Building Family Partnerships: The Journey From Preservice Preparation to Classroom Practice

This study reports the relationship of an undergraduate course in family and community relations to the teaching practices of 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-year elementary and early childhood education graduates of a mid-sized Midwestern university. Sixty students were surveyed using the Peabody Family Involvement Survey (Katz & Bauch, 1999 Katz, L. and Bauch, J. P. 1999. The Peabody Family Involvement Initiative: Preparing preservice teachers for family / school collaboration. School Community Journal, 9: 49–69.  Google Scholar]), with a treatment group (n = 21) having taken the course, and a control group (n = 39) who did not, in order to both quantify and qualify a difference in practices based on preservice preparation. Quantitative measures indicated minimal differences between groups. Qualitatively, however, treatment group members reported engaging families in creative, less standardized levels of involvement than members of the control group. Treatment group members articulated a theoretical and practical understanding of the benefits of family involvement. They emphasized importance of collaboration between home and school, while control group members expressed frequent antagonism and ambivalence toward families.