Michael P. Evans

Educating preservice teachers for family, school, and community engagement

Effective family, school, and community partnerships enhance the academic, social, and emotional development of children. As a result, colleges, schools, and departments of education are increasingly addressing the topic. Unfortunately, teachers continue to report that the most significant challenge encountered when entering the profession is the establishment of relationships with families and communities. This article reviews existing literature on the outcomes of efforts to prepare educators who are capable of successfully engaging a broad range of families and communities. Based on a comprehensive literature review, the findings reveal a narrow sample of empirically based research; however, these studies offer insights regarding pedagogical approaches that increase teachers’ confidence and self-awareness, improve educators’ knowledge of diverse families, and enhance teachers’ ability to use knowledge about families and communities to improve instruction. This review examines efforts in higher education to address family engagement and the impact of various pedagogical approaches on preservice teachers. It concludes with recommendations for research in the field based on identified knowledge gaps.

Internal leadership challenges of network participation

While networking is becoming an increasingly popular school improvement strategy with high levels of success, there is little research that shows the challenges school leaders face as they enter into these new relationships. This article supplements current literature by providing documentation and analysis of some internal leadership challenges—those between school leaders and their staffs and school communities—that emerged for administrators participating in a voluntary network in the UK. Our research showed that head teachers faced three types of challenges in these networks: contextual considerations for network involvement, building internal commitment and capacity for network participation, and balancing network activities with other school reform efforts. In spite of these challenges, our research suggests that networking can be learned and that the presence of a support system for network leaders may enhance the effectiveness and quality of participation for both individual schools and the network‐at‐large.

The development of collective moral leadership among parents through education organizing

It is often assumed that parent participation in schools is primarily based on self-interest and that this is a frequent source of contention between parents and teachers. This article examines the experiences of members of the Jamaica Plain Parent Organizing Project (JP-POP), a community-based organization in Boston, and reveals that some parents have learned to act beyond their individual self-interest and to organize on behalf of the entire community as a result of their participation. The authors present qualitative data from interviews with JP-POP members to ascertain the motivations behind their initial decisions to become involved in education, the benefits they derive from their participation, and the gradual evolution of narrow definitions of self-interest to more communal understandings. Finally, they draw out implications for the potential capacity enhancement of community-based organizations in education at both the institutional and district levels.

Consulting, Mediating, Conducting, and Supporting: How Community-Based Organizations Engage With Research to Influence Policy

ABSTRACT Grounded in critical policy theories and democratic conceptions of research, case studies of three community-based organizations, one in Canada and two in the U.S., were analyzed to determine if and how the groups engaged with research in their efforts to influence education policy. The findings demonstrate that the community-based organizations consulted and mediated existing research, conducted original research, and supported others’ research efforts. Collectively, engaging research helped community-based organizations realize technical, political, and transformative goals. Furthermore, the groups’ research activities helped democratize policy processes by broadening policy discourses, challenging dominant policy narratives, encouraging local dialogue and actions, and engaging participants.

Not Your Mother's PTA: Hybridity in Community-Based Organizations Working for Educational Reform

Abstract An increasing number of community-based organizations are engaging with educational reform. Some groups are applying hybrid organizational models to engage with the public and education policy makers. In this article, the authors use a multiple case study approach to better understand the development of organizational hybridity in three such groups. The findings indicate that shifts in political environments and the evolving desires of publics are the primary motivators for organizational change.

Learning to Teach about Religion in Public Schools: Perspectives and Experiences of Student Teachers in the Program for Religion and Secondary Education at Harvard Divinity School

Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)

The Challenge of Family Engagement Policy Implementation: A Case Study of Title I School–Family Compacts in the USA

Using critical discourse analysis, this chapter highlights how policies, and the way they are framed using particular language, can create and reinforce the very forms of parent involvement they seek to discourage. The chapter focuses on Title I schools in the USA and highlights parents’ lack of agency as well as the absence of student voice when it comes to decision-making in schools about curriculum and learning in different contexts.