Weaving Family Engagement Practices into Preservice Teacher Education: Supporting Future Educators in Partnering with Families from the Start

Abstract

This reflection of my practice arises from my background as an educator working with children and their families for over thirty years, as well as the professional learning I have engaged with throughout my career. In this reflective practice article, I focus on how family engagement knowledge and practices can be integrated into preservice teacher education courses by including outcomes addressing family engagement and providing immersive experiences with children and families in course content and assignments. Preservice teachers state that working with children and their families in these courses has significantly enhanced their learning and positively influenced their teaching philosophy and future practice. I use Schon’s conceptualization of reflective practice, the ability to reflect on one’s actions to facilitate continuous learning and improvement, in my own work as a practitioner. In this article, I demonstrate praxis and share specific examples from my practice to invite readers to use and adapt them for their own use and context.

1. Introduction

After thirty-one years of teaching in elementary school and working as an Early Years Coach, I was taking a new position as a teacher educator. I felt the weight of this new responsibility because I recognized how much there is to learn, and I had so much I wanted to share based on my practice and graduate studies. One key element is the importance of working with families because when I was a schoolteacher, I often heard new teachers say that one of the most difficult things they encounter when they start teaching is interacting with parents, and that they receive no preparation for it in their preservice training.

Throughout my career teaching young children in elementary school, I had many interactions with parents: some positive and some not-so-positive. Through these experiences, I learned that all parents want what’s best for their children. I noticed that when I built relationships with parents, we had a much better understanding of each other, and I learned many important things about my students. Our communication was easier and everyone benefited. It was not until much later in my career when I started learning about family engagement during my graduate studies that I understood why. It had been so easy to make assumptions about parents, and to believe they did not care about their child’s education because they didn’t do what I thought they should do. I felt that although they might know what was best for their child at home, I genuinely believed I was the expert on their child at school. Ironically, I also felt that I was the expert in the home as I had expectations of what parents should be doing during the time they spent together at home. For example, I made it clear I expected families to read together for at least twenty minutes every day, I sent home spelling words to be practiced and memorized each week, and I sent other homework I expected to be completed. Even when parents told me that ‘homework’ was a miserable time in their house, filled with frustration and tears, I did not change my practice.

If I could only go back now and do it all over again, I would do it so differently. Even if I couldn’t prevent my preservice teachers from making some of the same mistakes I made, how could I prepare them to work in positive ways with the families of their students?

In this reflective practice paper, I explore my core understandings of parent engagement gained from professional practice as an elementary teacher, my graduate studies, professional reading and development, and as a teacher educator. I situate my knowledge in the theoretical underpinnings of Schwab’s (1973) idea of the child in context and curricular commonplaces, as well as Schön’s (1983) Deweyan perspective as described by Third (2022) that considers reflecting on experiences as deep learning. I will also discuss research in the field of family engagement and expectations for family engagement in the province of Saskatchewan as well as other areas in Canada. This relates directly to what preservice teachers need in this area for teacher preparation. I consider how this knowledge and theory inform my practice in supporting preservice teachers to work in meaningful ways with the children they teach and the families they serve. I will describe course materials and experiences that support preservice teachers in using parent and family knowledge, examining typical taken-for-granted practices in schools, and adopting a family-centric (Pushor, 2015b) approach to teaching and learning.

2. My Initial Experience with Family Engagement as an Educator

My teaching career comprises 31 years of teaching elementary school in Saskatchewan, Canada, including 14 years teaching Prekindergarten, and 3 years as the Early Learning Coach for my school division. As most of my elementary teaching was done in smaller rural schools, I often knew the parents of my students and was usually able to build relationships with those I didn’t know. I communicated with parents through monthly newsletters, phone calls, and chats in the hallway. Our school often hosted events that we invited parents to attend such as Halloween Parades, Christmas Concerts, and Outdoor Playdays. We asked parents to volunteer regularly and held typical 15 min parent-teacher interviews twice per year. I believed I was engaging with families.

When I started teaching Prekindergarten, my understanding of family engagement began to change. Prekindergarten (PreK) programs in the province of Saskatchewan are built on a foundation of working with parents and families. In 1996, the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education implemented PreK to “help give children the opportunity to start Kindergarten with the social, emotional and intellectual skills necessary to succeed.” (Saskatchewan Ministry of Education Early Learning and Childcare Branch, 2008, p. 1). Though all schools do not offer Prekindergarten programs, the number of programs has grown from 26 when introduced to 316 programs currently (Government of Saskatchewan, 2025). The importance of Parent and Family Engagement is visible in the objectives of the PreK program which are to:

• foster shared responsibility for the development and well-being of the children;
• provide opportunities for parents to participate directly in their children’s learning and to be perceived by their children as role models, ‘teachers’ and as key people in the learning program;
• provide learning opportunities for parents to develop and enhance parenting and other life skills; and
• encourage shared ownership for the Prekindergarten among families” (Saskatchewan Ministry of Education Early Learning and Childcare Branch, 2008, p. 14).

These objectives are the starting point for educators working in the PreK program. My understanding of these objectives was personalized as I started teaching Prekindergarten when my son, Jacob, was less than a year old. Raising my own child while also teaching young students and working with their families was an incredibly significant catalyst for my understanding of the connections between young children and the context in which they live and learn. As part of the mandate of PreK to engage with families, I held many family events which Jacob often attended. Another way I engaged with families was by visiting them in their homes as I followed the guidance in the PreK document that “Visiting with parents and family members in their homes is a highly effective way to establish and maintain communication and to foster trust between home and school” (Saskatchewan Ministry of Education Early Learning and Childcare Branch, 2008, p. 15). These home visits were a starting point in supporting me to think about my positioning with parents and families in new ways. In this way, I began to “honour the family as children’s first teachers and collaborate with them to provide consistent support and culturally responsive learning opportunities” (Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, 2012, p. 2). My experiences with family events and home visits would prove to be very valuable when teaching preservice teachers about parent engagement.

3. Parent Engagement as My Philosophy and Pedagogy

I continued to build on my professional and practical experience with parent engagement in 2015 when I entered graduate studies in Curriculum Studies at the University of Saskatchewan (USask). Dr. Debbie Pushor, who has spent many years researching family engagement, was my supervisor and the professor for some of my courses such as Re/Presenting Families in Schools and Engaging Parents in Teaching and Learning (Pushor, 2013b). I found that in order to open my mind and heart to new ways of working with families, I first had to examine my own beliefs and assumptions about parents, and my own taken-for granted practices. I realized that in past practice I had heard stories of families and accepted them for truth rather than listening to family stories. I made assumptions about families and decided who the ‘good families’ were based on my limited knowledge. Engaging in cultural and community experiences as part of my graduate courses helped me learn the importance of learning family stories (Huber et al., 2010) directly from the family, rather than stories of families we might hear from someone else. We learned from Elders and took part in a Sweatlodge ceremony. We participated in a core community walk and visited with clients at the Friendship Inn which is a soup kitchen, and Switch, a clinic committed to improving the health, education, and skills of people from Saskatoon’s core communities. We were invited to reflect on families facing poverty, homelessness, racism, and mental health issues, and how we might be contributing to them being ‘othered’ or made to feel less than (Turner-Vorbeck & Miller Marsh, 2008). Hearing many parents share how much they loved their children and wanted only the best for them, no matter what their circumstances were, was heartwarming and enlightening. As graduate students, we reflected on the important parent knowledge (Pushor, 2015a) these parents had about their children and how we could view parents and families as strength based. We were challenged to think about building relationships and making space in schools for all parents. This greatly enhanced my understanding of parents and their capacity to support their children’s learning.

As I delved further into my graduate studies, the notion of ‘parent’ as a verb, rather than a noun (Pushor, 2013a) came to life for me. From this perspective, the parent is a particular role as defined by the responsibility of caregiving, rather than a person (Pushor, 2013a). The idea of honoring parents as a child’s first teacher that I had learned about as a PreK educator was reinforced as Pushor brought forth the awareness that education is from birth to forever (Pushor, 2013a). I also realized that when I had parents sign agendas, volunteer and attend ‘special events’, I was involving parents in school defined mandates, rather than engaging them in teaching and learning. I connected to Gerzon-Kessler’s (2024) notion that “Schools typically engage with families in conventional ways when it comes to forging relationships. They offer the same events every year to preserve these comfortable arrangements. For many decades, the dynamic between schools and families has been driven by an involvement approach rather than one based on mutual partnership” (Gerzon-Kessler, 2024, p. 5). Pushor’s (2007) description of parent involvement is something that anyone can do such as volunteering, fundraising, or bringing items for the bake sale. Their parent knowledge is not accessed or integrated into teaching and learning. Parents are helping with the school agenda and come only when the school calls. Conversely, parent engagement is about teachers and parents working together in partnership, for the benefit of all. Engaged parties work together like the meshing of gears with a common goal, and without one of the partners the process could not continue. The decision-making power is shared equally between educators and family members, and the agenda is set in partnership as mutually beneficial (Pushor, 2007). I recognized that when educators view parents as a child’s first teacher and engage them in teaching and learning, they can reimagine curriculum as much more than a paper document, but as a collaboration of learning that happens on and off the school landscape, and a place where parents have a place and voice.

My graduate studies were a significant time of transformation, which greatly impacted my beliefs and knowledge. Family engagement was now part of my philosophy of teaching and learning and became embedded in my practice. Understanding the importance of reflecting on biases and assumptions, learning family stories as opposed to stories of families, and knowing the difference between involvement and engagement all became important aspects of family engagement I would later help preservice teachers unpack in our courses.

4. Family Engagement as Foundational in a Preservice Teacher Education Framework

In June of 2021, I accepted a position as Lecturer in the Department of Curriculum Studies for the University of Saskatchewan (USask). I would be an instructor for teacher education courses in the Early Childhood Education (ECE) stream that provides specialized preparation for teachers hoping to teach Prekindergarten to Grade 3. The ECE program had recently been developed to respond to Saskatchewan Ministry of Education data that 65% of Prekindergarten teachers and 72% of Kindergarten teachers had no formal training in early childhood education (Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, 2018). Eight core courses were written and developed by a team including a USask Faculty Lead, Saskatchewan Ministry of Education Early Years Branch Representative, and a liaison among partners, administration, and developers, with input from Saskatchewan superintendents of education and teachers in the field.

Through this partnership of educators, administrators, and Ministry of Education leaders, a vision statement which highlights family engagement as an integral component to the teacher education program was formed. The Vision Statement for the USask Early Childhood Education Program is as follows:

The early years stream of the teacher education program at the College of Education, University of Saskatchewan, situated on Treaty 6 Territory and Homeland of the Métis, is designed to inspire early years teachers to

• examine their beliefs and assumptions in relation to the curricular commonplaces of student, teacher, subject matter, and milieus (Schwab);
• hold a holistic image of the child as strong, capable, and curious;
• develop a philosophy and pedagogy reflective of current early childhood education theory and practice;
• walk alongside children, parents, families, and communities, in ways that honor their identity, worldview, knowledge, and strengths;
• co-construct inspiring indoor, outdoor, and place-based learning spaces that serve as a third teacher; and
• engage as a reflective and professional educator.

ECE Partnership Vision Statement 13 August 2018

This vision statement guided my practice as a teacher educator in this program.

As I began preparing the syllabi for the ECE courses I would be teaching, I explored the work of Joseph Schwab (1973) to obtain an understanding of his notion of the curriculum commonplaces, as these understandings were embedded in the program vision identified above. Schwab (1973) identifies five commonplaces, or bodies of experience, which must be represented in curriculum: subject matter, learners, the milieus, teachers, and the curriculum making process itself. Traditionally educators have focused mostly on the subject matter (e.g., mathematics, social studies). Schwab proposed the importance of understanding the learners in terms of their prior knowledge and attitudes toward learning, as well as their interests (Schwab, 1973). Since children do not exist in isolation, educators must also consider their contexts or ‘milieus’ such as school, neighborhood, and cultural groups, as well as their families. “The relevant milieus are manifold, nesting one within another like Chinese boxes” (Schwab, 1973, p. 503). Teachers bring forth their own backgrounds, personalities, attitudes, passions, and desires for teaching and learning (Schwab, 1973). The final body of experience is the curriculum-making process itself and involves how the other body of experiences, or commonplaces of curriculum, relate to and with each other (Schwab, 1973).

Curriculum-making is an important consideration in teacher education. Although the University of Saskatchewan Early Childhood courses are created in separate subject areas, the notion that curriculum-making involves more than the subject matter is essential. Pushor encapsulates Schwab’s (1973) ideas stating that “the teacher does not make curriculum in isolation. It is in the teacher’s intertwining of his or her life with the children’s lives, the parents’ and families’ lives, and the subject matter that curriculum is made (Pushor, 2013a, pp. 13–14).

Outcomes in the various courses state that preservice teachers will apply an understanding of Schwab’s curricular commonplaces of teacher, student, subject matter, and milieus in order to build relationships with children and their families and create community of learners that promotes agency, voice, and choice. Throughout the course descriptions, learning about children in the contexts of family, community and school is a critical theme. “How, then, do we take up Schwab’s conceptualization of curriculum in our teaching lives and move beyond the milieus of our classrooms and schools to learn about children, their families, their hopes and dreams, and their lives?” (Pushor, 2013a, p. 10). This was important for me to consider as I began working with preservice teachers.

5. Expectations for Family Engagement in the Field

Professional Standards for Teacher Accreditation

Although the University of Saskatchewan Early Childhood Education Program has family engagement embedded into its framework, many preservice teacher education programs in Canada do not. As I was interested in what was happening in other universities, I looked at some of the research and found that the issue of not preparing educators to work with parents is widely recognized in the literature (de Bruїne et al., 2104; Epstein & Sanders, 2006; Evans, 2013; Mutton et al., 2018; Patte, 2011; Uludag, 2008), with Antony-Newman (2024a) identifying that “many teachers feel unprepared to effectively and collaboratively work with parents and families” (p. 2).

In this section I will share some research that explores policies about family engagement as part of professional standards for teacher accreditation in various places across Canada, as well as specifically in Saskatchewan. I will also highlight the work that is being done in partnership with school divisions and the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education to implement systematic family engagement in schools across the province. This is important in order to understand what preservice teachers need as part of their teacher preparation.

The research literature highlights a need for preservice teachers to learn about family engagement in their teacher education programs. For example, Antony-Newman (2024b) conducted a critical analysis of Canadian Standards about guidelines in policy for teachers’ and school leaders’ readiness for parental engagement. In his analysis, he seeks to understand what is known about expectations for parental engagement as part of teacher professional standards, as well as how policy provisions support teachers’ capacity for parental engagement (Antony-Newman, 2024b). In his exploration of a variety of Canadian policy documents, Antony-Newman (2024b) found three key themes of existing expectations for teachers engaging in parental engagement. Teachers are expected to:

• Build positive and respectful relationships.
• Establish effective communication practices.
• Create opportunities for parents to become partners through active participation in student learning.

These expectations for teachers extend beyond traditional taken-for-granted practices of parent involvement in classrooms (e.g., parents helping out with field trips or activities based on the teacher’s request) and align with the Family Engagement in Prekindergarten resource guide (Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, 2012) for family engagement.

Though there is an implicit expectation for teachers to partner with parents in meaningful ways, Antony-Newman (2024b) found little guidance in policy documents across Canada for how this will be supported. For example Antony-Newman (2024b) found that the Ontario College of Teacher’s (OCT) Accreditation Resource Guide (Ontario College of Teachers, 2017a, in Antony-Newman, 2024b) was the only Canadian policy document he examined that includes specific recommendations for teachers to build reciprocal partnerships with parents. Examination of the revised 2023 OCT Accreditation Resource Guide found:

The inclusion of parent and guardian engagement and communication is intended to ensure that teacher candidates recognize the important role of parents and guardians as partners, and that candidates develop strategies for working effectively with families to support and facilitate student learning and well-being. The intention is that teacher candidates will develop skills in building respectful, productive, authentic relationships and in communicating with parents and families regarding student learning, conduct and development. Teacher candidates will understand and use the diverse strengths and backgrounds of students, families and communities in planning, instruction and assessment.

(Ontario College of Teachers, 2023, p. 56)

The Accreditation Resource Guide (Ontario College of Teachers, 2023) goes on to recognize the knowledge, skills, perspectives and practices of parent engagement that teacher candidates (preservice teachers) will acquire through their teacher education program including an understanding of “the positive ways in which families contribute to each student’s learning and well-being” (p. 57). The document describes how this will be integrated into teacher preparation courses with evidence of family engagement in course outlines and syllabi, materials that reflect ways of working with parents, as well as assignments that require community observation and engagement and assignments requiring ideas for parent engagement (Ontario College of Teachers, 2023). Additionally, preservice teachers will be required to reflect on effective ways to engage parents during their practicum reflection (Ontario College of Teachers, 2023).

Seeing family engagement knowledge, perspectives, and practices as part of teacher certification policies in Ontario was encouraging. I wanted to compare it to the professional standards in my own province of Saskatchewan. I found that the importance of working with families is visible within teacher certification practices in Saskatchewan. For example, the Saskatchewan Professional Teachers Regulatory Board (SPTRB), the body responsible for certifying teachers in this province, has outlined teacher competencies that all preservice teachers must demonstrate in order to become certified. These competencies center around expectations for professionalism, knowledge, instruction, and curriculum (Saskatchewan Professional Teachers Regulatory Board, n.d.). Though working with families may be an implicit part of these competencies, families are only mentioned once under the area of professionalism in regard to expecting teachers to demonstrate “the ability to maintain respectful, mutually supportive and equitable professional relationships with learners, colleagues, families and communities” (Saskatchewan Professional Teachers Regulatory Board, n.d., p. 2). Specific expectations for family engagement knowledge or practices are not evident in Saskatchewan professional standards for educators.

The importance of this research is knowing that, although parent engagement is not yet built into preservice teacher education or provincial teacher certification standards in many places in Canada, we can continue to build it into our courses and programs.

6. Saskatchewan Provincial Education Priorities

As part of my work as an Early Learning Coach for my previous school division, I worked directly with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. In Saskatchewan, family engagement is an integral part of early learning and is becoming part of policy and practice in many school divisions, not only in early years, but across all grades.

In the current Saskatchewan context, the Provincial Education Plan 2030 created by the Government of Saskatchewan (2023) includes four priority actions, which include:

• Learning and Assessment
• Indigenous Education
• Mental Health and Well-Being
• Student Transitions

Within these priority areas, working with families is a key component of the Student Transitions priority, where there is a directive to

foster connections for learners and their families while supporting learners as they enter and progress through school to graduation and determine a life pathway [and also states that] engaging families and caregivers from school entry throughout a child’s education will be an important focus of this action.

(Government of Saskatchewan, 2023, p. 2)

The Provincial Level Action Plan Student Transitions Team is building on this directive and engaging parents’ and caregivers’ voices and insights as an integral part of the planning process. They intend to move schools in our province from a school-centric (Lawson, 2003) approach to strength-based family-centric models which deepen relationships to foster engagement, belonging, and identity in education and schools. The team is building A Provincial Family Engagement Framework, which will include guiding principles and important terminology. This framework was written and vetted with stakeholder groups across the province and will be launched in September 2025. Creating a playbook with a continuum of family engagement strategies will be the next step in this process. These strategies will align with the Provincial Framework, which will guide the work of school divisions and participating First Nations education authorities (Saskatchewan Provincial Education Plan Student Transitions Team, 2023).

As our province moves toward a systematic integration of parent engagement in all schools in the province, it is critical that preservice teachers receive necessary training in parent engagement. In the next section, I will demonstrate how I support preservice teachers in developing knowledge, skills, and perspectives to make parent engagement part of their philosophy, pedagogy, and future practice.

7. Relationship Building–Showing Preservice Teachers How to Begin

My goal when I began teaching preservice teachers was to share my knowledge and experience from my thirty-plus year teaching career to help prepare them to be educators. I began from a starting point that is integral to who I am–relationships. The importance of building relationships cannot be overstated in preservice teacher education. At the beginning of each of the ECE courses I teach, we engage in activities to get to know each other. In the Early Literacy course, I describe who I am with photos and a playlist of my life in songs. Preservice teachers are invited to share a representation of who they are through their own playlist or booklist. In Math in the Early Years, we describe who we are in numbers, such as our birthdate, street address, or number of siblings. In the Reading and Writing Development course, we read Linda Christensen’s (2001) article, Where I’m From: Inviting Students’ Lives into the Classroom. Christensen discusses a lesson she created using George Lyon’s poem Where I’m From. Christensen reminisces “I still remember the teachers who brought my home and culture into school… It was a moment of sweet joy for me when my two worlds of home and school bumped together in a harmony of reading, writing, and laughter” (Christensen, 2001, p. 5). Using this article in my courses prompts preservice teachers to begin thinking about how important it is that home and school are connected. They are invited to brainstorm ideas of where they are from and contribute a line to our collaborative Where I’m From poem which becomes part of our class community of conscience. In each of these instances, we connect our relationship building experiences to Schwab’s (1973) idea of curricular commonplaces and how that might impact curriculum making in our own course. Preservice teachers begin to understand that who they are, where they come from, and the contexts in which they live will impact their learning and ways of being together in the class. They see real examples of ways they can start to build relationships and community in their future classrooms. This awareness sets the tone for explicit learning about family engagement in the coursework.

8. Family Engagement as Situated in Course Content and Experiences

My understanding of the importance of family engagement has been informed by my experience as an educator and early learning coach, professional development and reading throughout my career, and knowledge gained from my graduate studies. Family engagement is not an event or a practice. It became my philosophy and pedagogy as I partnered with families and saw the positive results. Over fifty years of research has shown that everyone benefits when there is an effective family-school-community partnership (Mapp, 2023; Boone et al., 2021). Based on my knowledge and research, I intended to specifically teach and integrate family engagement into my preservice teacher courses. Although family engagement is woven through the entire Early Childhood Education program at USask, the specific examples I will share can be integrated into different courses and contexts on their own. I will show how preservice teachers can be supported in partnering with families, right from the start.

8.1. Early Literacy, Prekindergarten to Grade 3

Included in the course materials for Early Literacy are articles and chapters that preservice teachers read to understand the concepts of parent knowledge and funds of knowledge (Pushor, 2015a), partnering with families to help develop early language and literacy (Boone et al., 2021), and ways that families promote early literacy (Caspe & Lopez, 2017). Preservice teachers also explore the Family Engagement in Prekindergarten: A Resource Guide for Teachers and Associates that I used when teaching Prekindergarten and elementary school, and the Introduction and Examining Beliefs and Assumptions videos from the Care As A Bridge Between Us Video Series (Pushor & The Parent Engagement Collaborative III, 2020) which is supported by the Saskatchewan Early Years Outcome Team and the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. Preservice teachers take this course as one of their first education curriculum courses and they usually have little background knowledge in family engagement.

Because of my experience in graduate studies, I believe that it is essential for preservice teachers to unpack their biases and assumptions about parents and families in order to be open to collaborating with them in teaching and learning. These are some of the specific talking points we use in the Early Literacy course to foster discussion:

• All parents care about their children.
• The curriculum is too complicated for parents to understand.
• I know what is best for the child at school and the parents know what is best for the child at home.
• Parents can contribute to school curriculum.
• If a child misses lots of school, they aren’t going to learn anything.
• I can’t do Home Visits. They are too dangerous.

This results in a robust discussion about their beliefs, what they have seen, and their preconceived ideas about families. I share some of my experiences in working with families and how my beliefs and assumptions have been challenged and changed over time and with experience. However, many preservice teachers are still hesitant to engage with families in meaningful ways.

We then discuss how the talking points connect to the four essential core beliefs of family engagement outlined in Henderson et al.’s (2007) Beyond the Bake Sale:

• All families have dreams for their children and want the best for them.
• All families have the capacity to support their children’s learning.
• Families and Schools are equal partners.
• The responsibility for cultivating and sustaining partnerships among school, home, and community rests primarily with school staff, especially school leaders.

Based on their prior experiences and stories OF families they have heard, preservice teachers still have difficulty understanding that all families want what’s best for their children and have the capacity to support their children’s learning. To support preservice teachers’ understanding of these core beliefs, I do an in-class demonstration. I use three empty glasses. I state different possible family scenarios such as a two-parent home (fill glass halfway with water) with extended family nearby for support (add water) and one parent who has health complications (pour some water out). Another family constitutes a single mother (fill one quarter with water), who uses the food bank (add a bit of water) and the teacher does a home visit (add more water). This demonstration helps preservice teachers reflect on the belief that all families have capacity. All families have a cup. What we do as educators can either help to fill the cup or empty it. Different families need different supports.

Another practice I have is to invite guests into the class to share their knowledge and expertise of family engagement with preservice teachers. Dr. Emma Chen shared her doctoral research which centers around transnational parent knowledge in heritage language education. Preservice teachers read Chen’s 2021 article, 5 ways immigrant parents support children’s home language learning, which breaks down stereotypes that parents whose first language is not English cannot support learning at home and highlights the capacity these parents have to support learning. Chen describes the home language that is used in daily conversations as well as inter-generational communication that exists in the transnational families. Language is also learned through reading picture books in intimate and creative ways and the introduction of more complex vocabulary through real-life stories. Nurturing a passion for early writing is another way that parents support their children in literacy learning (Chen, 2021). Listening to a parent discuss the capacity of parents begins to open the minds of preservice teachers.

As another guest in our class, Dr Debbie Pushor invites preservice teachers to consider their assumptions about what we would call a ‘disengaged’ parent and why they assume that parent is disengaged. She discusses being a guest host–a guest in the family’s lives, but a host in inviting them into their child’s learning (Pushor et al., 2005). She also brings forth the idea of shifting from schoolcentric ways of doing things, which serve the school’s agenda, to familycentric practices which hold the child and family at the center. Pushor enhances preservice teachers’ understanding of parent knowledge and funds of knowledge they learned about in their readings (Pushor, 2015a) and connects to the third core belief that families and schools are equal partners. Parent knowledge can be relational, bodied, embodied, intuitive, intimate, and uncertain. Parents know and understand things about their children that no one else can. Families also have funds of knowledge that are personal, practical, professional or craft, as well as knowledge of children, teaching, and learning. When educators can access parent knowledge and family funds of knowledge and position it alongside teacher knowledge, they engage in a true partnership to support the child. This can enhance curriculum and learning on and off the school landscape (Pushor, 2015a).

This knowledge about the capacity parents have to support their child’s learning, as well as the concepts of parent knowledge and funds of knowledge is imperative for the first two assignments in the Early Literacy course. The Family Photovoice Project is one of my favorite assignments in all my courses. In a photovoice project, photographic images are used to tell a story. In the context of this course, preservice teachers work as partners and collaborate with a family to tell their family story through the Photovoice Project. Preservice teachers find a family to work with that have a child in Kindergarten to Grade 3 (for the purpose of the Early Literacy course). If they do not have any connections to families with young children, I help find a family for them to work with. They spend time visiting with the child and family to build a relationship. This might mean visiting the family in their home or at a coffee shop or park, or joining them in a family activity. Preservice teachers ask the family to collect photographs for the project that share aspects of their child, home, and community that they believe are important to know. As the family shares the photos, the preservice teachers have a conversation with parents asking questions such as: What are your hopes and dreams for your child? What do you see as their strengths and gifts? What does your child know and what are they able to do in relation to emergent literacy? How does your child learn? What does your family enjoy doing together? How do you promote literacy at home, consciously or unconsciously? This supports relationship building with the child and family and helps the preservice teachers understand the importance of getting to know a child within the context of their family.

Understandably, preservice teachers are hesitant about working with a family, especially if they do not know them at all. I share my experience of doing a family photovoice for one of my grad studies courses. I decided to ask a family that I did not know well because the mother was hesitant to enroll her child in Prekindergarten. I made contact a couple of times to introduce myself and make a connection and then asked the mom if she might be willing to work with me on a project I had to do for one of my university classes. We visited while walking around their yard and she showed me various fruit trees and areas they had created to spend time as a family. Within half an hour, I had learned many things about her children and family that would benefit me as an educator and left with a bag of fresh fruit from their yard! After multiple visits, I created a beautiful photovoice that shared their family story. Because we had built a relationship, the mother trusted me and enrolled her child in Prekindergarten. Our relationship continued to blossom for the entire time her son was in PreK and long afterward. Any assumptions I had made about the family were replaced by the family story I learned from doing the photovoice project with them.

I also share my practice of doing home visits regularly as a Prekindergarten teacher. I tell them that the term ‘Home Visits’ may have a negative connotation for some families so I call them ‘Get to Know You’ visits. For me, doing these visits at the beginning of the school year was such a rich experience! I learned so much from and about each one of the children and their families! I noticed that children who had previously been shy were more comfortable with me in their home and excited to show me their bedroom and belongings. I remember sitting with the children and reading the book I brought for them. I was able to see their family photos and the cultures represented in their home. The learning that was happening within the home was visible. Children were able to see the adults who cared for them spend time together. In some homes, families took me on tours of their garden to see how they grow their own food. In other homes, I sampled food from various cultures. I met many family members who were important to the students I taught. I watched a Kokum [Grandmother] sewing a jingle dress. I noticed a wooden growth chart that a family had made and asked if they might make one for our class. This eventually led to a family event where those parents taught the other parents how to make a wooden sign for their homes! I saw that every parent loved their children, had hopes and dreams, and wanted the best for them. The best question I asked when visiting was ‘Is there anything else about your family you would like me to know?’ The home visits created opportunities to build relationships as we shared about our families and listened to one another, leading to meaningful family engagement throughout the year.

In addition to visiting families and creating the Family Photovoice, preservice teachers had to write a reflection describing what they had learned about the child, about family engagement, and about themselves while doing the assignment. This aligns with the fundamental theories and models of reflection and reflective practice of Dewey and Schön described by Third (2022) which emphasizes the importance of involving the learner in reflection. “Reflection can be described as a learning tool, something that is going to help you to synthesize, explain, and make sense of something, while developing meaning from your experiences. It can be considered to be a professional competence, a skill but more likely a disposition. It is through examining our heart, our values and our thinking we can examine and rethink our pedagogical practice” (Third, 2022, p. 16). Preservice teachers are involved in a continuous cycle of reflection as they build a relationship with the family, learn about them, connect to early literacy, and create a photovoice which tells the family story.

The reflections highlighted the preservice teachers’ understanding of the importance of parent knowledge. They came to understand the role of parents as experts of their child and realized many aspects of the child they came to know from parent knowledge they would not otherwise have known. They gained a more open mind when it came to doing home visits as they realized that it wasn’t that scary and there were so many positive benefits. They also demonstrated an understanding of the important roles that families play and described many intentional and unintentional ways that families create nurturing and supportive environments that support holistic and literacy development. Partners in the photovoice reflected ‘Throughout our time participating in the family photovoice project and class discussions, it has become abundantly clear the crucial role families play in their child’s education and holistic development’ (Anonymous, ECUR 307 Family Photovoice Reflection, p. 2).

This is supported by Qarooni’s (2024) stance that “families are already providing thoughtful literacy and language support, in their own ways, infused with love-telling stories, growing knowledge about the world, and teaching their children how to read situations and experiences in ways that directly support literacy growth in the classroom (Qarooni, 2024, p. 16).

In their reflections, preservice teachers also communicated the importance of creating strong connections with families to significantly enhance their students’ learning experiences. They realized that learning about a child’s interests, learning styles, and individual strengths and needs would help them provide an inclusive, supportive environment in their classrooms. In one photovoice reflection, preservice teachers stated ‘For teaching candidates, recognizing the value in family knowledge allows us to create a bridge between home and school as an answer to how we as educators can collaborate with parents to form reciprocal relationships that best support students’ (Anonymous, ECUR 307 Family Photovoice Reflection, p. 9). It was evident that many preservice teachers now understood that parents care deeply for their children and have the capacity to support their learning.

In assignment one, preservice teachers are able to connect knowledge to practice as they learn about a child from parent knowledge, understand the capacity of parents to support their child’s learning, and develop a broader and more holistic understanding of the child as a literacy learner on and off the school landscape. In the second assignment of this course, preservice teachers apply and extend their learnings from the Photovoice Project by using what they learned about the child from parent knowledge to create a literacy invitation based on the child’s strengths, emergent literacy, and interests. This helps them to understand how parent knowledge can be used to enhance student learning and build praxis where their actions and teaching are informed by reflective practice.

The final assignment in the Early Literacy course is a Teacher Identity Journal which also builds on the theoretical models of Dewey and Schön as it supports preservice teachers in becoming reflective practitioners. Preservice teachers write reflective journal entries throughout the course. Sometimes I offer a prompt after a particular module, guest, or experience. However, they are encouraged to write journal entries at any time. At the end of the term, the preservice teachers ‘unpack’ their journal entries and reflect on their image of the child, parents and families, and themselves. Within this reflection they are asked to discuss the key beliefs that have formed as a result of their lived experiences, and how those inter-related beliefs of child, families, and self will inform their lived practice as a teacher. Clandinin and Connelly (2000) believe that narrative is a way of understanding experience. “Experience is the stories people live. People live stories, and in the telling of these stories, reaffirm them, modify them, and create new ones. Stories lived and told educate the self and others” (p. xxvi). The preservice teachers engage in lived experiences with young children and families, tell the story through photovoice, retell what they learned in the reflection, and then modify their experiences with families in the future. In this way, experience is the starting point for preservice teachers to learn about young children and their families (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000).

8.2. Reading and Writing Development, Prekindergarten to Grade 3

Another early years’ literacy course I teach is Reading and Writing Development, Prekindergarten to Grade 3. Preservice teachers take it in the winter term after completing the prerequisite Early Literacy course. In Reading and Writing Development, preservice teachers are introduced to children’s oral and written literacy acquisition in the contexts of family, community, and school. The course description states that ‘attention will be given to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit perspectives and ways of knowing, and culturally responsive practices that integrate the out of school experiences of linguistically and culturally diverse children and families into classroom learning’.

The core textbook that I use for this course, Constructing Meanings: Pedagogies for Literacies K-8. Heydon et al. (2022) maintains that ‘literacy educators have long recognized the importance of parents in literacy learning’ (p. 64). They highlight the work of Khattar et al. (2019) in stressing the importance of “incorporating home relationships into pedagogies and classroom curricula” (Heydon et al., 2022, p. 64) and connect to the notion of a ‘curriculum of parents’ where “the lives of the teacher, children, and the significant people in the child’s life all are central in, and inform, the teaching and learning” (Pushor, 2013a).

This notion of a curriculum of parents extends what preservice teachers learned in the Early Literacy course in the previous term. What is significant about the Reading and Writing Development course is that most preservice teachers are taking a classroom practicum concurrently with the course, so they are able to make connections to pedagogies and practices they are seeing in classrooms.

Heydon et al. (2022) also stress the importance of ensuring that when educators ask parents to engage in literacy experiences at home, they are meaningful, authentic, and whenever possible, connected to what families are already doing. A typical taken-for-granted practice held up for scrutiny is a home reading program. “Reading at home is a ubiquitous demand that educators make of learners and families. Educators might recognize that within this request, values and assumptions are being made” (Heydon et al., 2022, p. 65). This aligns with the assertion that what schools often ask parents to do is based on white middle class values, is not culturally responsive, and does not recognize funds of knowledge and literacy practices already happening in the home (Pushor & Amendt, 2018 in Heydon et al., 2022). This also connects back to what preservice teachers learned about different ways parents support literacy at home through daily activities when they collaborated with families for the Family Photovoice project in the Early Literacy course.

As I am teaching preservice teachers at a time when the climate around reading instruction is contentious, I often share information and position statements from the International Literacy Association (ILA) with preservice teachers and refer them to the website for quality resources. The International Literacy Association’s Research Advisory on Literacy Teacher Preparation states that ‘highly effective teacher education programs provide prospective teachers opportunities for sustained engagement with students and families whose histories, experiences, culture, and languages may be different than their own with the goal of preparing teachers to understand differences as a resource for students’ learning and effective teaching and to capitalize on students’ individual differences’ (International Literacy Association, 2017, pp. 6–7).

In the Writing Experience assignment of the Reading and Writing Development course, preservice teachers meet with a child and family to get to know the child in terms of their writing development and then apply what they learn from parent knowledge to offer an authentic and personal writing experience to the child. In the written portion of the assignment, one anonymous preservice teacher (ECUR 308 Writing Experience Reflection) stated:

This experience has also influenced how I will approach future interactions with parents/guardians. Meeting with [the child’s] mother gave me valuable insight into how he learns at home and helped us develop collaborative strategies to support his growth. I realized that open communication with families is essential for creating a consistent and supportive learning environment. In the future, I will ensure parent conversations prioritize a strength-based approach, highlighting what their child excels in and suggesting solutions tailored to their interests and learning style. I also plan to invite parents to share their observations and strategies that work at home, fostering a partnership in their child’s literacy journey. By continuing to build these connections, I can help ensure that students like [child’s name] receive the encouragement, support, and opportunities they need to thrive as confident writers. (p. 19)

The fieldwork performed in Early Literacy and Reading and Writing Development, Prekindergarten to Grade 3, supports preservice teachers in learning from and with families, in preparation for their future careers. Preservice teachers are invited to reflect on the critical aspects of a curriculum of parents and engage in a pedagogy that invites them to rethink their role, not just alongside children, but also alongside parents. They learn not just how to do it, but that their work IS also with parents. Children’s learning is richer when their parents are engaged in their learning. Clandinin and Connelly (2000) state that “We learn about education from thinking about life, and we learn about life from thinking about education. This attention to experience and thinking about education as experience is part of what educators do in schools” (p. xxiv). Preservice teachers begin to understand the interconnectedness of lived experiences and learning, both for their students and themselves.

When reflecting on the Writing Experience assignment, one preservice teacher emphasized her poignant understanding of the importance of learning from parents and how it has impacted her future practice.

I was reminded that families hold deep knowledge about their children and that by listening carefully, we as educators can gain insight into how to support each learner more fully. In the future, I want to continue building relationships with families in thoughtful and respectful ways, approaching conversations not as formal interviews, but as meaningful opportunities to connect, learn and celebrate student growth together.

(Anonymous, ECUR 308 Writing Experience Reflection, p. 7)

8.3. Mathematics in the Early Years

The Mathematics in the Early Years course that I teach infuses family engagement in a different way. The course outcomes state that preservice teachers will learn to evaluate mathematics resources for effective use in response to young learners and engagement in pedagogical practices that promote:

• differentiation,
• linguistic and cultural responsiveness,
• Indigenous perspectives and ways of knowing, and
• use of parent knowledge and family contributions.

The first assignment in the Early Years Math course is a Mathematical Autobiography due one week after classes begin. The purpose of this assignment is for preservice teachers to reflect on and describe their mathematical experiences in school, family, and community, and unpack how those experiences impacted their math esteem and attitude toward math. This activity is instrumental in helping them understand how teacher expectations for math at home can have positive or negative effects even years later. By examining how teacher and parent expectations and practices impacted them when they were in school, they are better equipped to understand meaningful ways to collaborate with families for math learning. Third (2022) describes Dewey’s notion that “our experiences shape us, and when reflective practice is part of learning, meaning and relevancy is created, which initiates growth and change” (p. 30). By reflecting on their own lived experiences, preservice teachers examine how those experiences impacted their attitude toward and learning in math, and contemplate how they will ensure the experiences their future students have will positively impact their feelings toward math.

I share an example of how preservice teachers can collaborate with families in math learning through a Cultural Math Bins project that a colleague of mine uses in her Kindergarten or Grade one classroom. She sends home a letter inviting families to send an item to school that reflects how math lives in their culture and explains that culture does not have to mean you are from another country. Your home culture is about what you do as a family at home. Items might be a photo or an actual item of clothing, jingles from a jingle dress, or number lines in different languages. Examples of items that children bring to school are Métis sashes, scarves from Pakistan, Korean dresses, Scottish tartans, photos of special quilts or blankets and a variety of games from diverse cultures. The items and games can be used for counting, estimating, patterns, and symmetry. Family members are invited to come to class and talk about their item or teach the game and discuss the math within it. This honors children’s identities and builds relationships with families. After the students learn about the game or artifact, the items are used to create cultural math bins that children can use at various times during the day.

I model this idea when I invite preservice teachers to bring something that reflects math from their culture or home culture to share with the class. They share their items in table groups and connect to different math concepts the items can be used to learn. At various times in the term when we are learning about number sense, subitizing, and number concepts, we reflect on games children can play at home to reinforce these skills, such as card and dice games. This is held up as another way to engage families in math learning in authentic ways, rather than sending home flashcards or homework that may create a negative attitude toward math. Preservice teachers apply the idea of authentic family math when they integrate family engagement into a Math Unit Plan they develop at the end of the term.

8.4. ECUR 383 Social Studies in the Early Years

The Social Studies in the Early Years course that I teach is the most organically connected to families. It is rich with experiential opportunities and focuses on learning with and about families throughout. This course includes outcomes which state that preservice teachers will learn to:

• establish a learning community by exploring and experiencing social studies concepts in the place-based environments of classroom, school, home, and community; and
• examine and re-conceptualize taken-for-granted assumptions and predispositions about how people are engaged in families and communities, with a focus on First Nations, Métis, and Inuit content; truth and reconciliation; and Treaty, and citizenship education.

At the beginning of the course, preservice teachers are invited to bring a photo or artifact from home that reflects who they are in the context of home and family. These items are shared in table groups to support a deeper understanding of each other. They also create an individual strand of a collaborative family chandelier project. They string small photos, symbols, beads, and other items that reflect who they are on a wire. All wires are attached to a bicycle rim (branch, lattice, etc.) which is hung in the classroom as a representation of our Social Studies class. The family chandelier is a beautiful way to begin creating our classroom community.

Similarly, in their first course assignment, preservice teachers work in small groups to create an experience that can be used to honor children and families as part of the learning community and create a sense of belonging. Ideas of sense of belonging projects include things like the family chandelier, a class quilt, recipe books, hopes and dreams trees, and potluck suppers. As preservice teachers work together, they learn the value of building strong relationships through collaborative projects and acquire many authentic, hands-on ideas they can use in their future classrooms.

Throughout this course we examine a variety of resources for learning in Social Studies. We discuss accessing guest experts, and how these can be family members or community members who share their funds of knowledge with the class. We pay special attention to children’s literature and engage in a book tasting. Preservice teachers are asked to use a critical lens to examine the literature and how families are depicted. Many children’s books represent families with the hegemonic notion of two white heterosexual parents and two white children, usually a boy and a girl. This is not the typical family structure of many of the children that we teach. A course reading that supports this is a blog post by Jeanie Phillips (2022) where she discusses how literature can be mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. “Books are mirrors when readers see their own lives reflected in the pages. Books are windows when they allow readers a view of lives and stories that are different from their own. Books become sliding glass doors when readers feel transported into the world of the story and when they feel empathy for the characters” (Phillips, 2022, p. 1). We discuss the importance of ensuring that our classroom library facilitates windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors. Including literature that represents the children and families in our class fosters a sense of belonging, helps children learn about each other, and builds community. When we share books as sliding glass doors, we can help students move toward social justice, even at a very young age. Preservice teachers demonstrate their understanding of this concept in assignment two when they choose a book that connects to a social studies curricular outcome and create an interactive invitation with materials children can use to play with the big ideas in the book. They can apply what they have learned to ensure all students see themselves and their families represented in the classroom and can use the instructional strategy of windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors.

The final assignment in the social studies course is an Inquiry Plan that preservice teachers create. An integral component of this plan is configuring how they might engage families in the project and access their family funds of knowledge. Preservice teachers go beyond inviting families simply to be chaperones on field trips and instead encourage them to share ideas about how they can be part of the inquiry, bring them into the classroom as guest experts, lead field experiences, and invite them to integrate learning about the topic in their family activities. Preservice teachers see how they can develop curriculum with families, making learning more authentic and meaningful.

Throughout the term, I invite guests and offer experiences that help preservice teachers understand important considerations and pedagogies for teaching social studies in the early years. By far, the most impactful experience for our preservice teachers is our Family Night. For this experience, I partner with a colleague, Kirsten Kobylak, who also teaches a section of the Social Studies in the Early Years course. Kirsten builds relationships with the parents of the children in her classes at the beginning of each year by sending home a letter asking families to sign up for a time when she can come and visit them in their home or wherever they will feel the most comfortable (coffee shop, park). She states that she will be visiting them as a learner to get to know their traditions and interests as funds of knowledge that can be used in the classroom throughout the year as part of curriculum. To model how this can be done for preservice teachers, we invite parents Kirsten has collaborated with over the years to be a part of our family night. One parent who I will call Radha, shares the story of how Kirsten invited parents to come into the classroom and share about their culture. Radha and her daughters created a beautiful presentation about Diwali and prepared sweet treats from their culture to share with Kirsten’s class. Radha shares this presentation with the preservice teachers and discusses how special it was to be invited into the classroom to teach something to the class. The ripple effect of this is that the experience fostered a great deal of confidence in her daughters and they continued to teach their peers about Diwali in their classes for many years afterward. Because Kirsten and Radha built a positive relationship when Radha’s daughter was in Kirsten’s class, she has shared their story with our preservice teachers for many years. Another parent who I will call Rashid, shared a traditional African math game called Mancala that he taught students when his child was in Kirsten’s class as part of the Cultural Math Bins project previously described. The preservice teachers were able to play the game and see exactly how you could engage parents in curriculum. We have had parents and other members of the school community share experiences of cultural cooking and dancing, Indigenous knowledge and stories, and ways to support newcomer families. We also had a parent who I will call Scarlet, share how she came into her daughter’s class to do a math lesson on pancakes. What resonated with the preservice teachers was not the math lesson, it was Scarlet’s story about how important the relationship between her and Kirsten was, and how it stemmed from the initial home visit that Kirsten did. Scarlet also shared that this year her son is having a great deal of difficulty in school and she wishes she had the same kind of relationship with his teacher that she previously had with Kirsten.

Many of our guest parents expressed that they would never have been part of their child’s learning in the classroom if Kirsten had not invited them in. Although we had discussed home visits many times throughout the year, and preservice teachers had met with children and families in their home, hearing how meaningful home visits and being invited into the classroom were from the parents themselves was very significant to them. In their feedback about the family night, preservice teachers highlighted how they now understood the importance of reaching out to families and that it did not need to be intimidating. They realized the connections that home visits secured between teachers and families. They also shared that this experience highlighted the importance of using family funds of knowledge as mirrors for children to see themselves represented in the class and windows to learn about others. One preservice teacher said she felt very lucky to get the chance to hear from a parent and another said they realized the benefits of home visits for the family as well as the teacher. Words used by preservice teachers to describe the Family Night experience included eye-opening, informative, authentic, immersive, inclusive, meaningful, and inspiring. We didn’t just tell them about hosting a family event. We immersed them in the experience to show them it is possible, how it’s done, and why it is worthwhile.

9. In Conclusion—An Invitation to Move Forward

In this reflective practice article, I have drawn on the work of John Dewey as discussed by Clandinin and Connelly (2000) as well as the work of Schön considered by Third (2022). In narrative form I shared my experience, knowledge, philosophy, and practice of parent engagement based on my teaching career and professional learning of over thirty-five years working with children and families. I inquired into my own practice as a practitioner, rather than engaging in research or data collection, and described my praxis which integrates theory and practice in a way that supports preservice teachers. Just as they reflected on their lived experiences both in and out of the classroom to inform their future practice, I reflected on my praxis which made learning active, meaningful and transformative for preservice teachers, leading to their ways of knowing, being and doing with families.

I discussed research showing there is a move toward systematic integration of family engagement in Saskatchewan schools, that some provinces in Canada are already building knowledge of family engagement into their preservice teacher certification requirements, and that some preservice teacher education programs incorporate family engagement as a learning objective.

However, regardless of whether or not there are frameworks and policies in place, it is our job to prepare our preservice teachers now for partnering with parents and families of the children they will teach. By including outcomes in courses for preservice teachers which include learning about children in the contexts of family and community, building relationships, and using parent knowledge to build curriculum, we can equip preservice teachers with the knowledge and skills they need for effective partnerships.

In sharing specific course materials, experiences, and assignments that highlight the necessity of examining assumptions and beliefs, and the importance of valuing family diversity and expertise, I demonstrate how family engagement can be threaded through multiple courses. Immersing preservice teachers in experiences such as the Family Photovoice Project or the Family Night can help them embody family engagement into their philosophy and future practice. Evidence that these experiential practices work is represented in course feedback with many preservice teachers stating that one of the best parts was working with children and their families, applying the knowledge from class, and learning from the families.

Partners in one assignment reflected,

The importance of including family in the classroom, forming relationships with the students and family, and the impact parents have on a child’s education and literacy development have been thoroughly demonstrated to us over the past few weeks. We are looking forward to carrying this experience with us as we continue through our educational journey and into our future careers.

(Anonymous, ECUR 307 Family Photovoice Reflection, p. 8)

By showcasing many specific examples, I invite readers to replicate and adapt these practices for their own use, leading to informed and committed praxis in their own context.