A school district in rural Alabama has encountered a lack of parental involvement, which research shows could have a deleterious effect on student achievement. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore parents' perceptions about their involvement and the impact of that involvement on students' academic achievement. The conceptual framework that informed this study was Vygotsky's theory of social constructivism. The research questions addressed the parents' perceptions of their role in the education process as well as the effectiveness of the district's 2 parental involvement programs. A purposeful sample of 6 parents of students at an elementary school in Grades 3 through 5 participated in open-ended interviews. Data were transcribed, member checked, and then inductively coded for emergent themes. The findings suggested that parents believed their involvement was important, as was a strong home and school relationship. These themes were used to develop 3 days of parental involvement workshops, designed to help improve participation in the district's parental involvement programs and improve family and community relations. This study may help students, teachers, administrators, parents, and community agencies identify strategies to reduce the lack of parental involvement and increase student academic success.

A pattern of low parental involvement exists at in an inner-city school in the northeast region of the United States, where 90% of the students are students of color and fewer than 10% of parents attend school-based activities. Low parental involvement at the local school may lead to decreased student achievement and limited access to needed resources and information. A qualitative case study design was used to explore the problem. Epstein's typology, which includes the traditional definition of parental involvement and acknowledges the parents' role in the home, provided the conceptual framework for the study. Research questions focused on perceived challenges that prevent parent participation, specific types of parental involvement strategies that are most effective when working with inner-city families, and potential solutions to the problems. Data collection included reviewing reports and conducting individual interviews with 5 elementary school parents, 5 teachers, and the principal at the research site. Inductive data analysis included organizing and categorizing data to develop themes related to the problem and perceived solutions. Findings revealed ineffective home-school communication, language differences, and a lack of shared meaning regarding parental involvement between parents and teachers. Identification of these challenges led to development of a 3-day professional learning series for parents, teachers, and administrators that focused on benefits of parental involvement. Implementation of the program may help to facilitate building of school-family community partnerships to empower parents to support their children's learning at home and at school.

The underlying philosophy of patient-centred care (PCC) advocates for patients to have an active role in all areas of their care, including broader areas of the health care system such as planning and evaluation. Despite efforts made in the past decade that would see greater patient engagement, conventional evaluation approaches continue to dominate the landscape in health services evaluation. To date, limited empirical research has examined the effects of patient engagement or the best approach to engage patients (Abelson et al., 2015; Baker, 2014; Baker, Judd, Fancott, & Maika, 2016). Furthermore, a relative lack of collaboration and shared knowledge exists between the evaluation community and health sector in the rapidly developing area of patient engagement and the development of best practices. Consequently, health organizations continue to struggle with how best to involve patients (i.e., process) in health service improvement initiatives, as well as learn from patient experience (Baker, 2014; Baker, Judd, et al., 2016; Luxford et al., 2011). This dissertation responded to some of these challenges and through this intervention study, the specific purpose of the thesis study was to gain a better understanding of the process of patient engagement in planning and evaluation by addressing the following research questions: 1. What are the facilitators and barriers of engaging patients in planning and evaluation of health services and why? 2. What did the process of engagement look like with respect to Cousins and Whitmore’s (1998) three dimensions of collaborative inquiry? 3. What are the observed effects of the engagement process? This longitudinal qualitative case study began with the creation of the Patient and Family Engagement Committee (PFEC) at the Ottawa Hospital Psychosocial Oncology Program (PSOP) and completed an evaluation project over a period of six months. The research study occurred in parallel with the evaluation project and was designed to gain a better understanding of the process of patient engagement and the role that evaluation plays in this context. The study consisted of three phases and data collection relied on multiple sources. Facilitators that influenced the patient engagement process include: accommodating participant needs, commitment, orientation meeting, designated lead with evaluation skills, homework between meetings, and mutual respect. Having a designated lead, mutual respect, and commitment to the project were the three most highly endorsed facilitators at the end of the project. Conversely, barriers identified include time and resources, imbalanced participation, change in health status, and living at a distance. Time and resources was endorsed as the most significant barrier to the patient engagement process across all three phases of the study. Motivations for participant involvement revolved around giving back, improving health services, learning, commitment to research/evaluation, and providing or hearing a unique perspective. The study examined participatory aspects of the focal evaluation using Cousins and Whitmore’s (1998) three fundamental dimensions of process in collaborative approaches to evaluation: stakeholder diversity, control of evaluation process, and depth of participation. Findings revealed that intended benefits of participant involvement included reach to decision-makers, improved health services, increased diffusion of patient/family engagement, improved access/awareness of services, and a follow-up to assess influence of engagement. Participants’ experiences of being involved invoked enthusiasm for the project, were personally rewarding, instilled a sense of optimism that the project would have an influence, closed the loop on healing, contributed to a shift from a personal to broader health care focus, and contributed to learning. Further research is needed to gain a better understanding of the processes involved or evaluation approaches that could contribute to translating patient engagement into improved outcomes. The findings of this study have enhanced understanding of key contributions that patients, family members, health professionals, and evaluators bring to the patient engagement process, and enriched understanding of key facilitators and barriers to ensure successful patient engagement.

abstract: There are many benefits for children, teachers, families, and schools when partnerships are formed between families and teachers. However, many new teachers are entering the teaching profession not feeling confident about communicating and engaging with parents. This lack of confidence stems from some teacher preparation programs not including curriculum that explicitly addresses how to communicate and engage with parents. The focus of this study was to investigate the extent to which four Family Engagement Trainings affected preservice teachers during their student teaching practicum. A quasi-experimental approach using an explanatory sequential mixed method action research design was used to measure changes in preservice teachers’ knowledge, value, and self-efficacy regarding communicating and engaging with parents throughout the 19 weeks of the study. A survey instrument, personal meaning maps, and reflections were used to gather data. Results indicated the Family Engagement Trainings were effective in positively changing the preservice teachers’ knowledge, value, and self-efficacy to communicate and engage with families. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Leadership and Innovation 2020

This qualitative study focuses on how beginning teachers attain skills to engage families in the educational process. Historical rationale, theoretical frameworks, and key research findings for family engagement training during the last three decades were reviewed, studied, and analyzed for themes. A review of scholarly literature is incorporated into this inquiry to provide a lens into the scope of existing family engagement research regarding the ways in which teachers are trained how to partner with families. This study also includes discussion and analysis of state and federal policies and mandated reporting to support new teachers in engaging families, the identification of theoretical frameworks that provide insight and rationale for teacher-family partnerships, and the inclusion of pre-service beginning teacher training focusing on partnering with families in the elementary school. Data for this case study includes beginning teacher training, interviews, document analysis, and anecdotal accounts, including teacher reflective journals. Utilizing case study and participant action research (PAR) methodology, the author identifies how providing professional development opportunities for beginning teachers supports increasing teacher-family engagement. The study focuses on beginning teacher training, as well as identifying attitudes and interactions with families, emerging patterns, and further research themes. Utilizing research in this case study, I set out to identify trends in the literature, research, and participant training modules to enhance training for beginning teachers in engaging families in the educational process.

Thesis advisor: C. Patrick Proctor / Dominant conceptualizations for family-school relations across U.S. educational research, policy, and practice continue to privilege the behaviors, experiences, and practices of white, upper- and middle-class families, while failing to address the race and class power-relations that permeate educational institutions and their neighborhoods. In the field of bilingual education, there is an emergent body of research that examines issues of language, race, and class within the experiences of families in two-way dual language bilingual education, where children from multiple racial, cultural, and economic groups are educated together with the goals of bilingualism and biliteracy. However, this scholarship has not related the experiences and relations in bilingual programs to the broader issue regarding the dominant and deficit discourse of family-school relations in the U.S. In response, this dissertation situates families’ experiences in a two-way dual language bilingual program within the broader ideological, political, and historical dimensions of U.S. family-school relations. A theoretical orientation informed by Critical Race Theory, Critical Poststructuralist Sociolinguistics, and Feminist Poststructuralist frameworks was used to highlight how racialized positionalities of families in schools reverberate beyond individuals’ identity construction, connecting to discourses about families at other societal scales. This study utilized participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and artifact generation. Data was analyzed using discursive and textual analytical approaches. Findings include (a) an investigation of how the legal and institutional contexts related to family-bilingual school relations contribute to the racialization of people and their languaging; (b) an analysis of how raciolinguistic ideologies are deployed to naturalize the designation of linguistic and ethnoracial labels upon families; and (c) a generation of portraits highlighting how families ruptured deficit positionings by reporting on systems of oppression, their dynamic language practices, and their expansive relations across groups of people, places, and temporal scales. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that despite individual efforts of stakeholders in bilingual programs to foster the wellbeing and development of families, the racist and classist foundations of schooling will ensure the reification of oppressive educational experiences for multiply minoritized families. At the same time, these families will continue to find ways to survive, resist their subjugation, and reimagine more liberatory worlds. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Thesis advisor: Mariela Páez / In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated persistent educational inequities and added exponentially to the existing “education debt” (Ladson-Billings, 2006). Public schools’ sudden shift to remote learning marginalized a large population of students, including young bilingual children from immigrant backgrounds. These students are among the most vulnerable when it comes to remote learning not only because of accessibility issues, but also because many of these students’ families live in underserved and under-resourced communities that were negatively affected by the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and persistent systemic racism (Fortuna et al., 2020; Schmit et al., 2020). Hence, there is an urgent need to understand pandemic-related experiences of immigrant families with young bilingual children and to respond with educational strategies that strive to mitigate the negative effects of this educational crisis. This dissertation study comprised of three papers addresses this need through a collaborative project with 20 immigrant families with 42 young bilingual children and two community organizations from the Metro and Greater Boston Area. Paper 1 used sequential mixed methods to provide an in-depth account of immigrant families' remote learning experiences and investigate structural barriers such as lack of support and oppressive practices that hindered the establishment of home-school connections during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Paper 2 employed transformative mixed methods to document the development, implementation, and evaluation of a family engagement and remote learning program—the Home Connection. This program was firmly grounded in the equitable collaboration framework of family engagement to build a strong partnership with the family participants and to recognize the crucial roles of the families as co-designers, co-educators, co-researchers, and co-evaluators. Paper 3 is a practitioner inquiry reflecting on what I have learned as a teacher-researcher implementing culturally sustaining pedagogy to partner with immigrant families and teach young bilingual children from diverse backgrounds during pandemic remote learning. Findings from this dissertation documenting the struggles, resistance, and solidarity of these immigrant families will help inform educators, administrators, and policymakers in their planning and delivering of learning experiences and family engagement initiatives that center on the motivation, needs, and assets of diverse students and their families. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Proficiency levels in schools often correlate with the poverty levels of schools. However, in 2018 three schools in Utah beat the state average proficiency rate on all three of Utah's end of year summative English language arts, mathematics, and science exams. These high scores provide evidence that schools are not necessarily limited by poverty in helping students succeed academically. By examining the schools that beat the state average on at least one exam, this study describes the conditions that were in play, which contributed to their students' academic achievement. A description is given of the conditions in the schools that are believed to produce high achievement. These conditions existed and these actions were taken to help a school with a high-poverty population break the perceived bond of poverty and low academic results to produce uncommonly high student achievement. This study identified the schools in Utah with a high poverty rate (70% or above) and also have student academic proficiency rates higher than the state average on at least one of the state assessments. The data indicates there are 80 schools with a high poverty rate. While only three of those schools had student academic proficiency rates on all three tests that were above average for the state of Utah, eight schools are included in the study as they had student academic proficiency rates above the state average on at least one test. This study reveals that these schools focus attention on school structures, positive school culture, leadership of the principal and his willingness to share leadership with teachers, improving instruction, and efficacious parent engagement. These things are the levers that helped move academic success forward in these schools, even though they are schools with a high rate of students experiencing poverty.

Parent involvement is one of the factors to which student achievement is consistently and strongly linked in educational research, and is perceived by teachers as a core factor affecting student achievement. Therefore more and higher-quality engagement with students' families has the potential to make a positive difference in urban schools. However, a tendency among educators to focus on perceived family deficits, without a clear understanding of students' families' strengths, may limit urban schools' ability to develop effective family engagement programming. This study involved faculty and staff members at an urban K-8 school in systematically identifying strengths of the low-income Puerto Rican families whose children made up the vast majority of the student body, as a critical point of reference for working with families toward stronger student outcomes. The study was grounded in the principles of Action Research and utilized methods associated with Appreciative Inquiry to involve school faculty and staff members in carrying out, then collectively analyzing the results from, structured interviews with parents of low-income Puerto Rican students at the school. Along with establishing a family strengths inventory for use in ongoing planning for enhancement of family engagement programming at the school, the study included an assessment of the impact of the research process on the perceptions and intended actions of both participating faculty and staff members and those who elected not to participate. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of implications and recommendations related to theory, practice, policy, and research associated with the efforts of schools serving low-income Puerto Rican (and other) communities to strengthen their engagement with students' families.

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