A Foundational Approach to Preparing Teachers for Family and Community Involvement in Children's Education

Challenges Enacting Caring Teacher Education

“…This was not entirely surprising. Preservice teachers enter their field-placement experiences with a simplistic picture of the stakeholders in a caring classroom community: They focus only on themselves and the children rather than on the teacher-childparent relationship (de Acosta, 1996). Once placed in classroom contexts, preservice teachers see that their prior notions of teachingnotions centered around images of caring teachers working with children who have no visible families-do not accurately capture the interpersonal complexity of the profession, and they are forced to broaden their understanding of teaching to include parents in some way.…”

Supporting the educational career of children from divorced families: parents' experiences and the role of the school

“…Empowerment and network-building between parents, schools and educational, mentoring and counselling institutions are also of great importance (cf. de Acosta, 1996).…”

“…Research has shown that many teachers do not possess the knowledge, attitudes and skills needed to collaborate effectively with families from diverse backgrounds (de Acosta, 1996;Morris & Taylor, 1998). Teacher training courses or teacher preparation programmes on the subject of family involvement in school education are needed.…”

Learning from Families: Pre-Service Teachers’ First Interactions with Parents

“…Schools with actively engaged parents enjoy increased parent support, improved teacher morale, and a better reputation in the community (Epstein & Dauber, 1991). This results in an increased sense of community between parents and teachers (Belenardo, 2001 Although parent involvement is key to student success, most education programs provide few experiences for pre-service teachers to interact with parents of the students they serve (de Acosta, 1996;Hiatt-Michael, 2001). This is of great concern.…”