Promising Practices for Engaging Families in STEM Learning
Promising Practices for Engaging Families in STEM Learning

Author: Margaret Caspe

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2018-05-01

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1641132825

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The technology revolution has made it critical for all children to understand science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) or risk being left behind. Promising Practices for Engaging Families in STEM Learning explores how families, schools, and communities can join together to promote student success in STEM by building organized and equitable pathways for family engagement across all of the settings in which students learn – including, schools, early childhood programs, homes, libraries and museums –from the earliest years through adolescence. This thought-provoking monograph includes three main sections with chapters from leading thinkers in the field: > The first section provides the theoretical and research base for the importance of family engagement in STEM and draws out the challenges and opportunities that exist– from the transmission of adults’ anxiety and lack of confidence in their own STEM skills, to inequalities in out-of-school learning opportunities, to biases and misconceptions about the kinds of STEM supports offered by families from low-income and immigrant homes. > The second section builds on this research by presenting success stories, best practices, and approaches to engaging families in STEM. > The final section focuses on how policies at the local, state, and federal level can support the promotion of family engagement in STEM. Taken together, the monograph shows that STEM is a powerful mechanism to connect, engage, and empower families. > STEM provides opportunities for parents and children to spend time together asking fun and meaningful questions that link in-and out-of-school learning. > STEM creates new experiences for families to co-construct and support learning with their children from the earliest years throughout formal schooling and onto college and career pathways. > STEM also presents possibilities for families to build confidence and agency in supporting children’s interests; especially those families who might be marginalized because of their economic or language status, race, or culture.

Promising Practices for Engaging Families in Literacy
Promising Practices for Engaging Families in Literacy

Author: Holly Kreider

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2013-03-01

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 1623963001

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(sponsored by the Family School Community Partnership Issues SIG) Promising Practices for Engaging Families in Literacy fulfills the need from parents and teachers to improve home/school assistance in every child’s literacy development. Literacy skills are required and valued in all academic areas and at all levels of education from preschool through adulthood. This volume provides suggestions and support to improve parent/child involvement in literacy activities from preschool through teacher education programs. Research is provided to undergird the documented practices that increase student academic achievement through improved literacy skills across academic areas. Practices include connections between home and school across age groups, developmental needs groups, universities, community groups, and technologies.

Critical Perspectives on Education Policy and Schools, Families, and Communities
Critical Perspectives on Education Policy and Schools, Families, and Communities

Author: Sue Winton

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2020-03-01

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1641138815

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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.

Composing Storylines of Possibilities
Composing Storylines of Possibilities

Author: Martha J. Strickland

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2022-01-01

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1648027172

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In this book, internationally migrant families invite us to listen to the storylines of their mostly muted voices as they navigate the local schools in their new cultural context. They call us to hear them as they grapple with issues they encounter. They implore us to feel like an outsider and see the school as a foreign culture with language and communication barriers. The book is organized to enhance this carework. Each chapter begins with a vignette that includes the voices of one or more members of international migrating families, while introducing the context of the chapter. At the end of each chapter readers will find specific implications to consider. These are constructed with preservice teachers, practicing teachers, and educational administrators in mind. As you read each chapter, there is the call for school transformation. The families in this book entreat school personnel to engage with international migrant families and to embrace a risk and resilience model as we strive together for success. These storylines challenge us to examine our personal storylines for biases and deficit understandings and call us all to purposefully rewrite these in the spirit of possibilities as the families in this book have embodied for us.

Handbook on Family and Community Engagement
Handbook on Family and Community Engagement

Author: Sam Redding

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2011-12-01

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1617356700

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Thirty-six of the best thinkers on family and community engagement were assembled to produce this Handbook, and they come to the task with varied backgrounds and lines of endeavor. Each could write volumes on the topics they address in the Handbook, and quite a few have. The authors tell us what they know in plain language, succinctly presented in short chapters with practical suggestions for states, districts, and schools. The vignettes in the Handbook give us vivid pictures of the real life of parents, teachers, and kids. In all, their portrayal is one of optimism and celebration of the goodness that encompasses the diversity of families, schools, and communities across our nation.

Universal Design in Higher Education
Universal Design in Higher Education

Author: Sheryl E. Burgstahler

Publisher: Harvard Education Press

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1612500935

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Universal Design in Higher Education looks at the design of physical and technological environments at institutions of higher education; at issues pertaining to curriculum and instruction; and at the full array of student services. Universal Design in Higher Education is a comprehensive guide for researchers and practitioners on creating fully accessible college and university programs. It is founded upon, and contributes to, theories of universal design in education that have been gaining increasingly wide attention in recent years. As greater numbers of students with disabilities attend postsecondary educational institutions, administrators have expressed increased interest in making their programs accessible to all students. This book provides both theoretical and practical guidance for schools as they work to turn this admirable goal into a reality. It addresses a comprehensive range of topics on universal design for higher education institutions, thus making a crucial contribution to the growing body of literature on special education and universal design. This book will be of unique value to university and college administrators, and to special education researchers, practitioners, and activists.

English Learners in STEM Subjects
English Learners in STEM Subjects

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2019-01-28

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0309479088

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The imperative that all students, including English learners (ELs), achieve high academic standards and have opportunities to participate in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning has become even more urgent and complex given shifts in science and mathematics standards. As a group, these students are underrepresented in STEM fields in college and in the workforce at a time when the demand for workers and professionals in STEM fields is unmet and increasing. However, English learners bring a wealth of resources to STEM learning, including knowledge and interest in STEM-related content that is born out of their experiences in their homes and communities, home languages, variation in discourse practices, and, in some cases, experiences with schooling in other countries. English Learners in STEM Subjects: Transforming Classrooms, Schools, and Lives examines the research on ELs' learning, teaching, and assessment in STEM subjects and provides guidance on how to improve learning outcomes in STEM for these students. This report considers the complex social and academic use of language delineated in the new mathematics and science standards, the diversity of the population of ELs, and the integration of English as a second language instruction with core instructional programs in STEM.

Minority Serving Institutions
Minority Serving Institutions

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2019-02-05

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 0309484448

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There are over 20 million young people of color in the United States whose representation in STEM education pathways and in the STEM workforce is still far below their numbers in the general population. Their participation could help re-establish the United States' preeminence in STEM innovation and productivity, while also increasing the number of well-educated STEM workers. There are nearly 700 minority-serving institutions (MSIs) that provide pathways to STEM educational success and workforce readiness for millions of students of colorâ€"and do so in a mission-driven and intentional manner. They vary substantially in their origins, missions, student demographics, and levels of institutional selectivity. But in general, their service to the nation provides a gateway to higher education and the workforce, particularly for underrepresented students of color and those from low-income and first-generation to college backgrounds. The challenge for the nation is how to capitalize on the unique strengths and attributes of these institutions and to equip them with the resources, exceptional faculty talent, and vital infrastructure needed to educate and train an increasingly critical portion of current and future generations of scientists, engineers, and health professionals. Minority Serving Institutions examines the nation's MSIs and identifies promising programs and effective strategies that have the highest potential return on investment for the nation by increasing the quantity and quality MSI STEM graduates. This study also provides critical information and perspective about the importance of MSIs to other stakeholders in the nation's system of higher education and the organizations that support them.

Promising Practices for Teachers to Engage with Families of English Language Learners
Promising Practices for Teachers to Engage with Families of English Language Learners

Author: Diana Hiatt-Michael

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2007-08-01

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 1607525968

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The monograph Promising Practices for Teachers to Engage with Families of English Language Learners provides practical activities, communication skills, events, resources, and policies to work with families who are English language learners. This book is primarily targeted toward preservice and novice teachers who are searching for ways to connect with families from diverse cultures and varying proficiency levels in English. However, the contents contain an array of practices that are useful for teachers at all levels, parents, other educator groups, and administrators.