Engaging families in the academic lives of their children continues to be an area that needs improvement in public education. Furthermore, public educators continue to fail at establishing two-way communication practices, as well as providing educational opportunities for parents on the various ways they can help their students outside of school.…

Background: An individual's ability to make autonomous decisions is fundamental to self-determination. The presence of neurological pathology, for example, aphasia, and its associated difficulties with language and/or cognition, may affect an individual's capacity to make decisions, or their ability to reveal their capacity to make decisions.…

Family engagement is a major component in assisting student success and academic growth; however, within the inner city, it can be difficult to get families engaged due to many different factors. Schools can increase family engagement by giving families the knowledge to be successful. The purpose of this dissertation is to present how effective it…

Language disorder is characterized by difficulty with the comprehension and production of different aspects of language. School-aged children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and school-aged children with Down syndrome (DS) demonstrate similar deficits in the area of morphosyntax, which often creates barriers during social interactions…

The Region 15 Comprehensive Center (R15CC) is federally funded to provide high-impact, customized, and responsive capacity-building technical assistance to state educational agencies (SEAs) in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah. In 2022, R15CC established a regional Family and Community Engagement (FACE) Collaborative for SEA leaders in…

Family involvement has emerged as an essential component of education with the expectation that school leaders strive to engage families in their children's learning effectively. Yet traditional models of "involvement" often fail families in minority, lower socio-economic status (SES) communities. This qualitative case study documents…

In the United States, employment experiences of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) have been dominated by discrepancies between recent policy shifts promoting integrated employment for people with IDD and the stagnation of the employment rate in integrated settings for this population. Although there is no direct source…

Black and African-American families are underrepresented in research on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and few studies have explored how to increase their involvement. To address this gap in the literature, this study explored the perspectives of 22 Black families raising children with ASD in order to identify facilitators and barriers to research…

In the past three decades, there has been increased attention on the influence of culture on the teaching and learning of mathematics. Jews and Chinese both have a long history and a rich cultural heritage, and the populations in both communities are known to place high emphasis on education. Has this emphasis anything to do with the cultural…

Family involvement is a cornerstone of early intervention (EI). Therefore, positive caregiver outcomes are vital, particularly in caregiver-implemented interventions. As such, caregiver instructional approaches should optimize adult learning. This study investigated the comparative efficacy of coaching and traditional caregiver instruction on…

There is growing interest in games as an exciting and engaging tool for professional development. At GFRP, we believe gamification holds promise for in-person and on-line professional development designed to build the capacity of teachers and all those who work to engage families in their multiple roles supporting their children's learning and…

Many teachers use traditional counting and shape books in math class. But what would happen if we approached any story with a math lens? How might mathematizing children's literature give learners space to ask their own questions and make connections between stories, their lives, and the world around them? These are the questions Allison Hintz and…

There are several benefits for Dual Language Learners (DLLs) when their home language is integrated into classroom instruction. For example, instruction in students' home language facilitates the learning of the new language more rapidly and supports bilingualism. One way to enhance young children's language learning is to engage families in home…

The authors detail how 2,000 teachers facilitating summer camps for 8,000 students across a state for three years engaged families in authentic literacy practices. Building relationships, considering families' needs and strengths, and providing authentic learning experiences linked with literacy led to positive changes in family engagement and…

We used triannual reading curriculum-based measurement of oral reading fluency data from 11,834 U.S. students in Grades 2 and 3 enrolled in an evidence-based Tier 2 reading intervention program (Reading Corps) to investigate the extent to which family involvement in the intervention might buffer against a negative effect of lower intervention…