Abstract
The last decade has seen a rise in research on and practices of school, family and community involvement in the education of youth. This trend can be attributed to a number of factors. Low achievement and high dropout rates, especially for poor and marginalized youth, have led educators and social scientists to become more aware of the importance of family and community involvement for school effectiveness and positive student outcomes. Moreover, communitarians and others have pointed to the loss of community and collective life that many people feel in their neighbourhoods, workplaces and schools as well. In this chapter, Sanders and Epstein make the case that in order for schools to educate all youth effectively, families and communities must become full partners in the process.
Not all schools and not all nations, they point out, are at the same point in their work on partnerships. Some focus on parent participation on school councils; others concentrate more on choice of schools than on what happens to involve families after the choice is made; some are looking deeply into helping families understand their children’s school subjects and curricula; and others are working on improving general communications. Drawing on Epstein’s model of different forms of school-community relationship, this chapter summarizes and discusses research studies collected from social scientists in twenty nations to increase our understanding of how partnership approaches are linked to the processes and outcomes of educational change and school improvement.
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This work is supported by grants from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) to the Center on Families, Communities, Schools and Children’s Learning and the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At-Risk (CRESPAR) at Johns Hopkins University. The opinions are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect the policies of OERI. Either author may be contacted for more information.
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Sanders, M.G., Epstein, J.L. (2005). School-Family-Community Partnerships and Educational Change: International Perspectives. In: Hargreaves, A. (eds) Extending Educational Change. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4453-4_10
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