The Framework of Six Types of Involvement - Notes for further study

 

The Framework of Six Types of Involvement 

(Notes made by David A. Gualin, July 7, 2024)

The Framework of Six Types of Involvement—sometimes called the “School-Family-Community Partnership Model”—has undergone revisions in the intervening years.

If educators view students as children, they are likely to see both the family and the community as partners with the school in children’s education and development. Partners recognize their shared interests in and responsibilities for children, and they work together to create better programs and opportunities for students.” 

“Partnerships tend to decline across the grades, unless schools and teachers work to develop and implement appropriate practices of partnership at each grade level.”

“Affluent communities currently have more positive family involvement, on average, unless schools and teachers in economically distressed communities work to build positive partnerships with their students’ families.”

The full technical name of Epstein’s framework is the Framework of Six Types of Involvement for Comprehensive Programs of Partnership and Sample Practices.

The six types of involvement are:

Parenting: Type 1 involvement occurs when family practices and home environments support “children as students” and when schools understand their children’s families.

Communicating: Type 2 involvement occurs when educators, students, and families “design effective forms of school-to-home and home-to-school communications.”

Volunteering: Type 3 involvement occurs when educators, students, and families “recruit and organize parent help and support” and count parents as an audience for student activities.

Learning at Home: Type 4 involvement occurs when information, ideas, or training are provided to educate families about how they can “help students at home with homework and other curriculum-related activities, decisions, and planning.”

Decision Making: Type 5 involvement occurs when schools “include parents in school decisions” and “develop parent leaders and representatives.”

Collaborating with the Community: Type 6 involvement occurs when community services, resources, and partners are integrated into the educational process to “strengthen school programs, family practices, and student learning and development.”

"...one practice activates several types of involvement simultaneously.”

 Even the best-designed programs can produce poor results for reasons that may be elusive to those involved. And as time goes on, and the conditions of any given program or approach evolve, the parsing of positive and negative influences and causes may be even more difficult to isolate and identify.

the tables do not directly address larger questions, such as disproportionality in school-family-community power; the harmful effects of influences such as institutionalized bias, discrimination, and racism; or strategies such as community organizing and protest that aim to wrest some degree of power away from institutions that may be reluctant or unwilling to share power or partner in authentic ways with students and families. One of the hazards of omitting frank discussions of power, privilege, or prejudice, for example, is that people may start doing the right things, but they may do them for the wrong reasons, which can result in new programs that merely reproduce the same problems, conflicts, discrimination, or inequitable results as the old programs.

“Schools have choices. There are two common approaches to involving families in schools and in their children’s education. One approach emphasizes conflict and views the school as a battleground. The conditions and relationships in this kind of environment guarantee power struggles and disharmony. The other approach emphasizes partnership and views the school as a homeland. The conditions and relationships in this kind of environment invite power-sharing and mutual respect, and allow energies to be directed toward activities that foster student learning and development. Even when conflicts rage, however, peace must be restored sooner or later, and the partners in children’s education must work together.”

Source: 

Epstein, J. L., et al. (2019). School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action. Fourth edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.