An essential read for all school principals and persons engaged in educational policy. Parental interest in faith-based schooling for children has surged and the contents of this book reveal the reasons for this surge. This book provides insights to school choice, support for faith-based schooling, and opening doors for increased parent involvement in schools. Authors focus on promising practices that these schools utilize to engage parents in the daily life of school and the effects of such practices on the educational life of the school. Their work cover Catholic, Jewish, Christian and Muslim schools within the U. S. and internationally. In addition, chapters suggest ways to market schools and promote social justice in faith-based schools.
Close to 60 percent of young people who went to church as teens drop out after high school. Now the bestselling author of unChristian trains his researcher's eye on these young believers. Where Kinnaman's first book unChristian showed the world what outsiders aged 16-29 think of Christianity, You Lost Me shows why younger Christians aged 16-29 are leaving the church and rethinking their faith. Based on new research, You Lost Me shows pastors, church leaders, and parents how we have failed to equip young people to live "in but not of" the world and how this has serious long-term consequences. More importantly, Kinnaman offers ideas on how to help young people develop and maintain a vibrant faith that they embrace over a lifetime.
How parents approach the task of passing on religious faith and practice to their children How do American parents pass their religion on to their children? At a time of overall decline of traditional religion and an increased interest in personal “spirituality,” Religious Parenting investigates the ways that parents transmit religious beliefs, values, and practices to their kids. We know that parents are the most important influence on their children’s religious lives, yet parents have been virtually ignored in previous work on religious socialization. Renowned religion scholar Christian Smith and his collaborators Bridget Ritz and Michael Rotolo explore American parents’ strategies, experiences, beliefs, and anxieties regarding religious transmission through hundreds of in-depth interviews that span religious traditions, social classes, and family types all around the country. Throughout we hear the voices of evangelical, Catholic, Mormon, mainline and black Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist parents and discover that, despite massive diversity, American parents share a nearly identical approach to socializing their children religiously. For almost all, religion is important for the foundation it provides for becoming one’s best self on life’s difficult journey. Religion is primarily a resource for navigating the challenges of this life, not preparing for an afterlife. Parents view it as their job, not religious professionals’, to ground their children in life-enhancing religious values that provide resilience, morality, and a sense of purpose. Challenging longstanding sociological and anthropological assumptions about culture, the authors demonstrate that parents of highly dissimilar backgrounds share the same “cultural models” when passing on religion to their children. Taking an extensive look into questions of religious practice and childrearing, Religious Parenting uncovers parents’ real-life challenges while breaking innovative theoretical ground.
"It's widely acknowledged that American parents from different class backgrounds take different approaches to raising their children. Upper and middle-class parents invest considerable time facilitating their children's activities, while working class and poor families take a more hands-off approach. These different strategies influence how children approach school. But missing from the discussion is the fact that millions of parents on both sides of the class divide are raising their children to listen to God. What impact does a religious upbringing have on their academic trajectories? Drawing on 10 years of survey data with over 3,000 teenagers and over 200 interviews, God, Grades, and Graduation (GGG) offers a revealing and at times surprising account of how teenagers' religious upbringing influences their educational pathways from high school to college. GGG introduces readers to a childrearing logic that cuts across social class groups and accounts for Americans' deep relationship with God: religious restraint. This book takes us inside the lives of these teenagers to discover why they achieve higher grades than their peers, why they are more likely to graduate from college, and why boys from lower middle-class families particularly benefit from religious restraint. But readers also learn how for middle-upper class kids--and for girls especially--religious restraint recalibrates their academic ambitions after graduation, leading them to question the value of attending a selective college despite their stellar grades in high school. By illuminating the far-reaching effects of the childrearing logic of religious restraint, GGG offers a compelling new narrative about the role of religion in academic outcomes and educational inequality"--
This concise monograph addresses the expanding field of family involvement to out of school time (OST). OST may be defined as time outside of state required time limits for compulsory school attendance but time in which students are engaged in planned academic or enrichment activities. During the past decade, OST programs have burgeoned across the United States. OST programs are offered to children and youth, elementary through high school, as structured and safe venues to increase student academic achievement, and extend students’ interests. Chapter authors share promising practices from a range of backgrounds, including nonprofit organizations, faith-based, health, and governmental agencies as well as university-school connections. Contents describe the benefits and concerns of parent engagement in OST, such as student outcomes of parent engagement in OST, how parents select appropriate programs, ways to connect with parents to assure regular attendance of youth, methods to solicit families to participate in OST activities, and evaluation measures.
Critical Perspectives on Education Policy and Schools, Families, and Communities offers scholars, students, and practitioners important new knowledge about how current policies impact families, schools, and community partnerships. The book’s authors share a critical orientation towards policy and policy research and invite readers to think differently about what policy is, who policymakers are, and what policy can achieve. Their chapters discuss findings from research grounded in diverse theories, including institutional ethnography, critical disability theory, and critical race theory. The authors encourage scholars of family, school, and community partnerships to ask who benefits from policies (and who loses) and how proposed reforms maintain or disrupt existing relations of power. The chapters present original research on a broad range of policies at the local, state/provincial, and national levels in Canada and the USA. Some authors look closely at the enactment of specific district policies, including a school district’s language translation policy and a policy to create local advisory bodies as part of decentralization efforts. Other chapters reveal the often unacknowledged yet necessary work parents do to meet their children’s needs and enable schools to operate. A few chapters focus on challenges and paradoxes of including families and community members in policymaking processes, including a case where parents demonstrated a preference for a policy that research demonstrates can be detrimental to their children’s future education opportunities. Another set of chapters emphasizes the centrality of policy texts and how language influences the educational experiences and engagement of students and their families. Each chapter concludes with a discussion of implications of the research for educators, families, and other community partners.
The International Handbook on Learning, Teaching and Leading in Faith Based Schools is international in scope. It is addressed to policy makers, academics, education professionals and members of the wider community. The book is divided into three sections. (1) The Educational, Historical, Social and Cultural Context, which aims to: Identify the educational, historical, social and cultural bases and contexts for the development of learning, teaching and leadership in faith-based schools across a range of international settings; Consider the current trends, issues and controversies facing the provision and nature of education in faith-based schools; Examine the challenges faced by faith-based schools and their role and responses to current debates concerning science and religion in society and its institutions. (2) The Nature, Aims and Values of Education in Faith-based Schools, which aims to: Identify and explore the distinctive philosophies, characteristics and guiding principles, values, concepts and concerns underpinning learning, teaching and leadership in faith-based schools; Identify and explore ways in which such distinctive philosophies of education challenge and expand different norms and conventions in their surrounding societies and cultures; Examine and explore some of the ways in which different conceptions within and among different religious and faith traditions guide practices in learning, teaching and leadership in various ways. (3) Current Practice and Future Possibilities, which aims to: Provide evidence of current educational practices that might help to inform and shape innovative and successful policies, initiatives and strategies for the development of quality learning, teaching and leadership in faith-based schools; Examine the ways in which the professional learning of teachers and educational leaders in faith- based settings might be articulated and developed; Consider the ways in which coherence and alignment might be achieved between key national priorities in education and the identity, beliefs, and the commitments of faith-based schools; Examine what international experience shows about the place of faith-based schools in culturally rich and diverse communities and the implications of faith-based schooling for societies of the future.
Family and Community Partnerships: Promising Practices for Teachers and Teacher Educators, offers a fresh new look at the competencies, strategies, and practices that effective educators develop to build strong partnerships with families and communities. Written by leaders in the field, the book is an outgrowth of a cutting-edge initiative led by the National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement to reimagine how educators are prepared for family and community engagement. Based on four guiding practices - reflect, connect, collaborate, and lead alongside families – each section of the book highlights theory, real-world strategies, discussion questions, and activities that can be used by teachers, teacher educators, and professional learning specialists to inspire new ideas for courses, workshops, and for self-reflection.
