This study explored the competencies that pre-service teachers had for working with parents of school aged children. The experience that new teachers have in working with parents prior to their first teaching job is often limited by the opportunities they have in their teacher preparation programs. The access to parents during teacher training is…

Communication plays a critical role in building and supporting healthy interpersonal relationships. American teacher development standards recognise this and outline the importance of communication in relationship-building with both parent and student to create a successful learning environment. However, although available research points to the…

This book is a first person narrative from a parent/community advocate. Examining my personal experiences as a parent of color in a Higher Learning Institute, I highlight some of the frustrations experienced by urban working class parents of color as they attempt to engage teachers in their community's schools. I underscore the importance of one…

Teacher educators are charged with supporting adult learners as they prepare to collaborate with diverse families and colleagues. In this research, we examined how a cohort of teacher candidates (N = 29) developed over a semester in their understanding, dispositions, and knowledge of strategies for partnership through the "dilemmas"…

When teachers develop strong and effective partnerships with families, children experience significant benefits (see for example, Anthony, Williams, Zhang, Landry, & Dunkelberger, 2014; Fan & Chen, 2001; Henderson & Mapp, 2002; Jeynes, 2007; Weiss, Lopez, & Rosenberg, 2010). However, collaborating with families remains an area in…

Current research on teacher-parent partnerships has increasingly focused on early childhood education. This transcendental phenomenological study expanded and extended the understanding of effective teacher-parent partnerships in secondary education at a parochial college preparatory high school. According to Bronfenbrenner's bioecological systems…

This paper draws on Ahmed's construct of "affective economies" to explore the role of affect in explaining how marginalization becomes (re)produced in pre-service teachers' encounters with an actor playing a Kurdish refugee mother in a simulated parent-teacher conference. Through an interpretive case study of four matched-pair…

Engaging parents in their children's education beginning in early childhood leads to improved academic and social outcomes for children (Brannon and Dauksas in PRISM: A Journal of Regional Engagement 1:94-105, 2012). In the field of early childhood special education (ECSE), teachers are likely to have frequent contact with diverse families, as the…

This explorative study is concerned with the issue of establishing a two-dimensional "mechanism" of moral education, relating to: (1) connections and continuity from primary to high school (vertical dimension); and (2) collaborations between parents-teachers-community-government (horizontal dimension). We use a primary school and a high…

Drawing on interview data collected as part of a qualitative study among thirty-two local educators and community advocates in the borderlands context of the Lower Rio Grande Valley (RGV), we inquire about the fundamental characteristics of being a community-engaged teacher for sustainable and equitable Latinx student teaching and learning. The…

This article reports on a joint research project across two countries, Germany and New Zealand, where there have been relatively successful measures in curbing the spread of the COVID-19 virus, though using somewhat different strategies given the different contexts with Germany being situated in centre of Europe and New Zealand being an island…

In this qualitative case study, six novice English as a second language (ESL) teachers in a graduate course were asked to describe how they had enacted advocacy for emergent bilinguals. Data were gathered from pre- and post- surveys and semistructured interviews conducted after the semester ended. While the ESL teachers in this study were willing…

The purpose of this research is to study the relationship between parents of pupils with multiple disabilities and their teachers. This, in order to understand the needs for special education teacher training programmes as these are perceived by the teachers who experienced an abrupt transition to distance learning as a result of the COVID-19…

The purpose of this study is to determine to what level beginning teachers' perceptions concerning the competency of pre-service teacher education and their professional commitment predict the challenges they face. This study was conducted with 942 beginning teachers working at Istanbul, Konya, Gaziantep and Van provinces in Turkey. The data were…

Special education teacher collaboration with families is essential to supporting students with disabilities, yet such partnerships often fall short in practice, and teachers report they are not adequately prepared to work with families. In order to prepare competent teachers for working with families, a Family Collaboration Project was…