School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Preparing Educators and Improving Schools

Description

School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Preparing Educators and Improving Schools addresses a fundamental question in education today: How will colleges and universities prepare future teachers, administrators, counselors, and other education professionals to conduct effective programs of family and community involvement that contribute to students' success in school? The work of Joyce L. Epstein has advanced theories, research, policies, and practices of family and community involvement in elementary, middle, and high schools, districts, and states nationwide. In this second edition, she shows that there are new and better ways to organize programs of family and community involvement as essential components of district leadership and school improvement. THE SECOND EDITION OFFERS EDUCATORS AND RESEARCHERS: • A framework for helping rising educators to develop comprehensive, goal-linked programs of school, family, and community partnerships. • A clear discussion of the theory of overlapping spheres of influence, which asserts that schools, families, and communities share responsibility for student success in school. • A historic overview and exploration of research on the nature and effects of parent involvement. • Methods for applying the theory, framework, and research on partnerships in college course assignments, class discussions, projects and activities, and fi eld experiences. • Examples that show how research-based approaches improve policies on partnerships, district leadership, and school programs of family and community involvement. Definitive and engaging, School, Family, and Community Partnerships can be used as a main or supplementary text in courses on foundations of education methods of teaching, educational administration, family and community relations, contemporary issues in education, sociology of education, sociology of the family, school psychology, social work, education policy, and other courses that prepare professionals to work in schools and with families and students. Review: Dated and obsolete 2nd edition. Watch out for same in this edition. - Dated and obsolete 2nd edition. Watch out for 4th edition continuing ignorance on legal provisions on ESSA and effectively fostering lack of engagement with same in the content of Title I public schools. Bottom line: it wants to look authoritative on this subject but it is not. It simply documents its own research on the subject. Nothing else. Like: Comprehensive, research-based resources for schools to partner with student's family and community. Didn't: No explanation on how Title I Part A (family and community participation) works. It does comment about it, but only as an outsider. Comments are from before 2015; keep mentioning section 1118, when Every Student Succeeds Act renumbered that section to 1116 back in early 2015. No mention on how to leverage Title I Part A to avoid duplication of efforts. Review: Very useful - Epstein knows her stuff and is backed by a well-respected institution in her research. I used it for several training sessions with both education administrators and classroom teacher groups.