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Researchers and policy makers overwhelmingly stress the harmonious nature of parent involvement. Researchers have focused on individual forms of parent involvement, yet collective efforts of parents in parent-teacher organizations (PTOs) are a key dynamic in schools. Drawing on a case study of an elementary school in an upper-middle-class community, we show that very high levels of parent involvement led to many conflicts. There were three main sources of these routine conflicts. Parents and educators had different priorities—parents favored a warm, friendly, and nonbureaucratic environment while the principal favored an orderly, safe, and bureaucratic environment. There were battles over authority, particularly over the planning of events. And finally, the PTO was a volunteer organization with high levels of turnover, weak lines of communication, and minimal training. This case study suggests the need to reconceptualize our models of family involvement in schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The literature has lauded parental involvement as an effective strategy to increase student achievement, but schools still struggle with how to effectively involve parents of color and low-income families. In an effort to assess the effectiveness of the Epstein Model of Parental Involvement in high-poverty, high-minority schools, the authors conducted a case study of an urban elementary school that uses parental involvement practices stipulated in the model. This article provides implications for school counselors and suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

YOUNG CHILDREN SHIFT MEANINGS across multiple modes long before they have mastered formal writing skills. In a digital age, children are socialised into a wide range of new digital media conventions in the home, at school, and in communitybased settings. This article draws on longitudinal classroom research with a culturally diverse cohort of eight-year-old children, to advance new understandings about children's engagement in transmediation in the context of digital media creation. The author illuminates three key principles of transmediation, using multimodal snapshots of storyboard images, digital movie frames, and online comics. Insights about transmediation are developed through dialogue with the children about their thought processes and intentions for their multimedia creations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mary, an early childhood special education teacher, was well prepared for her next parent-teacher conference. She laid out a portfolio about Grace, a 20-month-old girl with developmental delays, which included pictures and projects from throughout the school year. As Grace's mother, Ms. Jackson, arrived, Mary greeted her with a smile and invited her to sit at the table. After a bit of small talk, Mary provided Ms. Jackson with a conference agenda and began talking about Grace while sharing artifacts from Grace's portfolio. Next, they discussed goals for Grace and how the goals would be implemented in the coming school year. Mary frequently asked Ms. Jackson if she had any questions. Although Ms. Jackson sometimes talked about Grace's home life, she largely listened to Mary. Next, Mary updated school forms, such as emergency contact information. At the end of the conference, Mary asked if Ms. Jackson had any questions, to which Ms. Jackson replied that she did not. With a smile, Mary indicated that she had discussed all of the needed information. Ms. Jackson thanked Mary and exited the room. Afterward, as Mary reflected on the conference, she realized that Ms. Jackson had hardly spoken. When Ms. Jackson arrived home, she told her aunt that Grace's parent-teacher conference was terribly frustrating: The teacher gave her few chances to talk and seemed uninterested in what she had to say. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing a collaborative home-school partnership in the special education process is one of the crucial indicators of successful educational planning. Special education laws and regulations strongly emphasize the importance of parental roles in the process. However, as is well documented in existing literature, it can be challenging for many culturally and linguistically diverse families to be schools' equal partners and to be actively involved in the process of developing their children's educational programs. As the number of Asian students with disabilities continues to increase, the purpose of this article is to illustrate two Chinese families' experiences and identify what educators and service providers could do to strengthen their partnerships with Chinese families of children with hearing impairments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning is situated in the practices of communities, such that children learn by participating in the communities they inhabit. Learning through participation in the practices of a community influences interpretation of and engagement with the social world, and has implications for the identity of the learner as a participant in a community. In this article, the connection between learning and identity will be explored from a sociocultural perspective. Children participate in many communities and must appropriately generalize learning across communities such as home and school. Research in the connection between identity and learning in schools will be reviewed because in many countries where schooling is mandatory it is an important context for this generalization. Then the paper will explore the choice of when and how to generalize across contexts and whether this choice is conscious. Lastly, the paper will propose some ways that the connection between learning and identity may complicate this generalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which investigated parent-school relationships emerging from increased parental involvement during the period of consultation on the Education Bill of School-Based Management in Hong Kong, China from 2003 to 2004. This interpretive and exploratory study also theorized parent-school partnerships emerging in three case study schools of this qualitative research. Also presented is a review of the literature on parent-school partnerships which offered references for the interpretive analysis of the descriptive data collected.

773 children (359 girls, 414 boys) of two age groups, 10 years and 14 years, completed a questionnaire about subjective experiences of home and school. Children who reported getting along well with their parents and finding it easy to communicate with them also reported being more satisfied with themselves, enjoying school more, feeling less lonely, being less bullied by others, and also bullying others less. Boys reported bullying more than girls and more satisfaction with themselves than girls. Girls reported enjoying school more, feeling lonelier, sometimes having trouble falling asleep, and having headaches more often than boys. Girls at age 14 reported experiencing a prominent increase in headaches and parental complaints about their eating habits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children at risk for early reading difficulties were identified on entry into kindergarten, and half of these children received small-group intervention two to three times a week during their kindergarten year. The other half received whatever remedial assistance was offered by their home schools. These children were again assessed at the beginning of first grade, and those who continued to have difficulties in reading received either one-to-one daily tutoring offered by project teachers from the beginning to the end of first grade or whatever remedial assistance was offered by their home schools over the same time period. All target children were periodically assessed through the end of third grade. Results suggest that either kindergarten intervention alone or kindergarten intervention combined with first-grade intervention are both useful vehicles for preventing early and long-term reading difficulties in most at-risk children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

America's early education sector remains so radically decentralized-a far flung archipelago of pre-schools family child-care homes, and subsidized individuals providing services-that basic information on local organizations and staff members remains scarce. This, despite rising policy trite rest in, and skyrocketing appropriations for, preschool programs which are aimed at boosting children's school readiness, Working from a social ecology framework, this study aimed to learn more about local populations of early education organizations. This paper uses 1990 household census data aggregated to the zip-code level to report on features of the early education workforce nationwide. Teachers and other staff in preschools and center-based programs reported low wages, averaging about $7,300 per year ($10,700 in 2000 dollars), with most working less than full time. The median center-based teacher was 34 years of age, reported having completed some college, and was married. The median worker in family child-care homes earned even less and only had a high school diploma. About 15% of all preschool teachers in urban areas were African-American; about 8% were Latina. Twice as many preschool and center teachers per 1,000 young children resided in affluent zip codes, relative to poor and lower middle-class areas. Preschools and centers located in blue-collar and middle-income zip codes displayed the lowest level of organizational formalization, compared to those operating in poor or affluent areas. We discuss the utility of 2000 census data to assess inequalities in the supply and quality of early education organizations and their staff and modeling how economic and policy forces may shape organizational variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article attempts to develop an alternative, drawing on author's work on the social organization of health visitor training begin by reviewing what remains the dominant contemporary mode of thinking about "profession." The attribute approach, and the main criticisms of it, which one may broadly identify as structural, political and epistemological. The author's argument will be that each of these is, in its own way, inadequate and that one should, rather, proceed to the empirical investigations of socially distributed commonsense knowledge of social structures, abandoning any claim to legislate a correct use of the term "profession," but treating it as a concept invoked by members of particular collectivities and seeking to describe its practical usage. The data employed in this paper were collected by participant observation of a polytechnic health visiting course over a period of twelve months. Material was obtained in lectures, tutorials and informal situations within the school and on home visits and clinic sessions during the student's concurrent fieldwork experience. As far as possible, field notes were recorded at the time of the observation.

Provides general guidelines to enhancing teacher-parent conferences with parents of diverse cultures. Guidelines using a variety of conference styles; Preparations for the conference; Planning the physical arrangement of the conference area.

The indicators of parental involvement in children's education vary considerably across studies, most of which treat parental involvement as a unidimensional construct. This study identified four dimensions of parental involvement and assessed the relationship of each dimension with parental background and academic achievement for a large representative sample of U.S. middle school students. The findings provide little support for the conjecture that parents with low socioeconomic status are less involved in their children`s schooling than are parents with higher socioeconomic status. Furthermore, although schools varied somewhat in parental involvement associated with volunteering and attendance at meetings of parent-teacher organizations, they did not vary substantially in levels of involvement associated with home supervision, discussion of school-related activities, or parent-teacher communication. Yet the discussion of school-related activities at home had the strongest relationship with academic achievement. Parents' participation at school had a moderate effect on reading achievement, but a negligible effect on mathematics achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to an article "School-Based Collaboration with Families: An Effective Model For a Society in Crisis," written by J. Brien O'Callaghan. Many of the diagnostic labels and special education programs based on "neuroedumedical" model are at best, ineffective, and at worst, counter-productive, serving only to maintain homeostasis in the educational system itself, often at the expense of the children it is intended to serve. There are some significant problems with the model as set forth by the author that need to be addressed, however. The comments will focus first on a discussion of the beneficial aspects of school-based collaboration with families and then proceed to the specific problems and limitations inherent in the framework as described. The intent is not to criticize but rather to encourage both marriage and family and school-based counselors to consider the potential for extending systems thinking, for going beyond traditional family therapy, and for adopting a multisystemic perspective to prevention and remedial services involving the family-child-school triad. The idea of developing family-school collaborative programs is an idea with much positive potential. Several school systems have already successfully implemented family collaboration programs of various types.

This article extends the work of previous writers in the area of family-school interventions by describing a more assertive and direct model for a society in crisis, one that shifts the ownership of child problem prevention and solution from the therapy office to the school. This model involves all the relevant players in a child's life and provides for the assumption by teachers and other educators of systemic roles in confronting relationship problems between and among teachers, parents, and children that are viewed as the primary causes and maintainers of child home and school problems. It provides a flow chart describing and illustrating intervention steps that can be used by schools to facilitate efficient, systemic interventions in schools. It also provides a grid depicting relationships between parenting styles and various kinds of child behaviors as an essential aid in the design of interventions. Finally, this article comments on the "politics of collaboration," that is, the agendas and issues that militate against the adoption of this model in schools, as well as the implications of this model for the functioning of marital and family therapists. The school-based ecosystemic collaboration model offers an organized, progressive, and alternative schema for dealing with child problems that are presented at school and with home problems about which school staff help is sought.

The article offers news briefs related to community education in the U.S. There have been educative styles and systems occurring throughout the U.S. which affect the lives and actions of people of all ages. The cooperation between the Washington Community Education Center and the Charleston Parks and Recreation Commission has developed to provide more recreational opportunities. The Rocky Mountain Regional Center has offered a workshop for custodians and coordinators to develop and maintain their positive working relations. The parents' teachers' association has gained immeasurability by providing support, leadership and strength to community education in Utah. The community leaders of Pleasant Grove, Utah coordinated to meet monthly to discuss and deal different community related problems.

Despite recent public furor on the matter, the best research on the effects of home television use on school performance suggests but does. not establish a small negative effect The present research considers the effects. of television use on growth in reading skills and general ability as well as on classroom achievement among El Salvadoran children in grades seven to nine. We examined the effects of television access (in particular the effect of recent acquisition of a TV set) on each of three separate cohorts of students over a two- to three-year period. There was no obvious effect on short-tern achievement. There were, however, consistent negative effects on reading improvement for all three cohorts, and a significant negative effect on general ability growth for one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the parent-teacher conference program for mentally handicapped boys adopted by the Marxhausen School in Detroit, Michigan. The boys were segregated according to their intelligence levels. Two-thirds of the program is composed of individualized activities on reading, arithmetic, social studies, spelling, and handwriting. The conference program was created in order to inform parents what are the purpose and scope of special education. Prior to the start of the first conference, parents were obliged to fill out forms so that teachers may know the extent of their knowledge on special education. When parents were evaluated after the conference, majority cited major benefits they earned from the conference such as better understanding on their children's behavior.

The article focuses on the effort given by the Illinois Parent's and Teacher's Association Plan to understand exceptional children. The exceptional children division of the Illinois Congress and the Office of Public Instruction joined to work and ensured that every local community in Illinois was informed on the needs of exceptional children. Based from observations, it shows that many parents need help and guidance, they are eager for personal counseling, parents should be informed about the school program and its application to their children, and there is a need for a program of public education.

The article presents information on the plan for delinquency prevention as operating in P.S. 181, Brooklyn. This section was at that time considered the most serious delinquency zone in Greater New York. The purpose of the plan was to combat the causes of juvenile delinquency. The opening move was the formation of a Child Welfare League among the teachers, which was broken up into various committees. Next, a parents' organization was formed and merged with the teachers' organization, and later, the adjoining school was organized in the same manner. The last step was the fusion of the two school-home organizations into the East Harlem Community Association. The objectives adopted by this organization were, primarily, to acquaint the people in the community with the nature of the problems that confronted them as individuals and as members of the community, and with possible solutions of these problems. In line with these objectives many projects were carried to completion. For example, a Delinquency Prevention Court com- posed of two principals, a social worker, and two community representatives was set up. Previous to a discussion of a specific case, all circumstances of the accused were investigated as, home conditions, health, and past behavior and in the light of the findings a program of action was shaped aiming at a more or less permanent readjustment of the delinquent.

This article presents information on school and community relations. Every school makes an effort to reach the community which it serves. Achievements have not been very desirable in most of the cases. After the first attempts are made without the expected results, the community is sealed with many adjectives such as lazy people, indifferent community, lack of responsibility, ignorant people, and others. On the other hand, the lay people start doing incorrect judgment about the school due to the fact that they do not know what the school is doing and how the job is performed. A barrier is established little by little and each one assumes a very defensive attitude. In most of the cases the Parents' and Teachers' Associations is organized. The first meeting is usually called for that purpose at the beginning of the school year. The main objective of the meeting is to appoint the new executive board. The way that the executive board is chosen is very well known. In the majority of the cases the faculty knows before hand who the members are going to be.

In the article, the author discusses the latest practices in music education, particularly in the U.S., as of April 2011. She cites as example the child-centered parent-teacher association (PTA) performances that were helped realized by Rosemary Wharton, a music teacher at the Grand Forks, North Dakota-based Belmont Elementary School. She presents her experience in doing the informal process-based performance called informance that was introduced by Mary Pautz.

The article focuses on a study about brain damaged parents in the U.S. Parents with brain damage can be identified by soft signs such as frustration, inability to see their child, fantasy, romanticism and inability to hear the professionals. A series of perceptual training for brain damaged parents can enhance cognitive processes. Therapy and counseling are also part of the parent reeducation program. The ultimate goal of these parents is to return to the community and they are mainstreamed by having them appear at local school board meetings and before parents' and teachers' associations.

The article discusses the effectiveness of community education in the U.S. The achievement of the child in school can be directly related on how a community or home perceives learning, based on suggested information in recent years. It is apparent that the attitude of the parent toward the school would determine largely the entering behavior of the child. The failures can be blamed due to a poor home or community environment, while the success of the child can be regarded as the success of the teacher. Thus, the relations between the home and the community should be legitimized at the institutional level.

The article reports developments on teacher education in the state of California. A workshop was held for classroom supervisors at the College of Pacific in Stockton to discuss and share common problems they have encountered. The California Congress of Parents and Teachers, a committee of the California Council on Teacher Education, has been studying the preparation of teachers for home-school community relations. A State Conference on Appraisal of Educational Problems was called by the California Congress of Parents and Teachers and the School of Education at Stanford University.

The article reports on the citizen survey utilizing a grassroot approach conducted by a PTA member at County High School in Missoula, Montana. An over all citizen survey group was organized with the helped of Parents' and teachers' association and school officials. Population trends, school programs and public opinion were studied. A petition campaign to get the bond issue on the ballot was launched by the committee. The play-by-play account of a successful effort to bring about consolidation of three rural Ohio school districts through a citizens committee working with specialists from the School-Community Development Study is available.

The article reports on the development in the teacher education in Wisconsin. The Executive Committee of the Wisconsin Education Association creates the Wisconsin Commission on Teacher Education and Professional Standards upon recommendation. The State Superintendent of Public Instruction selects the membership in a list of nominees. The Commission appoints Woods Dreyfus, Parent's and Teacher's Association and Beatrice Bengdorff, county superintendent, as members.