. Clearly, teachers need concrete skills, knowledge, and positive attitudes about family involvement in order to carry it out effectively (Burton, 1992; Edwards & Jones Young, 1992; Davies, 1991). Despite this fact, however, research has shown that preservice teacher education programs often do not adequately prepare teachers to involve parents (Chavkin, 1991). In a study by Houston and Williamson (1990), beginning elementary teachers related that during their preservice education they had received little or no training in conducting parent conferences or in communicating with or building relations with parents. Other surveys have also shown that teachers feel that they need more instruction in how to work with parents (Bartell, 1992; McAfee, 1987). A recent report by the U.S. Department of Education (1997) found that 48 percent of principals in Title I schools also believe that lack of staff training in how to work with families poses a barrier to family involvement.
Teacher education in family involvement is one of the most potentially effective methods of reducing almost all of these barriers to strong home-school partnerships (Chavkin, 1991). Most teachers become certified through approved teacher education programs (Roth & Pipho, 1990). Such programs hold the potential for providing student teachers with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes needed to increase family involvement. Making changes at the preservice level would reach the greatest number of future teachers; collectively, they could significantly raise the quality of home-school partnerships.
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[II. Status of Teacher Preparation in Family Involvement]