Authentic and effective family engagement requires a high commitment from the school principal. This study is a representation of the researcher's effort to better understand how principals can form strong school-family relationships in order to improve overall achievement for economically disadvantaged students living in rural communities. Interview data were examined pertaining to six elementary school principals serving Title I schools within rural Appalachia. Data were analyzed to identify strategies practicing principals and policy makers can use to better strengthen school-family relationships. The findings focus on the principals' role in fostering and improving these relationships. As an educator in a high-poverty school system in rural southwest Virginia, I want to add to the literature research-based strategies for implementing family engagement strategies in elementary schools within rural communities. This research should provide practitioners with effective strategies for reflecting on their own strategies and to build relationships with families to ultimately improve the overall achievement for students experiencing economic distress. / Doctor of Education / Authentic and effective family engagement requires a high commitment from the school principal. This study is a representation of the researcher's effort to better understand how principals can form strong school-family relationships in order to improve overall achievement for economically disadvantaged students living in rural communities. The researcher completed interviews with six elementary school principals serving Title I schools within rural Appalachia. This research should provide practitioners with effective strategies for reflecting on their own strategies and to build relationships with families to ultimately improve the overall achievement for students experiencing economic distress.

The current thesis investigated the relationship between Vietnamese parents of children with a disability and special educators who worked with these parents in both mainstream and special schools in Melbourne Metropolitan Regions of the state of Victoria, Australia. The key objective of the study was to research the role of the parent-educator (interpersonal) relationship and its interrelatedness with the task: two major components of a home-school partnership. The research question that guided this study was 'How does the parent-educator relationship influence the operation of a family-centered home-school partnership?' With partnerships involving parents of diverse cultural backgrounds, investigating cultural influences on the partnership were an integral part of the research process. A qualitative interpretive approach was employed in searching for perceptions of involved parties about their home-school partnerships. The design selected was multiple embedded case studies with purposeful sampling. Influences on home-school partnership were investigated from a multidimensional perspective and were described and interpreted from the views of both parents and educators. The findings indicated that the relationship played a much more significant role than the task in the successfulness of an intercultural home-school partnership. Without a mutual understanding of home-school communication, the collaboration was far from productive or even did not work out. There was also evidence that a harmonious parent-educator interpersonal relationship did not seem to have any influence on the effectiveness of a home-school partnership without parent-educator mutual understanding and agreement in terms of goals and roles expectations. The need for the educators to be more appropriately equipped with cultural training and family-centered principles also arose from the study findings.

The achievement gap is an important problem with serious consequences for the United States’ economy. A long history of oppression has contributed to a substantial gap in achievement between students of minority status or low socioeconomic status and their white or higher income peers. Large scale efforts to address this problem have been unsuccessful in substantially reducing the problem. As parent involvement has been linked to student achievement, capitalizing on strong family-school partnerships offers a valuable opportunity to target student achievement. Low-income and minority parents face many barriers to parent involvement. If schools embrace a more inclusive view of parent involvement and collaborate with parents to reduce these barriers, however, successful family-school partnerships may be formed. Themes for creating such partnerships include recognizing that parents care about their children’s education and want them to succeed, treating parents as equal partners in the educational process, and using innovative techniques to solve problems. / text

abstract: Parent involvement is a concept that is used to describe the ways schools attempt to connect with parents for the educational benefit and support of students. Schools engage in strategies and invest in programs to increase parents’ involvement at and with the school, employ personnel to support parents, and develop workshops aimed at supporting parents’ understanding of academic content as well as to develop partnerships between parents and teachers. The purpose of this study was to investigate how parents viewed themselves as partners with their children’s teachers and what they believed their roles were in their children’s education. This qualitative study was conducted through interviews with parents who were recommended by school staff as having above-average or below-average involvement. Ten parents in a low-income public school in the southwestern United States were selected for an initial interview, and four of those ten were chosen as focal parents for additional rounds of interviews. All three rounds of interviews took place over a four month period in the spring. The interviews were used to document and analyze how parents viewed themselves and the roles they have in their children’s schooling. The findings from this study illustrate the similarities in behavior, attitude, and self-view between parents recommended by school staff as having above-average and below-average involvement. Additionally, this analysis describes how effective partnerships between home and school (including current teachers, former teachers, and school support staff) can help support parents as lifelong advocates for their children. When parents are intentionally made to feel vital as partners in their children’s schooling, their confidence in their ability to support their children’s education is strengthened. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Administration and Supervision 2017

The purpose of this study was to explore and describe parents' and caregivers' retrospective experiences of a higher education-rural school partnership providing educational psychology services. The study aimed to inform knowledge on community engagement with schools and forms part of the broad FLY (Flourishing Learning Youth) community engagement initiative that has been ongoing since 2006. The current study utilised interpretivism as metatheory and qualitative research as methodological paradigm. An instrumental case study design was utilised, with a specific higher education-rural school partnership conveniently sampled. Subsequently twelve parents or caregivers to a child/ren who participated in the relevant community engagement initiative at any time since 2006, were purposefully selected. Two field visits were taken for data collection purposes; the first included Participatory Reflection and Action (PRA) discussions between participants, whilst the second visit entailed member checking. I relied on written recording of the participants' dialogue on PRA posters, audio recordings of their poster presentations, observations throughout the process, photographs taken and a reflective journal as data collection and documentation strategies. From thematic data analysis two main themes emerged. Firstly, participants identified the partnership as a platform of educational opportunity, which allowed for children's development on a cognitive and socio-emotional level. Secondly, participants emphasised their hope for the continuation and growth of the partnership in the future. Participants expect the partnership to broaden in multiple ways, such as involving parents and caregivers, providing them with a safe space to voice their opinions, and incorporating a parental guidance element. Based on the findings of the study I can conclude that according to parents and caregivers, community engagement with schools provides an opportunity for the mobilisation of children assets to result in their positive development. Furthermore, when additionally activating the assets of the parents, community engagement can be strengthened. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Educational Psychology / MEd / Unrestricted

The lack of positive communication between parents and educators in the Texas district under study is a problem because it interferes with learners' academic success. The purpose of this mixed method study was to understand the communication gap between educators and parents in Title I elementary schools in that district. Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems and Epstein's parental involvement model formed the theoretical framework to address the importance of communication between educators and parents as related to student academic achievement. The quantitative portion of the study was carried out through descriptive survey research. The case study method was used for the qualitative portion of the study with data gathered from interviews. The data represented responses from the parent (n = 42) and educator (n = 119) surveys, interviews (n = 10), and a focus group (n = 8) to uncover both educators' and parents' perceptions of communication in the learning environment. Results revealed constructive concerns associated with lack of accessibility, education trust, parent educational background knowledge, collaborative partnerships, continuous communication, and guides to blueprints of learning expectations. The findings indicated the need for an intervention involving a 4-session parent-educator training program designed to implement positive partnerships and to eliminate and bridge the existing communication gap. This project study could promote social change in Title I schools because it conveys an improved understanding of communication gaps within the learning environment. Specifically, this study provides a plan to help parents and educators engage in positive communication to support students' academic success.

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Nonprofits, including cultural organizations, are increasingly relying upon fees for service as part of their operating budgets. Arts organizations have taken an increasingly prominent role in arts education starting with federal budget cuts in the 1960s and 1970s. There is a lack of data on the effects of partnering with schools on nonprofit arts organizations as well as the effects of government contracting on nonprofits.This study consists of an email/internet survey to determine how contracting with schools to provide arts activities affects nonprofit arts agency independence, vendorism, bureaucratization, costs, and artistic quality. The survey was pilot tested with 22 leaders of arts organizations. The survey was emailed to a random sample of 680 leaders of American nonprofit arts organizations identified as art museums; ballet; dance; music; music groups, bands and ensembles; opera; singing choral; symphony orchestras; theaters; and visual arts organizations. Responses were gathered from 280 respondents for a 41% response rate. The researcher analyzed the data using frequencies, cross tabulations, logistic regression, and linear regression.This study reveals limited negative effects on arts organizations of partnering with schools. The major findings of this study support Lester Salamon's (1995) theory that bureaucratization is among the most likely effects of government contracting on nonprofits, and a study of nonprofits by Patricia Hughes and William Luksetich (2004) indicating that greater reliance on private funding does not divert funding fiom program service delivery. Organizations that partner with schools have greater odds of being affected by rules and regulations compared to those that do not partner with schools, but these rules seem to fall within acceptable limits for arts organizations of the types studied.Earning higher levels of income from school partnerships does not make arts organizations less likely to advocate for arts education, change artistic direction or offer significantly different programs, or impose unreimbursed costs.This study does not support Bruno Frey's (2003) Crowding Theory of the effect of external rewards on creativity. More collaborative types of school activity had no effect on organizational creativity in this study. However, enhanced artistic growth appears to be an important positive effect of school partnerships.

In my thesis, The Life of a Handicapped Person, I tried to chart what influences the future of such person and how problems trouble him in life. In the first chapters I defined and separated the types of disabilities, their different impact and problems in diagnosis. The central part of the work is the chapter on systems that influence the life of a disabled person. These systems are mostly influenced by the family because, by accepting the child, the parent, as well as the selected type of upbringing, affects the future of the person and likewise the disabled child has a vital influence on the family. Also included is a chapter on health care, social services and education. The quality of life of a disabled person is also influenced by friends, hence a social process, and partnerships, and equally important is the person's professional role. The fourth chapter relates to research which was carried out by a questionnaire on a group of 46 people with physical disabilities. On the basis of the answers, I verified the validity of the six pre-defined hypotheses.

This case study examined the Screen It! Program and focused on how this program benefitted the students. This study focused on students’ perceptions and in order to have a holistic understanding of the phenomenon, it was important to understand the viewpoint of museum educators, teachers, and students. In these types of museum-school partnerships, students’ voices are rarely heard and considered when creating curricula. Therefore, consideration of students’ voices may help museum educators craft these partnership programs in the future. Three themes emerged emphasizing the importance of expectations and program goals, curricular relevancy to student life and community, and meaningful learning outcomes. Along with utilizing relevant learning theories during classroom instruction, by actively responding to the voices and needs of the students in these areas, museum educators can provide more meaningful learning experiences for students. / text