Documentary search
 
 

Document

Emerging Issues in School, Family and Community Connection


File number :
CS-CEFC-07e

Bibliographic reference :
Jordan, C., Orozco, E., & Averett, A. (2001). Emerging Issues in School, Family, & Community Connections. Austin, Texas: National Center for family & Community Connections with Schools, Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.

Abstract :

This report is based on the analysis of over 160 publications dealing with school-family-community partnership. Four issues emerged from this literature review: (1) clarifying certain concepts; (2) measuring outcomes; (3) advancing research; (4) further studying seven critical areas for research.

Clarifying Concepts
Defining the concepts of connections, parental involvement and community involvement does not meet with general consensus.

As it is currently being defined, parental involvement encompasses several actions that do not have the same effects. The various ways to define this concept make it hard to compare models and studies on the topic. Furthermore, this diversity complicates the work of educational players when it comes to choosing interventions to suit the particularities of their environments. The same difficulties are encountered when trying to define the school-community partnership.

Two factors influenced how these concepts are being defined: (1) divergence in perceiving the roles of individuals involved in the partnership; and (2) emphasis on priorities and school values.

Measuring Outcomes
Measuring the effects of school-family-community partnership proves to be inconsistent across studies, making faulty generalization and interpretation of outcomes hard to avoid. The large range of potential effects on students (e.g., academic achievement), family (e.g., development of skills), school (e.g., quality of climate) and community (e.g., community development) calls for the development of new assessment methods. To obtain a comprehensive picture of the effects, measurements must not only provide information on the actual effects, but also on the processes used to clearly identify the direct and indirect effects of partnership on student academic achievement.

Advancing Research
Research on family-school-community partnership is recent and in full development. However, it does not yet provide educational players with enough clear leads to intervention. The lack of links between theory and research, the limits of methodology and the disconnect between quantitative and qualitative research were among the limitations observed. It would be in the interest of this field of research to focus on developing more coherent theoretical models and vary the research methods used to better adapt the latter to the different research issues (e.g., combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies).

Further Studying Seven Areas
The authors identified some of the aspects that best aroused the interest of research to date, along with promising courses of action and new leads to research. These aspects are as follows: (1) forging connections with families from culturally diverse backgrounds; (2) connecting families with schools for homework help; (3) connecting school, family and community for effective school reform; (4) connecting school, family and community through developmental approaches and integrated services; (5) connecting school, family and community to support student transitions throughout the education system; (6) developing process-based approaches to make connections; and (7) preparing educators and other school personnel to make connections between schools, families and communities.



Links :
http://www.sedl.org/connections/

Key Words :
Definitions of Concepts, Parental Involvement, Community Involvement, Leads to Intervention, Leads to Research, Theoretical Models, Measurement Methods, Synthesis, Literature Review, Newsletter12

Monitored Countries :
United States