Preparing School Leaders to Build and Sustain Engagement with Families and Communities 147
include involving parents and family members to serve on curriculum committees,
establishing parent-action committees, offering parent/community workshops and family
nights and creating web-based family-school resource directories. Processes in which school
professionals reach out to families include arranging parent conferences at work sites,
conducting home visits with all new kindergarten students in a given school year, and other
forums for engaging parents in leading and solving complex problems for their children as
well as for the community as a whole. While we view the meaning implied by a term such as
“family and school collaboration” as the ideal, we acknowledge that a majority of school and
family relationships have yet to achieve a truly equitable partnership that could be described
in this way. We use “family engagement” throughout this chapter to describe an approach
that, while not perfect, goes beyond “parent involvement” and tries to capture a more
dynamic and inclusive relationship among schools and families. We use “family” rather than
“parent” to reflect the changing composition of families. We use “engagement” in place of
“involvement” to suggest the idea that the activities and interactions occurring among
families and school professionals may be initiated by either party. That being said, we
acknowledge that the term “engagement” may still be a limited way to describe the types and
depth of relationships that we hope families and school professionals can achieve over time.
In order for this new approach to be implemented, we offer the following set of five principles
as a template for school leaders and to consider as they move from encouraging “parent
involvement” to “family engagement.”
Five Principles for Leaders Committed to Social Justice
First, there is a need for school leaders to explore the cultural framework of the
community to identify and understand the context and implications of diversity as it is
experienced by and within that community (Riehl, 2000; Shields, 1996). Leaders could
conduct an environmental scan of their communities to develop a better understanding of the
needs, assets, and cultures that their students and families experience. Contact with area
businesses, community agencies, and religious leaders would expand their knowledge.
School leaders need to consider what it really means to empower family members to
participate in a dynamic system in which school personnel and families engage in
conversation and decision-making. In this regard, school leaders will need to be open to re-
defining the range of activities and opportunities that constitute this new definition of family
engagement. Related to this, school leaders will need to collaborate with families to create
new opportunities for family members to develop their approaches to leadership. There is a
need to move beyond traditional approaches to “parent training” to a more contextual and
experiential approach to cultivating leadership among family members. Parents, grandparents,
surrogate parents, and children can be encouraged to participate in a variety of activities in
which their leadership is sought out and encouraged. These might include family forums,
family study groups, community councils and action research approaches in which family
members are engaged in assessing strengths and needs within their schools and communities.
School leaders need to consider family engagement occurs both within the school and in the
community. There are family members throughout the community who are willing and able to
engage with students on a variety of activities that may be occurring in the community during
the evenings and weekends, including activities such as mentoring, participation in
community development efforts, and involvement in community organizations, including
places of worship. Through such experiences, families and parents participate in activities and