Bridging Cultures Between Home and School: A Guide for Teachers
The book is optimistic, well written, carefully documented, and studded with appropriate examples and suggestions. Teachers working with immigrant students will find useful cultural theory as well as suggestions for improving the nature of school-to-home communications and for interacting more effectively with parents.—CHOICEThe book highlights the importance of parents and teachers working in concert to ensure that all students receive a high-quality education. The significant feature of this book is that it offers practical advice for parents and teachers to bridge the cultural divide that diminishes learning opportunities for students. This is a must read for all educators interested in ensuring culturally inclusive schools.—Multicultural PerspectivesThe example of cooperation in educational research set by the Bridging Culture project is inspiring. The specificity of the book's focus on immigraant family culture is relevant to schools all around the country that are experiencing tremendous growth in numbers of students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. It would not be surprising if the training materials based on this book become widely-used by educators struggling with school improvement issues. The individualistic/collectivistic framework is accessible to teachers and easily applied, andBridging Cultures Between Home and Schoolhas great potential value in the effort to increase school effectiveness by building stronger partnerships between families, students, and their schools.—TESL-NJ...even if you are satisfied with the home-school relationship in your school,Bridging Cultureswill challenge you to make it even better. In short, everyone concerned with making public education workwithfamilies instead ofagainstthem should read this book.—educational HORIZONSBridging Culturesoffers an antidote to many of the problems that plague U.S. public schools. But instead of advocating a one-size-fits-all, universalistic reform, such as nationwide standards or standardized testing (both of which they caution against), the authors advocate changing teachers' ways of thinking, one teacher at a time, and how teachers relate to their constituents, one constituent at a time. After all, the authors suggest, education occurs within human relationships. Shouldn't the focus of reform be on those relationships?—educational HORIZONS