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Family and Community Engagement

Catholic schools honour the role of parents as the first and ongoing nurturers and educators of their child. In partnering with families, this life-giving relationship transforms the possibilities for each child and promotes optimal engagement, achievement and wellbeing (Catholic Education Melbourne, 2017. Horizons of Hope Wellbeing Statement, p.8).

A family and community engagement approach for wellbeing and learning

School leaders, teachers and families are pivotal in fostering the wellbeing and learning of children and young people. Together they strengthen students’ ability to navigate the breadth of experiences they will face in their environment and relationships (Catholic Education Melbourne, 2018. eXcel: wellbeing for learning, p.6).

Catholic schools engage families and communities through a partnerships approach where:

Leaders, staff and families work collaboratively to create and strengthen safe, child friendly environments for learning
Relationships with families are actively fostered and sustained to support students to thrive in learning and life
Families and teachers are mentors and partners in their children’s learning journey, and
Families, teachers and other significant adults play complementary roles that contribute to the spiritual, emotional, social and cognitive development of the whole child.

Areas of focus for family and community engagement

Family and community engagement has the greatest impact

when parents and carers are valued and engaged as co-educators of their children;
when the whole school community works strategically toward shared goals; and
where building relationships is central to the educational approach of the school and is focused on
- a holistic view of the child and approach to education;
- student progress, skills and motivation for learning;
- the home and community as environments for learning; and
- mitigating the impact of disadvantage and barriers to engagement (Fox & Olsen, 2014)

Resources:

Parent Engagement in Action resource

The Parent Engagement in Action resource guides school leaders through a process of reflection and evaluation focusing on parental engagement across four key focus areas: Relationships, Learning, Leadership, and Reflection. It consists of two components:
The Guide and The Toolkit.

It is designed to assist school leaders and teachers to examine what they are doing well to engage parents in learning, and where they can improve. Leaders can use the Parent Engagement in Action resource to help their parish and school community form a deeper understanding of parent engagement. They are offered a selection of tools to assist with the collection and analysis of existing and new data around parent engagement, including the School Improvement Framework data. There is as much emphasis on formal data and research as there is on local information and knowledge. School leaders are encouraged to use the information gathered through this resource to evaluate and plan for improvement.

Leading Family School Partnerships

A document developed by Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools' (MACS) Wellbeing & Community Partnerships Unit to assist school leaders to understand and strengthen the role of school leadership in facilitating effective family, school and community partnerships. In this context leadership can be displayed in three related but distinctly different ways – in-school leadership, between school (cluster) leadership and leadership within the community. This work has been informed by a substantial evidence base and learnings from the MACS Family School Partnerships (FSP) initiative.

Community Conversations

This document provides schools and school leaders with an overview of the approach, and sets out how the practice of Community Conversations can lead to improved understanding and connected for whole school communities, and improved learning outcomes for students. The work has emerged from MACS' Family School Partnership initiative (2010–2013) with the support of Dr George Otero from the Centre from RelationaLearning, New Mexico.

Community Conversations – listening to Parent Voice in a school community.

This 7-minute film is a useful resource to help school leaders and staff further explore the purpose and process of a Community Conversation, showing how it might look in action in a school community.

Multimedia

Learning Together

The Learning Together – Engaging Parents and Families in School Learning DVD explores how Catholic school communities in the Archdiocese of Melbourne have engaged in family school partnerships work and the six dimensions of a strategy to support school leadership.

Engaging parents as partners in their child’s learning makes a difference to learning outcomes. The Support Materials for Schools provides guidelines, quotes and activities for school staff and communities to deepen and extend the conversation about engaging parents and families in their child’s learning.

Anne Henderson – what does a successful partnership school look like?

This 20-minute film of Anne Henderson, author of Beyond the Bake Sale, presents aspects of her research to a group of parents and teachers in Melbourne. Anne focuses on the reasons for working with parents and community, and what successful partnership schools look like. At the end of the clip, ideas to prompt discussions are provided.

Family School Partnership statement: animation

This Family School Partnership statement is a declaration of intention, a way of bringing to life the purpose behind why engage families and communities in children's education. It is designed to help school leaders understand the philosophy of family–school partnerships and to provoke conversations which deepen understandings around the key elements.

Professional learning and international collaboration

June 11 2015 – Leading Family School Partnerships – full day professional learning sessions with Ms Maggie Farrar and Dr George Otero

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

In May 2012, Maggie Farrar (National College for Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services, UK) presented a series of forums on school-community partnerships for learning, equity and excellence and the role of leadership in educational reform and school improvements. Maggie’s presentations for the three days are:

Family–School Partnership (FSP) Forum
Master Class
Workshop for school leaders
‘Closing the gap’ Framework (extract from the FSP forum).

Posters

Designed to support schools in their family and community engagement efforts, the posters can be printed and used to guide school involvement and planning processes, as well as a stimulus in staff professional learning.

These posters are reproduced from the MACS Family School Partnerships e-newsletter distributed each term. While they were developed for targeted school communities involved in the Smarter Schools National Partnerships, Family School Partnerships initiative, they are relevant resources for all school communities.

Family and Community Engagement: Through the lens of eXcel
Family and Community Engagement: Where do young people learn?
Family and Community Engagement: The language of learning
Family and Community Engagement: Three useful ways to think about family engagement in learning
Family and Community Engagement: Leading for improvement
Family and Community Engagement: Family school partnerships statement
Family and Community Engagement: What’s your viewpoint
Family and Community Engagement: Relationships are the key to learning
Family and Community Engagement: Everyone has a part to play

Additional Posters

Translated Family School Partnerships Posters

Schools, Families and, Social and Emotional Learning
    Amharic
    Arabic
    Chinese (Simplified | Traditional)
    Dinka
    Khmer
    Spanish
    Vietnamese

Where do young people learn (translated):
    Amharic
    Arabic
    Chinese (Simplified | Traditional)
    Dinka
    Khmer
    Spanish
    Vietnamese

References

Catholic Education Melbourne (CEM) 2017, Horizons of Hope: Wellbeing in a Catholic School, CEM, East Melbourne. https://www.cem.edu.au/Our-Schools/Curriculum-Learning-Programs/Student-Wellbeing/eXcel.aspx

Catholic Education Melbourne (CEM) 2018, eXcel: Wellbeing for learning in Catholic school communities, CEM, East Melbourne. https://www.cem.edu.au/Our-Schools/Curriculum/Horizons-of-Hope.aspx

Fox & Olsen, 2014. Education Capital: our evidence base defining parent engagement. Australian Research Alliance for Children, Youth and Families. https://www.education.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/687476/52828-DET-Defining-Parental-Engagement-A4-Report_AccPDF_01.pdf.

Additional Resources

Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, 2011. Strengthening family and community engagement in student learning resource. http://www.partners4learning.edu.au/_uploads/_ckpg/files/Attachment%205_Strengthening%20family%20and%20community%20engagement%20in%20student%20learning%20resource.pdf

Harris, A, Andrew-Power, K & Goodall, J 2009, Do Parents Know They Matter? Raising achievement through parental engagement

Henderson, A. T., Mapp, K. L., Johnson, V. R., & Davies, D. (2007). Beyond the bake sale: the essential guide to family school partnerships

Mapp, K & Knutter, J. 2013. Partners in Education: a dual capacity building framework for building family school partnerships. SEDL http://www.sedl.org/pubs/framework/FE-Cap-Building.pdf

Ontario Ministry of Education, October 2012. Capacity Building Series: Parent Engagement. http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/CBS_parentEngage.pdf

Otero, G, 2016. Connecting school, family and community. http://relationalearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Seminar-Series-256-July2016-D1.pdf

West-Burnham, J., Farrar, M., & Otero, G. (2007). Schools and communities: working together to transform children's lives.

Parents as Partners