Effective family, school, and community partnerships enhance the academic, social, and emotional development of children. As a result, colleges, schools, and departments of education are increasingly addressing the topic. Unfortunately, teachers continue to report that the most significant challenge encountered when entering the profession is the establishment of relationships with families and communities. This article reviews existing literature on the outcomes of efforts to prepare educators who are capable of successfully engaging a broad range of families and communities. Based on a comprehensive literature review, the findings reveal a narrow sample of empirically based research; however, these studies offer insights regarding pedagogical approaches that increase teachers' confidence and self-awareness, improve educators' knowledge of diverse families, and enhance teachers' ability to use knowledge about families and communities to improve instruction. This review examines efforts in higher education to address family engagement and the impact of various pedagogical approaches on preservice teachers. It concludes with recommendations for research in the field based on identified knowledge gaps.

From 2000 to 2001, Andy Hargreaves produced a series of publications introducing the concept of distinctive emotional geographies of teaching. The concept addressed how teacher emotions are situated within the context of their work and influence interactions with students, colleagues, administrators, and families. Hargreaves contended that understanding the emotional geographies of teachers would help build stronger relationships among stakeholders. He also predicted that educational policies centered on accountability that fail to develop commitments from families and communities threatened to exacerbate preexisting tensions. Ten years later, Hargreaves' prescient observations provide important insights on the challenges encountered by the No Child Left Behind Act and implications for policy proposals being entertained during the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the United States. This article revisits the concept of emotional geographies, utilizes its conceptual framework to examine policy efforts focused on the issue of family engagement, and offers recommendations for new directions in educational policy.

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While networking is becoming an increasingly popular school improvement strategy with high levels of success, there is little research that shows the challenges school leaders face as they enter into these new relationships. This article supplements current literature by providing documentation and analysis of some internal leadership challenges-those between school leaders and their staffs and school communities-that emerged for administrators participating in a voluntary network in the UK. Our research showed that head teachers faced three types of challenges in these networks: contextual considerations for network involvement, building internal commitment and capacity for network participation, and balancing network activities with other school reform efforts. In spite of these challenges, our research suggests that networking can be learned and that the presence of a support system for network leaders may enhance the effectiveness and quality of participation for both individual schools and the network-at-large.