Opportunities, Challenges, and Solutions within a FamilySchool Partnership Approach

1
Opportunities, Challenges, and Solutions within a
Family-School Partnership Approach

• The Future of School Psychology Task Force on
  Family-School Partnerships
• Ashley Taylor, Katie Magee, Laura Mullaney, Susan
  Sheridan
• University of Nebraska-Lincoln

2
Opportunities

• Family-school partnerships provide opportunities
  to strengthen relationships and promote the
  identification and development of actions that
  are uniquely meaningful and worthwhile to
  families and educators
• (Christenson Sheridan, 2001, p. 75)

3
Opportunities

• Importance in recognizing the family-school
  interface as a context for childrens academic,
  behavioral, and social development
• Promoting consistencies across families and
  schools to promote childrens success
• Values
• Expectations
• Goals

4
Challenges as Unique Opportunities

• Defining challenges
• Perceiving challenges as obstacles to overcome
  rather than as providing opportunities to
  increase understanding and perspective taking
  between families and schools requires a change in
  our conceptualization of challenges
• (Christenson Sheridan, 2001)

5
Structural vs. Psychological

• Challenging circumstances include structural and
  psychological barriers experienced by both
  families and educators
• Structural refers to the organization of the
  school day
• Psychological refers to the attitudes toward
  families and educators
• Structural barriers limit the collaborative
  dialogue to facilitate working relationships
  between families and educators
• Psychological barriers limit an individuals
  motivation to personally engage with families or
  educators
• (Christenson, 2004)

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Challenges affecting the Partnership

• Structural
• Limited opportunities for communication
• Limited opportunities to build trusting
  relationships
• Initiating communication primarily during times
  of crises or conflicts
• Limited skills and knowledge on how to
  collaborate with families
• Lack of routine communication between families
  and educators (e.g., home-school notes)
• Limited understanding of the constraints faced by
  the other party
• (Christenson, 2004)

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Challenges affecting the Partnership

• Psychological
• Reluctance to facilitate family-school
  partnerships
• Limited values or beliefs toward a partnership
  orientation
• Blaming or labeling the other party
• Differences in perspectives are communicated as
  deficits
• Failure to see differences as strengths to be
  built upon
• Limited use of perspective taking, empathy, or
  validation toward families
• Previous negative interactions and experiences
  between families and schools
• (Christenson, 2004)

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Challenges experienced by Families

• Structural
• Lack of role models
• Limited accessibility to resources or services
• Child care
• Transportation
• Economic constraints
• Scheduling conflicts
• Time constraints
• Agendas based solely on school rather than
  family-school concerns/priorities
• (Christenson, 2004 Christenson Sheridan, 2001)

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Challenges experienced by Families

• Psychological
• Feelings of personal inadequacies, failure, and
  poor self-worth low self-efficacy
• Doubts from educators about families capacities
  and capabilities to address concerns (i.e.,
  self-efficacy and role construct)
• Adopting a passive role (e.g., leaving education
  in the hands of solely educators)
• Assumption that families and educators should
  hold identical values and expectations
• Linguistic differences
• Perceived lack of responsiveness to parental
  needs or insight
• Less than positive attitudes or previous
  frustrating experiences with schools
• Educators use of negative communication about
  children
• Fear of conflict with educators
• (Christenson, 2004 Christenson, Carlson,
  Valdez, 2002
• Christenson Sheridan, 2001)

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Challenges experienced by Educators

• Structural
• Time constraints
• Lack of training in how to partner effectively
  and collaboratively with families
• Lack of efficacious partnering resources or
  models available to practitioners
• Linguistic and cultural differences between
  families and schools
• Lack of funding for family outreach programs
• Lack of administrative support
• Limited time for communication and meaningful
  dialogue between families and educators
• Limited contact for building trust between
  families and educators
• Lack of routine and strength-based communication
• Lack of sustained interactions over the course of
  time
• (Christenson, 2004
  Christenson, Carlson, Valdez, 2002)

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Challenges experienced by Educators

• Psychological
• Fear of demonstrating inadequacies of service and
  professional incompetence
• Fear of additional time and funding demands
• Fear of potential conflict
• Use of negative or one-way communication
• Perpetuation of stereotypes or labels
• Narrow conception of families roles related to
  their childrens education
• Limited use of perspective taking
• Assumption that families and educators should
  hold identical values and expectations
• (Christenson, 2004 Christenson Sheridan, 2001)

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Understanding Challenges

• These unique circumstances must be understood in
  relation to each other rather than in isolation
  due to their relational/bidirectional context
• Focusing solely on family barriers presents an
  incomplete picture because it does not reflect
  potential educational barriers, within its
  structure or among its educators, that may be
  inhibiting families engagement in their
  childrens education
• Identifying family and educational variables as
  unique challenges will affect the degree to which
  a family-school partnership is fostered across
  settings
• (Christenson, 2004)

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Solutions

• Promoting an emphasis for practitioners in
  schools to encourage partnerships with families
  based on functional elements that
• foster bi-directional communication,
• enhance problem-solving across families and
  schools,
• encourage shared decision making, and
• Access opportunities for participation
• Voice listening, understanding, and validating
  familys perspective
• Ownership actively contribute to the
  development and implementation of a
  plan/intervention (Christenson, 2002)
• reinforce congruent family-school support

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Solutions

• Employ opportunity-focused attitudes and actions
• Increase families self-efficacy and role
  construction
• Opportunities to consult with families about the
  process of family-school partnerships (e.g., the
  4 As)
• Create formal and informal opportunities to
  communicate and build trust
• Focusing on the socialization practices of
  families and educators and the process for
  partnering is more important than implementation
  of a parent involvement activity in isolation
• Reinforce the need to meet parents where they
  are, not where we want them to be
• (Christenson, 2002 )

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Solutions

• Consider flex time to accommodate flexible
  scheduling
• School psychologists can present at workshops and
  conduct in-service training for teachers
• School psychologists can work with parent groups
  and/or school government teams
• Conduct scheduled home visits
• Establish parent centers within schools
• Conduct activities/social events to increase
  parents opportunities to communicate with
  teachers and other educators
• Foster bi-directional communication
• Enhance problem solving across families and
  schools
• Encourage shared decision making
• Reinforce congruent family-school support

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References

• Christenson, S. L. (2004). The family-school
  partnership An opportunity to promote the
  learning competence of all students. School
  Psychology Review, 33, 83-104.
• Christenson, S. L., Carlson, C., Valdez, C. R.
  (2002). Evidence-based intervention in school
  psychology Opportunities, challenges, and
  cautions. Journal of School Psychology, 17,
  466-474.
• Christenson, S. L., Sheridan, S. M. (2001).
  Schools and families Creating essential
  connections for learning. New York Guildford
  Press.