As part of the STEM Next Opportunity Fund’s Family Engagement Project, this case study features the Bay Area STEM Ecosystem, a collaborative effort to increase equity and access to STEM learning opportunities in underserved communities.
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Research shows that families are critical to the encouragement and navigation support of STEM learning for youth. Culturally responsive family engagement is especially important for program providers to consider in that it maximizes the strength and potential of all communities, most notably the populations most underrepresented in STEM fields. Culturally responsive programs respect cultural differences of families across race, language, geography, religion and nationality.
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As part of STEM Next Opportunity Fund’s Family Engagement Project, this white paper was released to support leaders in the field to best connect with families. The paper reviews promising STEM opportunities for children and their families, in addition to offering recommendations to make such opportunities more inclusive.
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In a comprehensive study of more than 27,000 parents from across the globe, the Varkey Foundation set out to discover the hopes, fears and aspirations of parents in 29 countries.
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Teachers and other school staff visit homes in Washington, D.C.
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This comprehensive report and ready-to-use curriculum for family engagement was created by the Equitable Parent–School Collaboration Research Project at the University of Washington. With a train the trainer model, the curriculum works to build authentic parent and family engagement to improve student outcomes and success.
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A parent is working hard to involve herself in her children’s education -- something that was impossible for her own parents.
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Family engagement efforts will be successful when the reliance on issue-focused campaigns shifts to utilizing design thinking and elevating family and community engagement.
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Traditional reporting methods to parents, including report cards and parent-teacher conferences, need to be re-examined.
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This guide walks through six standards to build successful family-school-community partnerships. A review of each standard and its relevance, tips to support implementation and success stories are included for each standard.
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This study acknowledges the traditional role that data collection has played as a vehicle for demonstrating compliance, in addition it a new, meaningful role that it can play when collection efforts are approached collaboratively with families.
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Research around the important role of “cultural brokers” play between families and schools. Cultural brokers serve as bridges and translators between family and schools and can adopt strategies for building parent and family capacity.
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Technology can play a powerful role in connecting families, students and educators and thought and effort must be placed into developing accessible communications vehicles and strategies. Technology can be especially useful at breaking down barriers for immigrant families as the author recounts their own education experience.
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This paper is intended to stimulate work that can result in “next generation family engagement” that involves aligned, strategic and systemic approaches to family and community engagement from a child’s birth to young adulthood.
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Parental involvement is one of the most important predictors of students’ success. This report reviews the importance of family engagement from the early years all the way up to age 16.
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Two nationally commissioned surveys from Microsoft Corporation among college students pursuing STEM majors help us gain insight into the types of preparation and inspiration needed to get students there.
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A national study reports that parents are far more optimistic about their children’s academic successes than data indicates they should be. The study also includes recommendations for helping parents with such areas as learning goals, financing college, life skills, parent-teacher communication, and learning tools.
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Case study on the Chi S&E program, recruiting parents and families on Saturdays to learn and apply science, technology, engineering and math side by side with their student. The program demonstrates a family engagement model that leads to improved student achievement, and the building of institutional / systems capacity among all key stakeholders.
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The National Network of Partnership Schools offers six types of parental engagement, and a written action plan for family engagement that links to the school improvement plan.
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Traditional reporting methods to parents, including report cards and parent-teacher conferences, need to be re-examined.
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Children need adults to provide them with meaningful STEM learning experiences early in life in order to facilitate their natural inclinations for STEM. In particular, parental involvement at home correlates directly with children’s development of literacy and math knowledge.
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There are six principles for effective family engagement, including co-design, two-way communication, reciprocal relationships and systemic family engagement.
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