8082 MD3 Assignment 1

5

Angel Winslow

Course: EDDD 8082

“Meaningful Learning Experiences in Supportive Environments”

Module 3 - Assignment #1

Due Date: January 3, 2022

Summary of the Article

One article that focuses on the issue of getting to know children who are part of a classroom community is Beyond Involvement and Engagement: The Role of the Family in School–Community Partnerships by Stefanski et al. (2016). In it, the authors observe that establishing collaborative partnerships between schools and neighborhood communities is pivotal in supporting student learning, improving schools, and strengthening families and neighborhoods. To them, such partnerships should go beyond the conventional educational mission of the school to incorporate health and social services for children and their families. Additionally, school-community and family partnerships often emerge from the growing need in the children and community, and vary across a wide range of cultures, processes, structures, and types of family involvement. Thus, they develop a typology to closely evaluate various school-family and community partnerships and their importance. Using a systematic literature review method, they focus on the role of family in those partnership models and identify the potential implications for productive family-school-community relations. The outcomes of their analysis suggest that the role of parents and families vary considerably across four models. In contrast to the simple family involvement versus engagement dichotomy that is common in much of the existing literature, they identify eight unique ways in which family roles are envisaged and implemented. More importantly, the researchers infer that school-family partnerships are efficacious models for helping promising students to improve their learning capabilities.

Rationale and At Least One Strategy for Getting To Know Children and Families

There are various ways in which the article reflects the rationale and at least one method of getting to know children and families. The article, for instance, indicates that schools cannot meet children’s learning needs on their own without connecting with the pupils’ families and community members. This task requires proper coordination with social service systems and becoming full-service schools. It also utilizes the general theory of action to stress on partnerships that provide the beginning of answers, since it posits that schools serve learners academic needs better if they can speedily and efficaciously attend to the overall health and wellbeing of children and their families (Stefanski et al., 2016). To attain this objective, learning institutions must serve as partnership advocates that push for a closer working relationship with parents and family members. Indeed, developmental theorists argue that the multiple and interrelated aspects of human development: physical, psychological, and socio-cognitive growth are shaped by family, school, and community factors. As such, it is important to understand learners using an ecological perspective on human development, which includes examining the environmental contexts (peer, family, school, and neighborhoods) that support or impede healthy development and learning, including the interactions among them. In their ecological orientation, developmentalists intersect with sociological perspectives that point to the persistent effects of social capital on student accomplishment (Coffee et al., 2013). From an educational standpoint, social capital encompasses networks of supportive relationships and resources that make goal attainment possible (Stefanski et al., 2016). For instance, family support, good health, and instructor coordination increases the prospects for children’s academic improvements.

How the Information Gleaned can be used to Support Learning about Children and Families

The Insights that I have gained from this article can be used to understand children’s learning needs in early educational setting. The article, for instance, promotes family engagement as a tool to promote goal-directed relationships between instructors and families. This can be pivotal in designing culturally-responsive instructional processes and creating mutually supportive learning environments for children. Most significantly, the article advises teachers to encourage parents to actively take their place alongside educators in the schooling of their children, fitting together their knowledge of children, teaching, and learning with educators’ knowledge. Since families are broadly regarded as critical elements of school-community partnerships, encouraging them to take part in the learning process generates positive academic outcomes.

References

Coffee, G., Ray-Subramanian, C. E., Schanding Jr, G. T., & Feeney-Kettler, K. A. (2013).

Family Engagement in Early Childhood Education. Early Childhood Education,

99-112.

Stefanski, A., Valli, L., & Jacobson, R. (2016). Beyond Involvement and Engagement: The Role

of the Family in School-Community Partnerships. School Community Journal, 26(2),

135-160.