Opportunities, Challenges, and Solutions within a Family-School 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 children’s academic, behavioral, and social development • Promoting consistencies across families and schools to promote children’s 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 individual’s motivation to personally engage with families or educators (Christenson, 2004)

6. 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)

7. 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)

8. 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)

9. 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)

10. 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)

11. 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 children’s education • Limited use of perspective taking • Assumption that families and educators should hold identical values and expectations (Christenson, 2004; Christenson & Sheridan, 2001)

12. 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 children’s 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)

13. 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 family’s perspective • Ownership – actively contribute to the development and implementation of a plan/intervention (Christenson, 2002) • reinforce congruent family-school support

14. 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 A’s) • 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 )

15. 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

16. 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.