Professional Readings
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Professional Readings includes reviews of recent publications and highlights of reports on current issues that affect schools. Your contributions are welcome. Send them to principal@osu.edu. Please indicate if we may use your name in the “contributor” credits.
Framework for Parent/Family Involvement
The Principal’s Office recommends the following resources to help you have the standards-based family involvement program you want.
Joyce Epstein, the director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships and the premier parent involvement researcher at Johns Hopkins University, offers a framework for parent/family involvement (1987): (www.csos.jhu.edu/p2000/center.htm)
- Basic obligations of families, including health, safety, and a positive home environment
- Basic obligations of schools, including conferences with parents regarding their child’s programs and progress
- Parent involvement at school including volunteer activities and support for sports and student performances
- Parent involvement in learning activities at home including supervising homework and helping children work on skills that will help them learn in the classroom
- Parent involvement in governance, decision making, and advocacy, including participation in parent-teacher organizations and in various decision making and advisory roles
Epstein’s framework encompasses both the Ohio standards and the ISLLC Standards for Principals. It advocates one partnership model of parent involvement. Other works include School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Preparing Educators and Improving Schools, published by Westview Press (2001) and Handbook for Action. Both are available on Amazon.com.
You will find “100 Ways to Make Your School Family Friendly” in Engaging All Families by Steven M. Constantino (ScarecrowEducation, 2003). Many of the ideas in the Appendix are common sense, but are worth repeating!
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