Family-School Partnerships (FSP) are important for students' academic achievements and social-emotional development. Therefore, pre-service teachers need to learn how to establish this. However, in teacher education programmes this topic is insufficiently addressed partially attributed to already overloaded programmes. This study reports on a…

Children bring a variety of cultural, linguistic, and social backgrounds into the preschool classroom. When teachers consider these backgrounds, they are better able to create environments that reflect children's cultures and to design learning experiences that build on children's prior experiences. This qualitative study examined how children's…

This study examined the day to day operations of home schools. The case study method was used with four families from a larger pool of families that held membership in a home school organization. Data was gathered using interviews, observations, and artifacts. Findings suggest that these families operated their home schools using traditional…

A brief sketch, as provided by the 2010 Michigan Migrant Head Start Community Assessment, describes Michigan migrant students in the following terms: (1) approximately 17.5% are high school graduates; (2) 92.46% live in homes where Spanish is the preferred language; and (3) 93.3% live below the poverty line. These circumstances create a…

According to Simplico (2005), critics who were led by parents have argued, "Children are spending too much time doing homework, which has no impact on their learning" (p. 138). This research study is significant for students, parents, teachers, educators, and administrators who wish to compare beliefs of families, students, and teachers regarding…

The formative evaluation study describes the parallel development and implementation of two learning formats for a professional development curriculum focused on supporting partnerships with families. Face-to-face and e-learning delivery formats were developed based upon a theoretically informed framework and used state professional development…

Wide-ranging discussion about family structure, society and individuals, a curriculum for caring, and involving the school in the community. (MLF)

Advocates the need for reading instruction to be a required class for all middle grade students in Indiana. Topics include decline of library usage, school organizational change, schedule changes and the shift to "language arts," time on task, questions for interviewing prospective reading teachers, a reading curriculum, useful…