Building Culturally Responsive Family-School Relationships, 2nd edition

• Reflective Exercises.  Reflect upon and challenge yourpreconceived beliefs and assumptionsabout your involvement with families. To promote and increase awarenessof the attitude shift necessary to promote collaboration with families, reflective exercises are found in every chapter.

• Instructional methods to help link students’ home and school worlds include the presentation of authentic families, first-person accounts,and their influence on childhood learning through a strength-based framework.

• Case Studies provide an insight intocommon situations teachers are faced with daily. Case Studies, appearing in Parts 3 and 4, portray the common situations that educators face in which they interact with families, the emotional reactions, and a range of effective responses to each situation.

• Research-based strategies are included for avertingthe blaming endemic to many family-school interactions. In Chapter 11, the managing the conflict section gives great description to these useful strategies.

• Pedagogical tools support the reader, reinforce student learning, and aid in exam preparation. Pedagogical features include glossary terms, discussion questions, and suggested readings.

The second edition contains updated research and resources, as well as a deepened coverage of timely topics important to teachers today, including the challenges and strategies involved with each. The authors have increased content related to: greater crisis intervention, the effects of poverty on families and schools, child maltreatment and family violence, and collaborating with families.

• New Expanded coverage of the differing ways in which families respond to crises and the crisis intervention practices that educators can use. The new content in this edition will equip education professionals with the information, concrete strategies, and helpful resources needed when dealing with students and families who are experiencing significant crises that need special support. This information can be found in Chapter 5.

• New First-person stories depict families and their influence on children’s learning through a strength-based perspective. Readers will learn how to work effectively with culturally diverse families, challenging the deficit perspective often characterizing these families, and instead view these unique families through a strength-based framework. Please see Chapter 4 for this new information.

• New Content on the effects of poverty in children, their families, and schools. Chapter 6 helps readers gain a greater awareness of the overt and covert impacts of poverty on family-school relations.

• New Expanded coverage of early childhood family-school collaboration challenges and practices. Readers will gain an authentic perspective on how practitioners modify family-school collaboration practices to accommodate the varying levels of understanding of very young children and their families. Found throughout the text in this edition.

• New Deepened coverage of child maltreatment and family violence, the impact on children, and relevant intervention strategies. This new content will prepare educators in their need to know how to respond to child maltreatment and the possible resources available to respond effectively. Featured in Chapter 13.

• New Additional reflective exercises designed to allow readers to examine their own personal beliefs about families and their reactions to the text content. These reflective exercises help beginning professionals relate what they are learning from the key concepts in the text to themselves and their current practice, and to enhance their critical thinking skills. An increased understanding of the changes necessary to promote collaboration with families hopefully will be achieved as well. Every chapter in this edition features the reflective exercises.

• New Suggested activities and questions at the end of every chapter further anchor readers’ understanding of chapter concepts. Featured in every chapter.

• New Updated resources, including information on key organizations or websites allow readers to gain further information from innovative practitioners working with children and their families. Located in every chapter.

• Each chapter contains updated references and figures on the latest research and changing family and community demographics in the United States. These updated references synthesize the most current research data for the reader. Found in every chapter.