Using Our Understanding of Families to Strengthen Family Involvement

The purpose of this article is to help teachers become more responsive to the changing needs and contexts of families in their efforts to establish relationships and encourage family participation. Through this article, the authors describe the changing landscape of parenting and the stressors experienced by contemporary families. The authors then provide a review of research that describes strategies that have been successfully employed by teachers of young children to foster increased communication and family involvement. The article concludes with suggestions to help early childhood professionals change their paradigm of parent involvement from a school-centric perspective to one that is more family-centric.