Schools and Families: Creating Essential Connections for Learning

SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES: CREATING ESSENTIAL CONNECTIONS FOR LEARNING SANDRA L. CHRISTENSON/SUSAN M. SHERIDAN (EDITORS) THE GUILFORD PRESS, NEW YORK, 2001 $32.00 ISBN 1-57230-654-8 Schools and Families: Creating Essential Connections for Learning is not just another "how to" of specific strategies for parent or family involvement. This book's orientation is the interface between family and school as the two primary socialization environments for children's learning. The authors call for a "new social contract" of shared responsibility between the home and school. After an examination of common assumptions, policies and practices related to family-school relationships, the book outlines key process variables important to positive home-school connections. These four process elements, approach, attitudes, atmosphere and actions, comprise the major chapters of the book, Helpful features of the book include lists of sample practices and personal inventories for educators and parents. Each chapter is a list of questions to consider that have practice implications. The appendices contain a checklist for quality indicators of national standards for parent/family involvement, examples of parent newsletter items, a teacher's perspective on communicating with families and an inventory for creating school-family connections based on the major process variables in the book. Chapter One describes the family-school relationship as a protective factor against poor student achievement. It reviews the National Education goals, school reform efforts and federal policies as well as Joyce Epstein's research and National PTA standards. The authors build a case for the argument that close family-school collaboration is a professional obligation of educators. Three critical issues facing families and school personnel, rights, roles and responsibilities, and resources, are presented as a guide to examining productive familyschool relationships. The authors then describe their four key process variables that help to conceptualize conditions necessary for optimal family-school relationships. Chapter Two discusses the first process variable of approach, which is the framework for interaction with families. The authors detail the significance of families to children's learning to build the argument that schools or teachers alone cannot help students achieve their full academic potential. Concisely presented conclusions from the research literature support this contention. Emphasis is placed on the student at the center of the relationship between school and home. Two societal concerns regarding students are the erosion of social capital and increases in student apathy for schoolwork. The authors feel these can be addressed with a genuine partner relationship. They give an excellent list of examples of school and family co-- roles emphasizing the shared-responsibility approach. A particularly helpful table lists ways to create conditions for student success with sections for "at home", "in school" and "within the community". Attitudes and perceptions of families and schools are addressed in Chapter Three. The authors discuss a "family-centered" school orientation which includes friendliness, positive ness, responsiveness, sensitivity to the whole family. They emphasize a "no-fault model" where blame is not placed on either the family or the school. Positive school and family attitudes are described, i.e., attitudes that cause barriers to effective relationships and the importance of perspective-taking. …