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The essentiality of family involvement in the schooling process is evident from the vast directives embedded within federal mandates, professional standards for teachers and administrators, parent organizations, and advocacy groups. Yet, as explicit as legislative mandates and professional standards are regarding parental rights and involvement, they do not require definitive roles of the family. Several factors influence the lack of a decisive definition regarding the role of the family in the schooling process. Those include the different perspectives on what constitutes a family structurally and functionally, the socio-cultural and political diversity within and among populations, the move to an inclusive education framework, the various terms used to describe parental involvement, the realization that no one family model fits the demographic diversity existing in today’s school districts, and the rights of family members to select their level of involvement. Given the importance of family engagement and student outcomes, three fundamental questions addressed in this chapter are, “How can inclusive schools enhance productive collaborative family engagement networks?” “How can the family be empowered to voluntarily participate within those networks?” and “How can inclusive schools connect with teacher preparation programs to promote the competency of educators for those collaborative family/school engagement networks?” In this chapter we delineate an interactive triad conceptual model with the school as the “connecting agent” to build relationships with families and teacher preparation, setting the stage for productive family engagement as partners in inclusive settings.

The role of parental involvement in their child’s education and academic success has been widely acknowledged in recent educational theories, policies, and practices. Parental beliefs and expectations concerning their child’s learning and success have been shown to be reflected in the parents’ involvement in their child’s education and their practices with their offspring, thereby shaping the child’s motivational development in school. In addition, parental trust in their child’s teacher is a key factor in enhancing the home–school partnership and in supporting a child’s academic motivation and successful schooling. However, political, economical, and technological changes in society and uncertainty about the future may present several challenges for raising children in the twenty-first century. The aim of this chapter is to present recent theories and empirical research focusing on the role of parental beliefs, expectations, and trust in their child’s teacher in supporting children’s interest in learning, self-concept of ability, and achievement behaviors in the challenging and unpredictable future. We will also reflect on how the changing world and uncertainty in society may influence parental beliefs and expectations in their child’s success.

It has long been established in educational stratification research that teachers play an important role in shaping children's school experience, which is closely associated with children's educational outcomes. Children's family background has been considered as one of the factors that may influence how teachers form their evaluations of children's behavior and academic competence, and their educational expectations for children. Going beyond the conventional modeling of using measures of the family's socioeconomic situation alone, this chapter incorporates the teachers' perceptions of the importance of children's family background into the examination of teachers' evaluations and expectations. Using a unique data from northwest China, this study provides a case study to highlight the importance of bringing teachers' perspectives into examining the relationship between children's family background and their educational outcomes. The analysis results reveal that teachers' perceptions of the importance of children's family background, above and beyond children's previous academic achievement and their family's actual socioeconomic situations, are closely associated with teachers' evaluations and expectations. Teachers' expectations at early time point help to predict children's later school persistence.

A pressing educational concern is how to provide effective education for the growing population of dual language learners (DLL) in early childhood settings. Given the robust findings that family involvement promotes children’s academic success as well as recognition of parents’ “funds of knowledge,” one pathway to provide a culturally and linguistically responsive classroom environment for DLLs is to form collaborative relationships between parents and teachers of DLLs. The purpose of this chapter is to describe Project TAPP (Teachers and Parents as Partners), a community of practice (CoP) composed of parents and teachers of preschool dual language learners. The chapter describes the framework of Project TAPP, findings related to participation, and lessons learned.

Strong home-school partnerships consistently and substantially benefit children’s academic and social development. Home-school partnerships are considerably affected by the settings in which they take place (e.g., rural, urban, suburban), the characteristics of the partners (e.g., parents and teachers), and their relationships with one another (parent-teacher partnerships). In rural communities, supportive home-school partnerships promote young children’s success but have proven difficult to implement. African American families with young children residing in rural communities experience unique social and institutional challenges and benefits that are particularly salient for fostering home-school partnerships. Thus, the landscape of rural communities is an important and essential consideration for understanding the intersection between race and home-school partnerships. This chapter focuses on the promise of positive home-school partnerships for rural African American children, their families, and their schools. Home-school partnership as an essential component of children’s academic and social development is defined, and sample home-school partnership intervention programs are described. Finally, existing policy investments related to the facilitation of home-school partnerships are explored and policy recommendations that promote such partnerships are discussed.

This study examines the effect of preservice teachers’ (PSTs) immersive learning experience in working with families. A total of 48 undergraduate university students participated in a traditional or immersive class. The Peabody Family Involvement Initiative Survey (PFIIS) was selected to assess students’ self-efficacy in working with families. The students completed the same assignments as those in the traditional course and additionally were involved in planning two family events, and creating a family space on site to meet real goals. The results indicate that among level of importance, level of feasibility, and perceptions of preparation, the immersive class students showed some significant differences. Although the students’ motivation and excitement initially was low, as time progressed these gradually increased. The PSTs gained much more ownership over their experiences and changed their perspectives of working with families as well as increased confidence in this area. This study suggests that it is beneficial for PSTs to have immersive experience with actual parents while gaining immediate, real feedback about effective strategies.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to define and explain a curriculum of parents, its purpose and importance as an addition to teacher education curriculum, and how the author lives out this curriculum alongside teacher candidates.

Approach – The chapter gives an account of the author's narrative inquiry into the lived experiences of two teacher candidates who were engaged in a curriculum of parents.

Findings – The chapter highlights how the teacher candidates’ acceptance of dominant notions of parents as outsiders to the processes of schooling or as individuals to be wary or fearful of was interrupted by their experiences within a curriculum of parents. An account is given of their dis/positioning as they came to “un-know” their understandings of professional as someone with power and control and to reknow it as an act of standing together with parents; as a reflection of the “person to person.”

Research implications – This initial narrative inquiry makes visible how intentionally making and living out a curriculum of parents alongside teacher candidates impacts their beliefs and assumptions about parents and the way in which they position themselves as teachers in their work with parents and families.

Value – The value of the chapter is that it is the first work that has detailed a curriculum of parents. The chapter shows the major contributions such a curriculum can add to teacher education programs – as it moves the curricular commonplace of milieu from a subordinated position in relation to the other commonplaces of student, teacher, and subject matter to one of coordination.

The purpose of this chapter is to overview what extant research says about parental involvement in online learning environments.

The approach in this chapter is a systematic review of literature focusing on engagement frameworks.

Parents have the potential to be the key to overcoming key concerns about attrition and achievement in online settings. However, research has been silent as to how to engage parents more fully as learning coaches for their children.

Research about parental involvement in online learning should consider the roles of both teacher and parent as they coordinate their efforts to improve student engagement. Research also needs to look at what parents need to know about helping their students be successful and how to provide the training and expertise to parents that will help them learn critical support skills.

This chapter is particularly timely in light of the dramatic growth in online learning and the resulting concerns about achievement and attrition that are particularly acute among at-risk populations.

Friendships, an important form of people’s everyday relationships with others, have been studied by many scholars from different disciplines. However, there is limited research on friendship in the context of childhood, particularly that of Chinese rural children. This chapter presents findings from an in-depth study on Chinese children’s understandings and experiences of friendships with peers in the context of a rural primary boarding school. Data for this research were collected through an intensive five-month study, using an ethnographic approach, in a rural primary boarding school (given the pseudonym ‘Central Primary School’) in the western area of China in 2016. This chapter discusses parents’ influences on children’s selection of friends, particularly their ‘good’ friends, and their understandings of the functions of making friends in the context of rural China. It unpacks parents’ interventions on children’s friendships by discussing the moralised hierarchical relationship between children and their parents – children are expected to show obedience to parents. Then, it argues that the Confucian-collectivist values construct a relationship between a child’s individual achievement and their family’s collective good, which makes friendship not only an individual issue but also a collective one too.

This chapter describes how a college of education sponsored child development laboratory school responded to P-12 school reform movement efforts, particularly related to the establishment of professional development schools for the preparation of teachers. In its efforts to create a diverse learning community where all constituents (teachers, preservice teachers, and parents) are engaged in collaborative inquiry, the school sought inspiration from other sources, most notably the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education. In both the professional development school standards and the principles of the Reggio Emilia approach, emphasis is given to learning to teach within practice, teachers as researchers, making teaching and learning visible and egalitarian roles in carrying out the work of the school.