Resources to Help Close the Achievement Gap
The Family Involvement Storybook Project uses children's storybooks with family
educational involvement themes to boost young children's achievement by promoting
family engagement in learning and education and by stimulating literacy skills.
Created by Harvard Family Research Project researcher Ellen Mayer, the Storybook
Project focuses on culturally diverse low-income families, with a special emphasis
on Latino families. The Storybook Project provides information and tools that
support the use of commercially available children's storybooks, as well its
own research-based storybook, to promote family involvement. Most Storybook
Project resources are available on the Family Involvement
Storybook Corner, located on the HFRP website.
Usable Knowledge in a New Format
The Family Involvement Storybook Project constitutes a new way to put family
involvement research into practice. Research has amply documented that family
engagement in education and learning matters to children's successful outcomes.
Family involvement storybooks offer a novel way to carry this important message
from research into everyday use and into the many settings where children's
picture books are read and shared.
The Storybook Project has identified commercially published picture books that
contain messages about family involvement in their stories. These books touch
on such topics as home–school communication and cultural differences in
family engagement. In addition, the Storybook Project has crafted its own family
involvement storybook, which illuminates some important aspects of family involvement
drawn from family involvement research. Our storybook, Tomasito's
Mother Comes to School/La mamá de Tomasito visita la escuela,
is inspired by a true case from HFRP's family involvement study.
With family involvement storybooks, educators can share knowledge about family
involvement, and families can be inspired, informed, and empowered to support
their children's learning and development.
Bringing Family Engagement Ideas to New and Wider Audiences
HFRP has a long history of developing innovative practice tools out of research.
These tools include teaching cases
that present real-life scenarios in narrative form, designed to foster reflection,
discussion, and problem solving of family involvement issues within educator
audiences. The narrative format of children's books now extends this kind of
learning to the new and wider audiences of young children and the adults who
read to them.
HFRP's family involvement research tells us that children are an often ignored
but very important part of the family engagement process. Family involvement
storybooks provide a way to acknowledge that child voice, and bring children
into the family engagement conversation. Storybooks can also provide accessible
ways to stimulate reflection, discussion, and action for adults with low levels
of print literacy or for English Language Learners.
Contributors to the Family Involvement Storybook
Corner
Many of the resources on the Storybook Corner were developed through close
collaboration between researchers and teachers. Educator practitioners Elaine
Hou, Martha Kateri Ferede, Rashmi Kumar, and Elizabeth Heymann created and tested
tools, in dialogue with project manager researcher Ellen Mayer. Carrie-Anne
DeDeo contributed her knowledge of children's literature to Storybook Corner
articles. Holly M. Kreider, M. Elena Lopez, and Abby Weiss provided review and
feedback for Storybook Corner resources.
The Storybook Corner was developed through a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation,
with additional support from the Reading
Is Fundamental/Coca-Cola partnership, Reading Takes You Places.
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