Families play a vital role in their child's education both educationally and behaviorally. Schools hold family engagement events and want parent support, but schools are not including families in the planning and implementation of their School-wide Positive Behavior and Intervention Support (SWPBIS) process. Policy holds schools responsible for family engagement involvement as well as reducing discipline referrals, but there is little research on schools including family engagement with their SWPBIS. The purpose of this study was to identify elementary school administrators' overall perceptions of family involvement in SWPBIS implementation. Specifically, this study sought to identify family engagement in decision-making, barriers limiting family engagement, and family engagement activities focused on student behavior. Fourteen school administrators were interviewed and shared they have not been including families with the SWPBIS process, they need to get their school's process out to families so the families understand it and can have a voice in the school, they need training on how to involve families with the implementation process, and they need to plan events that focus specifically on their SWPBIS system. The study has created future opportunities for elementary school administrators to share ideas for involving families, utilize a common database or handbook for guidance with involving families, and ways to train school administrators on how to involve families in the SWPBIS implementation process. A suggestion for future research would be to expand the sample to include more regions of Virginia. / Doctor of Education / Families play a vital role in their child's education both educationally and behaviorally. Schools hold family engagement events and want parent support, but schools are not including families in the planning and implementation of their School-wide Positive Behavior and Intervention Support (SWPBIS) process. Policy holds schools responsible for family engagement involvement as well as reducing discipline referrals, but there is little research on schools including family engagement with their SWPBIS. Thirteen elementary school administrators in a PK-5 or K-5 school with at least three years of SWPBIS implementation were interviewed for this study. The interviews sought to discover how elementary school administrators include families with the implementation of their SWPBIS process and to identify any engagement events that focus on behavior as well as identify any barriers preventing families from participating. The administrators shared they have not been including families with the SWPBIS process, they need to get their school's process out to families so the families can have a voice in the school, they need training on how to involve families with the implementation process, and they need to plan events that focus specifically on their SWPBIS system. The study has created future opportunities for elementary school administrators to share ideas for involving families, utilize a common database or handbook for guidance with involving families, and ways to train school administrators on how to involve families in the SWPBIS implementation process. A suggestion for future research would be to expand the sample to include more regions of Virginia.

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<p>Civil society activism in traditional non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is seen as one of the cornerstones of a vibrant participatory liberal democracy in most Western democratic states. Whereas this issue has been explored from a variety of perspectives in a Western context, only limited research has been carried out in a post-Soviet context. This study presents unique survey data on civil society core activism in post-Soviet Latvia addressing the following two main questions: What are the characteristics and factors that influence a person to become a core activist in a civil society organization? How does the post-Soviet Latvian context influence civil society core activism?</p><p>Two nationwide surveys were carried out among core activists in all sorts of NGOs and for a comparative purpose among the population at large, from which non-activists have been extracted. Through cross-tabulations based on the three comparative dimensions: a) activists in general vs. non-activists, b) fields of interest and c) position in organization, this study indicates that many of the factors proven to be important when explaining civil society core activism in Western contexts also have explanatory power in post-Soviet Latvia. Important factors are an individual’s educational level, empathic ability and level of civic literacy, as well as the presence of activist role models and positive support for the decision to become involved in civil society activism. Citizenship and gender are other important factors, but unlike Western countries women dominate the civil society sector in Latvia. Two new factors are also suggested and tested, showing that the perception that one has the ability to organize activity and prior leadership experience from a communist organization are important for Latvian core activists.</p><p>Binary logistic regression analysis is further used to test the significance of each of the independent variables alone and in combination with each other, introducing different types of core activists based on gender, motives for activism, intensity of political, charity and recreational activity, as well as the positions they have in their organizations.</p>

Civil society activism in traditional non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is seen as one of the cornerstones of a vibrant participatory liberal democracy in most Western democratic states. Whereas this issue has been explored from a variety of perspectives in a Western context, only limited research has been carried out in a post-Soviet context. This study presents unique survey data on civil society core activism in post-Soviet Latvia addressing the following two main questions: What are the characteristics and factors that influence a person to become a core activist in a civil society organization? How does the post-Soviet Latvian context influence civil society core activism? Two nationwide surveys were carried out among core activists in all sorts of NGOs and for a comparative purpose among the population at large, from which non-activists have been extracted. Through cross-tabulations based on the three comparative dimensions: a) activists in general vs. non-activists, b) fields of interest and c) position in organization, this study indicates that many of the factors proven to be important when explaining civil society core activism in Western contexts also have explanatory power in post-Soviet Latvia. Important factors are an individual’s educational level, empathic ability and level of civic literacy, as well as the presence of activist role models and positive support for the decision to become involved in civil society activism. Citizenship and gender are other important factors, but unlike Western countries women dominate the civil society sector in Latvia. Two new factors are also suggested and tested, showing that the perception that one has the ability to organize activity and prior leadership experience from a communist organization are important for Latvian core activists. Binary logistic regression analysis is further used to test the significance of each of the independent variables alone and in combination with each other, introducing different types of core activists based on gender, motives for activism, intensity of political, charity and recreational activity, as well as the positions they have in their organizations.