There is often a disconnect between K-12 schools and postsecondary institutions. While this gap has grown consistently, the need for collaboration between systems is greater than ever. The Adopt-A-Classroom program was created to address the need for greater university faculty involvement in public schools by providing opportunities for…

This study examined the relationships among school specialists, specifically, special education teachers, Child Study Team members (school psychologists and school social workers), and school counselors, who provide support to students with specific learning needs and their families. By examining the relationship and level of collaboration among…

Home-school communication is fundamental to parent involvement and student success. This essay and discussion article outlines the broad range of opportunities currently available for teachers to communicate with parents and associated strategies. The most frequent one-way modes of communication used with parents are discussed (websites,…

Family engagement is considered to be a cornerstone of successful universal prekindergarten (PreK) implementation. Using data from interviews with mothers, this study investigates the different ways families are engaged in their child's PreK experience. Multiple themes emerged from the interviews, including: family engagement, parents' knowledge…

Research has indicated that parents play a significant role in promoting school and family collaborative activities. However, empirical studies on parental engagement in school and family collaboration in China are scarce. This study investigates how Chinese parents perceived the school and family collaborative activities initiated by elementary…

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…

Despite the rhetoric, establishing effective home-school partnerships remains a puzzle for Turkish educators. Extant literature in Turkey provides some guidance, but these studies focus heavily on problematic cases and merely request educators' and parents' perceptions about existing problems. The current study focuses on an exemplary literacy…

One way to improve the quality of family engagement in K-12 U.S. public schools is by ensuring beginning teachers are well prepared to engage with their students' families. To ensure this, teacher educators and policymakers first need to know what works in preparing preservice teachers for effective family engagement. This systematic review…

This study offers a look inside one school community. The school implemented Let Grow Play Club and a recently expanded 40-minute recess period. Data are from observations of children's play periods, child interviews, and teacher interviews. We argue that play has significant cognitive, emotional, and social benefits for elementary school…

Understanding first-generation students' salient experiences in preparing for college is key for educators to engage in transformative college readiness efforts. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand the perspectives and experiences of a sample of first-generation college-bound high school students. Five themes and four subthemes…

The purpose of this study was to use an action research approach to improve family-school partnerships within one rural high school. The action research process occurred over three school years and involved multiple cycles of investigation. Each cycle of investigation involved an ongoing, iterative process of reflecting, planning, acting, and…

Challenges for culturally and linguistically diverse children with disabilities have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 school closures, highlighting major social and educational inequities. In response to this educational crisis, our university partnered with a community organization that supports immigrant families and their children with…

Assessment in special education is a shared practice by a number of professionals. Educational diagnosticians are one such group of licensed professionals who assess students to determine eligibility and service recommendations. This study examined educational diagnosticians' perceptions of their role in fostering home--school collaborations. In…

This study examined how school leadership for school and family partnerships is related to the percent of teachers in a school that engage families in their children's education. Using data collected from over 380 schools nationwide, we examined the roles principals played to establish school-family partnerships. Structural equation modeling…

This study used semi-structured interviews to examine 18 primary education preservice teachers' views on working with Mongolian parents across diverse family patterns, including: preservice teachers' understanding of parental involvement; parental involvement practices learned; their awareness of diverse family patterns; and the preservice…