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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.

Youth and young adults with emotional and/or behavioral difficulties (EBD) face particularly difficult challenges in their efforts to fit into adult roles and functions. The purpose of this chapter is to assist providers, educators, and administrators from the mental health, education, child welfare, justice/corrections, and adult service system sectors understand (a) a practice for improving the progress and outcomes for young people in transition, and (b) how this practice model is implemented in communities to impact the lives of youth in transition to adulthood. This is accomplished in two major parts in this chapter. The first part provides an overview of the Transition to Independence Process (TIP) model, a description of its status as an evidence-supported practice, and tools and strategies that support its implementation in communities and regions across North America. The TIP model is further illustrated through a description of how it is applied with a young person. The second part of the chapter provides an overview of implementation science, a description of how its strategies and tools can guide the implementation of an intervention or model; and an illustration of a large-scale TIP implementation initiative with collaboratives of agencies and schools. This chapter concludes with implications regarding the importance of having effective transition-to-adulthood models; and ensuring the implementation and sustainability of these to improve the progress and outcomes of youth and young adults with EBD.

Educational inequities that are often systemic and the result of structural oppression persist in schools under/serving minoritized youth and communities. This chapter illustrates how professional learning networks (PLNs) and the practice of collaborative professionalism within them have served to support educators, positioned at multiple levels, in their effort to serve all children well, and especially those who are most marginalized. Collaborative professionalism emphasizes collective responsibility and student and teacher empowerment through PLNs. Further, the collaborative professionalism model incorporates elements of culture and context to ensure that collaborative efforts are responsive to the students and communities educators are purposed to partner with and serve. In this chapter, the authors highlight two such cases of collaborative professionalism through PLNs in Colombia and Ontario, Canada. These cases provide a model for how collaborative professionalism within PLNs can be utilized to enhance teaching and learning for all teachers and students across cultures and contexts, while attending explicitly to educational inequities.

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.

This chapter focuses on the importance of collaboration between university laboratory schools and community partners. The why, what, and how of collaboration within higher education contexts are reviewed, with a focus on the steps required for successful collaboration. The University of Rhode Island Child Development Centers’ collaborative efforts are used to illustrate potential ways collaboration can occur through statewide professional development activities, relationships with state and local public school systems, and relationships with various community groups and agencies. The conclusion is that through collaboration, lab schools can enhance their potential to fulfill their three-part mission of teaching, research, and service, and can strengthen the interconnections among the missions, bridging the gap between theory, research, and practice.

Interagency collaboration is an effective strategy for supporting students and families with resources and support to prepare students for life after high school. The Communicating Interagency Relationships and Collaborative Linkages for Exceptional Students (CIRCLES) is the only interagency collaboration model identified as a research-based practice, which means the CIRCLES model has the most and highest quality of evidence for its use among interagency collaboration models. Within this chapter, we overview the CIRCLES model and its history. School districts from multiple states have implemented CIRCLES, and, within this chapter, we overview stakeholder experiences with CIRCLES. When implementing any practice, evaluation and implementation fidelity are critical, so we provide suggestions for both. Finally, we discuss barriers and strategies to effective interagency collaboration, in addition to implications for policy and practice.

This chapter presents a university’s School of Education partnership with three local elementary schools to provide learning and professional development opportunities for all stakeholders. Impacting student learning is the main goal of these collaborative endeavors, regardless of age. University pre-service educators perform a variety of activities with elementary students to extend hands-on learning experience beyond their coursework. Experiences focus on mutually beneficial activities for both parties which fulfills each one’s mission and vision for impacting student learning on both the elementary level and the teacher preparation program. Professional development includes activities that involve teacher-to-teacher initiatives that may be designed for teachers by teachers to share teaching strategies; research, both qualitative and quantitative, involving practitioners in the field using student-centered and innovative new instructional ideas in the classroom developing toolkits of best practices. Qualitative approaches are taken through interviews and teacher perceptions through the process and product of each professional development activity.

Child development lab schools have long played a significant role in contributing to our understanding of child development and new and innovative educational practice. In this chapter, we argue that lab schools need to be continually reinvented and reconstructed to meet changing societal and institutional demands. As models for the early childhood community, lab schools should be on the leading edge of what theory and research informs us are best practices in early childhood education and child development. Here we tell the story of the Virginia Tech Child Development Lab School’s efforts to reconsider and reconstruct our philosophical approach, practices, and policies and move closer to bridging theory and practice as a family-centered, teacher-inquiry based, community of learners. It demonstrates a paradigmatic shift in thinking about children, families, early childhood teacher education, and the role of lab schools in general.