Schools engaging with Parents: Research says…

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about Parent Engagement in K-12 Schools. What has struck me is the relative lack of controversy in the literature.
There are two consistent themes in the literature:
1. The parent engagement models are both limited and validated in the research. Parents want to engage, engagement declines over [...]

Parent Choice and School Reform: The Case of the Science Leadership Academy

Parents and Students
Originally uploaded by PGoGS

Meaningful parent involvement requires more than just programming. Some would argue it begs for major school reform.
Mark Holmes, Honourary Patron of the Society for Quality Education and Professor Emeritus at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education lays bare his personal bias [...]

Parents, pedagogy and context

I spent the better part of the day yesterday pondering a great book by Kevin Marjoribanks called Family and School Capital: Towards a Context Theory of Students’ School Outcomes. The essence of the theory (without meaning to trivialize the complexity of the analysis) is that parents bring social and cultural capital togehter with [...]

From Parental Involvement to Engagement

I spent the evening doing online research on parental involvement in K-12 education.  There is significant research to demonstrate a link between parental involvement and student achievement (which I will document in a future post).  I wanted to write about an insightful paper by Dr. Debbie Pushor from the University of Saskatchewan.  In Parent Engagement:  [...]

Dealing with Parents

As part of my readings about Parent Voice I just finished a book by Elaine K. McEwan on How to Deal with Parents….  The book is a mix of understanding parent needs (with sources) and how-to’s for school administrators in creating a healthy school environment by working effectively with parents.  Here’s her list of what parents want:

Instructional [...]

More on Social Networking for Kids

Thanks to all who responded to my last post.  I’d like to try to summarize the responses, which wove threads into the same fabric:  we are being over-protective:
1.  There is a difference between safety and literacy.  Children must learn to survive in this new culture they themselves are creating.  Ignorant children cannot grow up to [...]