During EDLD 5339, students were given the choice of reading many articles related to collaboration, school/family/community partnerships, community relationships, and shared decision

135School Community Journal, 2016, Vol. 26, No. 2 Available at http://www.schoolcommunitynetwork.org/SCJ.aspx

Beyond Involvement and Engagement: The Role of the Family in School–Community Partnerships

Amanda Stefanski, Linda Valli, and Reuben Jacobson

Abstract

Research indicates that partnerships between schools and neighborhood communities support student learning, improve schools, and strengthen fami- lies and neighborhoods. These partnerships expand the traditional educational mission of the school to include health and social services for children and their families and to involve the broader community. School–community partner- ships typically arise out of a specific need in the community and, as such, differ across a range of processes, structures, purposes, and types of family involve- ment. In previous work, we developed a typology to more closely examine various school–community partnerships (Valli, Stefanski, & Jacobson, 2013). From that review of the literature, we identified four increasingly complex and comprehensive partnership models. In this article, we reexamine the literature, focusing on the role of the family in those partnership models, and discuss implications for productive family–school–community relations. Our analysis of the literature indicates that the role of parents and families differed con- siderably across the four models. In contrast to the simple family involvement versus family engagement dichotomy found in much of the current literature, we found eight distinct ways in which family roles were envisioned and enact- ed. This article provides a detailed picture of those roles to guide policies and practices that strengthen the family’s role in school–community partnerships.

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Key Words: involvement, engagement, family role, school–community part- nerships, models, parents, full service community schools, wraparound ser- vices, development, interagency collaboration, families, linked

Introduction

School–community partnerships have long been viewed as a promising way to help struggling students, families, and neighborhoods. In the Progressive Era, the local school was commonly viewed as the community’s central insti- tution (Dewey, 1902). Schools served as places where community members could hear lectures, debate about civic issues, and use the facility for recreation at night, on weekends, and during school breaks. Social reformers from out- side the school system—including muckrakers, activists, public health doctors, women’s clubs, and settlement-house workers—sought to improve the lives of children and families in the school setting. These reformers advocated for a larger role of government in helping poor families and for more services at the school site, both during and outside the regular school day (Tyack, 1992). A few of the many new services were vocational guidance, lunches, playgrounds, sex education, health programs, and vacation schools (Cohen, 2005; Sedlak & Schlossman, 1985; Tyack, 1992). A variety of community associations worked with and within these community schools. Sometimes these working relation- ships took the form of mutual partnerships; at other times, the relationship resembled a patronage system, with a foundation or influential organization bestowing aid on a needy community.

Influenced in large part by the seminal work of Joy Dryfoos, the early 1990s witnessed a resurgence of the community school movement. Working in the public health sector, Dryfoos (1994) argued that schools cannot meet the needs of students on their own, but must coordinate with social service systems and become “full-service schools.” A year later, the president of the American Ed- ucational Research Association advanced this agenda, advocating for a new paradigm of schooling, a paradigm that linked “health, social welfare, juvenile justice, extended day educational opportunities, [and] community partici- pation” (Stallings, 1995, p. 8). More recently, neighborhood transformation efforts such as the Harlem Children’s Zone as well as grant competitions such as the Choice Neighborhoods, Full-Service Community Schools, and Promise Neighborhood programs have renewed interest in this paradigm. The Promise Neighborhood grant competition, for example, required school–community partners to develop an integrated system of educational programs and family/ community supports “with great schools at the center” (U.S. Department of Education, 2012).

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As Harris and Hoover (2003) have written, Dryfoos’s work “became a ral- lying point” for those striving to advance partnership agendas (p. 206). Today, community schools and similar collaborative initiatives rely on numerous types of partners to support their efforts. In some cases, organizations such as the Children’s Aid Society (Communities in Schools [CIS], 2010) take the lead in establishing the focus of the partnership. In other cases, school districts ini- tiate partnerships with one or more organizations. In the city of Boston, for instance, the public school system has had a long-standing partnership with the Full-Service Schools Roundtable, a coalition of over 150 members (Weiss & Siddall, 2012). A driving assumption behind each of these partnerships is that the expansion of the academic mission of the school to include health and social services for children and families and to involve the broader community will benefit both individuals and society. Indeed, such partnerships have been found to support student learning, improve schools, and assist families (Hen- derson & Mapp, 2002; Valli, Stefanski, & Jacobson, 2014; Walsh et al., 2014).

But in the struggle to define the movement, exactly how are partnership roles conceptualized and enacted? The general theory of action underlying partnerships provides the beginning of the answer: Positing that schools serve students’ academic needs better if they can quickly and efficiently attend to the overall health and well-being of children and their families (Epstein, 1995; Krenichyn, Clark, & Benitez, 2008), partnership advocates push for a closer working relationship with parents and family members. In this article, we re- view the literature on the ways in which school–community partnerships have included families. Our goal is to provide a more detailed understanding of “closer working relationships” that, as the theory of action suggests, should result in an array of social and academic benefits. We begin with the develop- mental and sociological perspectives that underlie this theory of action. We then review the previous literature on parent involvement, explain the typology of partnerships we developed, and analyze findings on family roles within the four partnership models.

Perspectives and Frameworks: Family Roles

Developmental theorists emphasize the multiple and interrelated dimen- sions of human development: physical, psychological, social, cognitive, ethical, and linguistic. They also argue for an ecological perspective on human devel- opment, that is, examining the environmental contexts (peer, family, school, neighborhood, etc.) that support or impede healthy development and learn- ing, as well as the interactions among them (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Comer, Haynes, Joyner, & Ben-Avie, 1996). In their ecological orientation, develop- mentalists intersect with sociological perspectives that point to the persistent

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impact of social capital on student achievement. Defining social capital as net- works of supportive relationships and resources that make goal achievement possible (Bourdieu, 1986), sociologists argue that good health, family and community support, and employment prospects are key factors in students’ ac- ademic success (Jencks, 1992; Rothstein, 2004; Wilson, 1999). Bringing those two traditions together, Epstein’s (1995) theory of overlapping spheres empha- sizes the importance of schools, families, and communities working together to meet the needs of children. More specifically, a central principle of the theory is that certain goals (e.g., academic achievement) are of mutual interest to people in each of the three spheres and, therefore, are best achieved through coopera- tive action and support.

Combined, these perspectives provide a powerful rationale for schools not operating as entities separate from family and community contexts, which is the current norm of U.S. public schools, especially in high-poverty neighbor- hoods. In addition, family involvement is supported by a substantial body of research that links it to children’s academic, social, and emotional development (Banerjee, Harrell, & Johnson, 2011; Farkas & Grolnick, 2010; Henderson, Mapp, Johnson, & Davies, 2007; Jeynes, 2012; Mapp & Kuttner, 2013; Weiss & Stephen, 2009). There are different frameworks, however, for describing this involvement. Gordon (1977), for example, identified six types of parent involvement: parents as bystanders, decision-makers (e.g., PTA participation), classroom volunteers, paid paraprofessionals, learners, and teachers at home. One of the most commonly used frameworks, developed from Epstein’s (1995) theory of overlapping spheres, outlines six types of involvement: parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making, and col- laborating with the community. McNeal (2001) provided a framework that focused on four elements: parent–child discussion, monitoring, involvement in school and classroom activities, and participation in school organizations.

More recently, there has been a shift away from what some call mere parental involvement toward the broader, more inclusive notion of parental engagement (see, e.g., Harvard Family Research Project, 2014). Ferlazzo (2011) explained that a school striving for involvement “leads with its mouth—identifying proj- ects, needs, and goals and then telling parents how they can contribute” while a school aiming for engagement “lead[s] with its ears—listening to what parents think, dream, and worry about….not to serve clients but to gain partners” (p. 12). Ishimaru (2014) similarly criticized the involvement approach for being based in deficit assumptions about parents and called for it to be replaced with an approach that views parents as resources and collaborators.

This shift has also been recognized in the language used by federal programs. For example, Head Start (2014) defined parental involvement as participation

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in a variety of activities developed or implemented by family services staff and often measured by such outputs as the number of parents who attend a meet- ing. In contrast, family engagement is defined as goal-directed relationships between staff and families that are ongoing and culturally responsive; family and staff members share responsibility and mutually support what is best for children and families (Head Start, 2014). Evaluation focuses on evidence of family progress in a number of broad areas (e.g., well-being, advocacy, learn- ing, connections). In addition, the U.S. Department of Education recently released a framework designed not only to help schools and districts engage parents as part of the process to increase student achievement, but also to pro- vide a model for how to build effective community engagement (Mapp & Kuttner, 2013). The authors of the framework depicted how, in effective part- nerships, families negotiate multiple roles including supporters, encouragers, monitors, advocates, decision-makers, and collaborators.

As Pushor and Ruitenberg (2005) described it, engagement encourages “parents to take their place alongside educators in the schooling of their chil- dren, fitting together their knowledge of children, teaching, and learning with teachers’ knowledge” (p. 13); parent engagement rather than involvement, they argue, allows schools to move away from the “typical hierarchical structure of power” (p. 15). But language and practice, or conceptualization and enact- ment, do not necessarily change at the same time. As noted by Price-Mitchell (2009), “the shift in language [from involvement to engagement] has yet to change the fragmented focus of the research, and many schools continue to emphasize participation and volunteerism over partnership and engagement” (p. 13). Further, to complicate the issue, researchers do not use these terms consistently, so there may be times when authors use the term “involvement” but in actuality are discussing what Ferlazzo (2011), Pushor and Ruitenberg (2005), and others would call engagement—or vice versa.

Despite the fact that families are widely viewed as an essential component of school–community partnerships, our review of the partnership literature in- dicates that neither the current “involvement vs. engagement” distinction nor the different frameworks of involvement (e.g., Epstein, 1995; Gordon, 1977; McNeal, 2001) fully capture the range of family roles. In this article, we argue that carefully delineating the various types of school–community partnerships is a helpful first step in obtaining a comprehensive picture of the roles families actually can fill. We first present the typology of school–community partner- ships we previously developed to examine factors that facilitated and impeded partnership success (Valli et al., 2013). We then analyze family roles within each type and discuss the implications for fostering productive family relations in these types of partnerships.

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Research Methodology

Even though school–community partnerships are generally inspired by a common vision, a host of terms such as full-service schools, wraparound ser- vices, and community schools are often used interchangeably to describe quite different types of partnerships, complicating efforts to comparatively analyze them. Therefore, when the three of us began our initial review of the litera- ture, we identified studies related to school–community partnerships through an electronic search of ERIC and EBSCO by using this range of terms as well as broader terms such as school–community partnerships and community–school linked services.

We then conducted ancestral searches using the articles initially identified for inclusion. Additionally, when articles appeared in themed journal issues or particular journals became regular sources, we searched through those in order to identify other sources of information. Finally, we contacted several community school and partnership agencies whose work had consistently ap- peared in our searches to identify relevant studies and documents that had been published for the organization and did not appear in peer-reviewed jour- nals. Throughout this process we used inclusionary and exclusionary criteria (e.g., rigor and relevance) for final selections (Boote & Beile, 2005); classified sources as descriptive, empirical, or research syntheses; and created a compre- hensive table tracking research questions, methods, and findings (see Valli et al., 2013 for a detailed account).

In several instances, we found multiple articles written about a single partner- ship. We sorted these articles into “sets” of sources (e.g., three different studies about the implementation of the Comer School Development Program are col- lectively referred to as one “set”). A total of 39 sets of sources were identified through these processes. For this analysis, we draw on only those sources that explicitly discuss the role of family (i.e., functions family members are expected to perform in relation to the school) in order to ensure that the findings were drawn from specific examples rather than our own conjecture. We also includ- ed the broader school–family relationship literature discussed above to provide context for our more focused examination of the family’s role in the various types of school–community collaborations. This broader literature examines how and why schools, in general, have worked to establish ties with families.

Using an inductive, grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), we tracked similarities and differences on key dimensions as they emerged across those sources. We noted two broad partnership dimensions that were particu- larly helpful in characterizing the various models: (a) overall purpose or scope, and (b) organizational change requirements. As recommended for compara- tively analyzing and interpreting sources for a literature review (Onwuegbuzie,

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Leech, & Collins, 2012), we sorted the articles along those two dimensions, examining similarities and differences. During this sorting process, we found that each initiative we reviewed fit into one of four categories, distinguished by the two criteria mentioned above—purpose and change requirements. Moving from least to most comprehensive, and requiring increased degrees of com- mitment and change, the categories are: Family and Interagency Collaboration, Full-Service Schools, Full-Service Community Schools, and the Community Devel- opment model (see Table 1).

The most basic form of partnership, Family and Interagency Collaboration, coordinates education, social, and health service delivery for students and fami- lies and requires organizational commitment. Going beyond collaboration, the Full-Service School model aims to coordinate a comprehensive array of services while, as much as possible, offering them at the school site. This expansion of purpose requires organizational change; the school actually becomes a differ- ent type of institution. Full-Service Community Schools continue this model but add a democratic component in which families and community members provide input as full partners, rather than simply being recipients of services. As such, these schools require both organizational and cultural change. Finally, the most comprehensive of the four models, Community Development, aims not only to assist students and families, but also to transform whole neighbor- hoods. This model goes well beyond the other three in its goals and vision and requires both interorganizational and cultural commitment and change.

Table 1. Typology of School–Community Partnerships Scope and Purpose Requirements

Family and Interagency Collaboration Coordinate service delivery Organizational

commitment

Full-Service Schools Deliver school-based, coordinated services

Organizational com- mitment and change

Full-Service Community Schools

Deliver school-based, coordinated services and

democratize the school with community input

Organizational and cultural commitment

and change

Community Development Model Transform the community

Interorganizational and cultural commit-

ment and change

We are not the first to develop such a framework. Like us, others who have studied school–community partnerships have found typologizing to be a use- ful analytic tool for examining how various types of partnerships have been

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implemented. Melaville (1998), for example, identified four approaches to school–community initiatives: services reform, youth development, commu- nity development, and school reform. More recently, Warren (2005) used the terms Service, Development, and Organizing to describe three distinct part- nership models. While these and other frameworks are compelling, we decided not to simply adopt one of them for our purposes for two reasons. First, authors do not always provide the basis for their typologies (e.g., how they focused on particular dimensions to construct their categories). Second, authors develop typologies at different times and for different reasons, making their use in other contexts problematic. Melaville’s purpose, for example, was to provide specific answers to policy questions such as “Who began the initiatives?” and “What activities are provided at the site level?” Warren’s purpose was to identify the mechanisms by which the different types of partnerships built social capital. So instead of adopted an existing framework, we chose an inductive, grounded theory approach, described above, to develop our own.

After describing the sources we found within each of the four models, we analyzed the roles of the family within each. While the names we gave each model suggest that families are an essential component, our review made clear that the nature of the partnership constructs the role of the family in vastly different ways. And, as with the language issue described above (i.e., lack of consistency in terminology by researchers and practitioners), both our catego- ries and the delineation of family roles within them must be considered fluid and dynamic in that various organizations (e.g., CIS) are apt to have partner- ships that fit in different ways than our analysis suggests—thus, others may interchange the terms and meanings we have ascribed to them. Our goal in this article is to create a comprehensive picture of the various ways in which family roles are envisioned and enacted in order to guide successful policy and practice. Our findings indicate that as the purpose behind each of the models evolved from the coordination of service delivery to transforming—or empow- ering—the community, so too did the role of parents and families evolve.

Serving Parents: The Family and Interagency Collaboration Model

As described above, the Family and Interagency Collaboration model of partnership involves the coordination of education, social, and health service delivery for students and families. But unlike the Full-Service model that fol- lows, these partnerships stop short of attempts to offer a comprehensive range of services for both family and student, focusing instead on one or two services each organization believes are most important and for which they have the re- sources. Also, and in contrast to Full-Service Schools, less attention is given to offering services directly at the school site.

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Eight of our 12 total sources on the Family and Interagency Collaboration model addressed the role of parents and other family members (see Table 2). One source was descriptive, providing information about the Iowa School- Based Youth Services Program (Walker & Hackmann, 1999). Four were empirical studies that utilized a broad range of methodologies: a single school case study that examined the characteristics of successful partnerships (Sand- ers & Harvey, 2002); a three-year, quasi-experimental evaluation of afterschool programs at six Children’s Aid Society community middle schools (Krenichyn et al., 2008); a statistical analysis of schools and school districts to determine the impact of leadership on family and community involvement (Epstein, Galindo, & Sheldon, 2011); and a survey study that identified student support services and established a baseline for partnership work in the Boston Public Schools (Weiss & Siddall, 2012).

Table 2. Number of Sources/Sets of Sources (Total and Family-Related) in the Four Partnership Models

Model Descriptive/ Conceptual

Empirical Studies

Research Syntheses

Totals

Total Family Total Family Total Family Total Family

Family & Interagency

Collaboration 1 1 7 4 4 3 12 8

Full-Service Schools 4 0 9 4 0 0 13 4

Full-Service Community

Schools 3 2 4 4 0 0 7 6

Community Development

Model 3 2 4 4 0 0 7 6

Total 11 5 24 16 4 3 39 24

The three remaining sources were research syntheses commissioned by sponsoring organizations. Two of these evaluated the sponsoring organization’s partnership program: Communities in Schools (CIS, 2010), and Coalition for Community Schools (Blank, Melaville, & Shah, 2003). The Communities in Schools series of studies across 5 years were conducted by an external evalu- ator and included a quasi-experimental design, a natural variation study, and

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randomized controlled trials that examined a broad range of outcomes, while the Coalition studies were based on participant self-reports (i.e., surveys, focus groups, individual interviews) from selected partnerships. The third research synthesis, sponsored by the National Education Association (NEA), examined NEA partnership strategies to advance student learning (Henderson, 2011).

In our review of these eight total sources, we noted that the collaborating agencies emphasized two features of parent involvement over others: increased access to resources and service provision, and two-way, open communication. As we considered implications for families, we were struck by the fact that, in each case, the focus was more on serving than on involving (see Figure 1). For example, authors used language such as “provide access” (Blank et al., 2003, p. 32), “referral of families” (Weiss & Siddall, 2012, p. 2), and “[parents]…were kept aware of school activities” (Sanders & Harvey, 2002, p. 1359).

We would argue that increased access to resources is the foundation of all school–community partnerships; in other words, connecting students and families to various resources and providing additional services occurs at every level in our typology. For schools within the Family and Interagency Collab- oration category, this involves developing partnerships with the community in order to connect students and families with needed services. For example, parents whose children participated in the Communities in Schools program reported receiving direct benefits through referral to individual, case-managed social services, many of which they would not have known existed without the referral from Communities in Schools (CIS, 2010).

Blank and colleagues (2003) have asserted that these schools “typically arise as unique responses to the specific needs of their communities, [so] no two are exactly alike” (p. 2). The organizations described in this section reflect that as- sertion, varying largely from one to another, with one major commonality: they exist primarily to provide services to parents, rather than to work at involving parents in the school or in partnership activities. There are a few exceptions, such as the incorporation of parents on advisory councils that monitor the inte- gration and collaboration of agencies in the Iowa School-Based Youth Services Program (Walker & Hackmann, 1999), but by and large, parents and families are passive recipients of services under Family and Interagency Collaboration.

Although each organization provides services specific to the community in which it is situated, in general, these services focus on parental support or development, literacy, recreation, counseling, and health care. In reviewing evaluations of 20 partnerships across the country, Blank et al. (2003) reported, for example, that typical activities included adult education and career devel- opment, child care, mental health and nutrition counseling, crisis intervention, dental and health services, and family support centers. Reports on initiatives in

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Iowa (Walker & Hackmann, 1999) and Boston (Weiss & Siddall, 2012) also noted a range of social services available to families (e.g., mental health and substance abuse counseling, violence and suicide prevention, legal advice, pri- mary and dental health care, job training).

Although some articles briefly mentioned parent involvement, such as feeling welcome at the school (CIS, 2010) or participating in school events (Henderson, 2011), only one (Sanders & Harvey, 2002) elaborated on a parent role that went beyond being served: a four-hour per month volunteer require- ment in an afterschool program that could be fulfilled by parents or their representatives (e.g., older siblings, grandparents). In the same vein, Blank et al. (2003) were the only authors to report on specific impacts on families, in- cluding greater attendance at school meetings, increased knowledge of child development, and increased confidence in their role as the child’s teacher, among others.

In addition to increasing access to resources and providing services to parents, another way that partnerships under the Family and Interagency Collaboration model serve parents and families is through the use of open, two- way communication, a theme that reoccurs throughout the broader literature on school–family relations. In the NEA’s review of family–school–commu- nity partnerships, the authors identified 10 strategies as essential for success (Henderson, 2011). Of those, two referenced involving parents in key con- versations, while two others had to do with building relationships between educators and families.

Other studies similarly discussed the importance of a climate of mutual respect and two-way, open communication among all partners (Blank et al., 2003; Krenichyn et al., 2008; Sanders & Harvey, 2002). In some cases, this communication was facilitated by a family outreach or parent coordinator (Blank et al., 2003; Krenichyn et al., 2008; Weiss & Siddall, 2012); other ini- tiatives made sure parents

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