Training School Professionals to Engage Families: A Pilot University/State Department of Education Partnership

Federal and professional mandates call for increased family involvement in education, yet most teacher preparation programs do not teach skills necessary to engage families in a thorough or systematic manner. The current project ad dressed this training deficit by offering a program that included a sequence of three graduate courses to a cohort of school professionals in a high-need school district. Courses were taught at a school within that district and included projects designed to address the needs of the community in which the participants were employed. Qualitative analysis suggests that following completion of the courses, school professionals enhanced their ability to engage families and experienced positive changes in attitude toward family–professional collaboration. Importantly, participants were able to articulate specific ways in which they planned to utilize new skills in the school setting. A unique aspect of this study was investigation of continued use of new knowledge and skills and implementation of action plans six months post-training.