Family Engagement in Education: Creating Effective Home and School Partnerships for Student Success

Design family engagement practices that are directly connected to student learning. Increase your capacity to engage staff, families, and your community to improve student outcomes.

Overview

Family engagement plays a critical role in student achievement. While most educators recognize the importance of family engagement, they need opportunities to develop particular skills, knowledge, and mindsets to effectively integrate families into the life of the school.

Family Engagement in Education prepares you to create a school culture that honors and respects the knowledge that families bring to the learning process. With guidance from Harvard faculty and district and community leaders, you’ll explore best practices in family engagement and identify engagement strategies you can use to promote student learning and improve educational outcomes.

Program Details

Held on Harvard’s Cambridge, Massachusetts campus, this four-day institute convenes educators and school leaders from around the world. Working alongside your colleagues, you’ll analyze research on family engagement and learn how to align family engagement initiatives with standards-based reform. You’ll participate in plenary sessions and small working groups where you can dig deeper into topics relevant to your interests or community. Topics discussed in past institutes include home visits, outreach to fathers, balancing privilege and power, race in family engagement, and finding sustainable funding for family engagement.

Learning Goals

Who Should Attend

• Teams comprised of district or state leaders, school board members, and educators in leadership roles
• Teams comprised of school leaders, teachers, parent/family coordinators and other staff leading family engagement initiatives
• Individuals with an interest in this topic

Fees & Policies

Full tuition is due by the indicated payment deadline, which you may find above or on the program’s community page. While a purchase order confirms enrollment, full payment is still required by the payment deadline. Please note that failure to pay by the payment deadline will result in your withdrawal from the program. Click here for more information on payment, refund, and withdrawal policies.

Tuition includes all instructional materials required for participation in the program. The Harvard Graduate School of Education reserves the right to change faculty or cancel programs at its discretion. The school is not responsible for any planning expenses incurred.