A Familycentric Approach to Schooling: What It Is, What It Takes, What It Looks Like

A special issue of Education Sciences (ISSN 2227-7102).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2025 | Viewed by 766

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Curriculum Studies, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK S7N 0X1, Canada
Interests: familycentric schooling; parent engagement; systematic parent engagement; parent knowledge; a philosophy and pedagogy of walking alongside; a curriculum of parents

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

A “schoolcentric” (Lawson, 2003) approach characterized our educational institutions for decades. It resulted in parents being marginalized in relation to their children’s schooling, asked to serve the agenda determined by school personnel—through fundraising and volunteering, helping their children with assigned homework, and ensuring their children came to school ready and able to learn. Arising out of 50 years of research in the field, a shift to a “familycentric” (Pushor, 2015) approach is taking hold in a number of schools and communities across the globe. In this Special Issue, we foreground work being carried out across the educational sector that aims to engage parents in authentic and meaningful ways, using their “parent knowledge” (Pushor, 2015), and giving them place and voice in the development of policies, programs, and practices affecting their children and families. Within the aim and scope of this Special Issue, we are seeking papers that are demonstrative of “familycentric” policies and practices currently being conceptualized, developed, lived in practice, and/or researched. We will feature a peer-reviewed assemblage of papers that achieve the following:

  • Reflect a diversity of experiences and disparate backgrounds;
  • Are contextual but with relevance to a broader context;
  • Extend theoretical understandings;
  • Propose new directions for policy, practice, and research;
  • Translate policy into lived action;
  • Reflect sound and current research;
  • Are representative of all levels of schooling, from early years through post-secondary, and a wide range of stakeholders across, and in relationship with, the education sector.

Our intent with this Special Issue is to provide the field with ideas that will move us into new possibilities and will help us re-imagine schools in ways that give place and voice to all parents and families, and that are equally honoring and reflective of parent knowledge and teacher knowledge.

Prof. Dr. Debbie Pushor
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • parent engagement
  • parent knowledge
  • familycentric schooling
  • a curriculum of parents

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 1084 KiB  
Article
Parents as Allies: Innovative Strategies for (Re)imagining Family, School, and Community Partnerships
by Emily Markovich Morris and Yu-Ling Cheng
Educ. Sci. 2025, 15(5), 533; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15050533 - 25 Apr 2025
Viewed by 90
Abstract
Research conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic in rural, urban, and suburban public schools in southwestern Pennsylvania indicated that families and school educators and leaders had different views on education and that more needed to be done to build family, school, and community partnerships. [...] Read more.
Research conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic in rural, urban, and suburban public schools in southwestern Pennsylvania indicated that families and school educators and leaders had different views on education and that more needed to be done to build family, school, and community partnerships. The Parents as Allies Partnership, a collective of community, education, and research institutions, emerged out of this study and has led the co-creation of a human-centered design process with school teams on how to radically reimagine and support family, school, and community collaboration in southwestern Pennsylvania. Through the human-centered design process, teams of families, teachers, staff, and school leaders develop innovative solutions together to address pressing needs they identify in their communities. This article details this community-building process alongside case studies of three schools and how they have used the research to launch deeper and more inclusive and equitable familycentric partnership practices. This study challenges educators, researchers, and parent organizations to think differently about family, school, and community engagement and provides an evidence-based process to apply in their own contexts. Full article
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23 pages, 490 KiB  
Article
Engaging Parents and Their Fifth- and Sixth-Grade Latina Daughters in a Family Science Program
by Katherine Short-Meyerson, Margarita Jiménez-Silva and Peter Rillero
Educ. Sci. 2025, 15(4), 512; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15040512 - 20 Apr 2025
Viewed by 111
Abstract
This research study was conducted to pilot an out-of-school family science program for fifth- and sixth-grade Latina girls and their parents. Program goals included encouraging parents in supporting their Latina daughters in science, increasing the girls’ interest in science and increasing the families’ [...] Read more.
This research study was conducted to pilot an out-of-school family science program for fifth- and sixth-grade Latina girls and their parents. Program goals included encouraging parents in supporting their Latina daughters in science, increasing the girls’ interest in science and increasing the families’ participation in science experiences together. The 41 families participated in a 7-week Saturday program on either rocketry or gardening. Each week, the parent–daughter dyads engaged in hands-on Family Problem-Based Learning activities together and then the parents and daughters met separately in Conversation Groups. To measure the impact of the program, surveys were administered to the parents and daughters separately at four points: pre-, mid-, post- and delayed-post (three months after the program). Parents reported increases over time for several aspects of their support for their daughters in science and also increases in frequency of science experiences with their daughters. The daughters reported increases over time in their science identity and their discussions with their parents about jobs in science. In addition, the examination of video-recordings of a subset of the parent–daughter interactions during the activities revealed that parental and daughter behaviors evolved over the course of the program. Implications for engaging parents in science education are discussed. Full article
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