Preparing Teacher Candidates to Collaborate with Families and Communities: Standards, Research, and Practice

Abstract

Preparing teacher candidates to engage with family and community in ways that align with the reality of today's classroom is a critically important aspect of fostering student academic success and well-being. This paper examines how a set of professional preparation standards, the teacher preparation literature, and a qualitative inquiry into the practices and challenges of kindergarten teachers working with family and community converge to inform the work of teacher educators. Implications of these three sources of expert knowledge are instructive for teacher educator practice. Implications for the preparation of teacher candidates around family/community engagement include: the shaping of teacher candidate beliefs and dispositions, teaching candidates to build skill in fostering culturally responsive relationships, and preparing candidates to utilize engagement strategies that count.

Navigating the process of building parent-teacher partnerships: Experiences of early childhood pre-service teachers

“…However, evidence shows that during their professional preparation, most pre-service teachers have limited opportunities for interacting with parents (de Bruїne et al, 2014;Evans, 2013;Taylor & Kim, 2020). This can be achieved by providing experiences where pre-service teachers interact directly with parents so they can develop skills needed for establishing effective partnerships and to give meaning to knowledge gained in the classroom (Buchanan & Buchanan, 2019;de Bruїne et al, 2014;Mitsch et al, 2020). These interactions should take place within a prolonged period and should not be limited to only school but also to interacting at home and community.…”

“…Educators understand the critical role that parents play in their children's education (Mitsch, Branch, & Weglarz-Ward, 2020) and this calls for continued efforts to build strong home-school partnerships (Buchanan & Buchanan, 2019). Developing productive relationships with families is part of a teacher's professional role (de Bruїne et al, 2014), thus as teacher candidates embark on their professional journey, having knowledge on how to establish strong parent-teacher partnerships is critical.…”

“…Moreover, as scholars continue to argue that developing productive relationships with families is part of a teacher's professional role, they also acknowledge that creating parent-teacher partnerships is challenging for teachers (de Bruїne et al, 2014). Further, it is worth noting that in most teacher education programs little attention is paid to preparing prospective teachers for forming these partnerships (Buchanan & Buchanan, 2019;de Bruїne et al, 2014;Evans, 2013;Mitsch et al, 2020). Therefore, despite increased attention to family engagement in teacher education, teachers continue to feel unprepared since _____________ parent-teacher partnerships are not adequately addressed in ways that prepare them to work with families (Brown, Harris, Jacobson, & Trotti, 2014).…”

“…Literature addressing how teacher candidates are prepared to work with parents is scarce (Evans, 2013;Miller, Coleman, & Mitchell, 2018) and few have focused on preservice teachers in early childhood programs. Moreover, although some studies continue to point to the important role that communication plays in parent-teacher partnerships (Buchanan & Buchanan, 2019), few have focused on real-life experiences that offer teacher candidates opportunities to work directly with parents. Through incorporating an assignment in a child, family and community course, the current study sought to explore the experiences of pre-service teachers (enrolled in an early childhood program) in their communication with parents and their overall experiences about what it takes to form parent-teacher partnerships.…”

Preparing Pre-Service Teachers for Family Engagement: Insights from the Initial Teacher Education Syllabus

“…Global research has shown that these competencies that encourage FIPE are frequently inconsistent in initial teacher education [14][15][16][17][18]. There is evidence that initial teacher education programmes pay little attention to preparing pre-service teachers to form these relationships [11,[19][20][21][22]. Particularly in Europe, research addressing how pre-service teachers are prepared to work with families is scarce [21,23,24], and there is even less focus on early childhood educators' master's degrees [19].…”