what is family engagement?

While decades of research underscore the value of family engagement, the crises of the past year cast a new light on its importance. First, the pandemic-forced school closures blurred lines for educators and families, as parents abruptly took a front row seat to their children’s educational experience in a way that they never had before. Second, our country’s reckoning with racial injustice highlighted an urgent need to equitably engage families in their child’s education. With this heightened recognition that meaningful and authentic family engagement is critical, it has also become clear that establishing a shared, well-understood definition of family engagement is critical.

We, at Family Engagement Lab, have been focused on family engagement since our founding in 2016. Powerful insights directly from families and educators regarding their experiences and needs, paired with research uncovering that involvement from a parent or caregiver in at-home learning has more than twice the effect on student achievement than parents’ education levels or socio-economic status (Melhuish et al., 2008) motivates our work, drives our commitment, and has shaped our definition of family engagement. Our approach to family engagement builds off of the Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnership, which highlights how relationships between educators and parents are central to supporting student and school improvement.

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Authentic Family Engagement

At Family Engagement Lab, authentic family engagement means: 

• Educators directly invite families to collaborate around student learning
• Educators meet families where they are, breaking down technology and language barriers and flexibly adapting to diverse needs
• Families understand and support students’ learning paths, goals, and ability to meet academic benchmarks
• Educators share regular information with families to support at-home learning that is aligned with high-quality curriculum and standards-based objectives in the classroom (i.e., educators prompt at-home engagement with content-rich, standards-aligned curricular materials to reinforce the development of grade-level knowledge and skills,)
• Families’ and educators’ roles and expectations are clear; each values the other’s contributions and recognizes the importance of collaborating to promote student success

We also believe that authentic family engagement must include:  

• Strength/asset-based approaches that recognize families play a critical and impactful role in student learning
• Recognition of competing demands on family members’ and educators’ time by prioritizing high-impact communication
• Training, tools, and support for educators to facilitate meaningful interactions with families
• Sustained two-way interactions between teachers, families, and students
• Efforts to build families’ confidence and capacity to support learning
• Explicit involvement of diverse caregivers (e.g., grandparents, relatives, neighbors)

How Family Engagement Lab Addresses
​Authentic Family Engagement

Family Engagement Lab’s signature tool, FASTalk, promotes equity and builds partnerships between teachers and historically underserved families by sharing engaging, at-home activities in each family's home language to reinforce classroom learning.

With FASTalk:

• Educators meet families where they are, with accessible technology and learning-focused activities in their home language.
• Teachers share activities that are aligned with high-quality curriculum and standards-based objectives that empower families to support at-home learning (ex: see sample FASTalk messages aligned with Core Knowledge Language Arts).
• Families know what their children are learning and how to help.

Beyond FASTalk, we are focused on crucial, systems-level capacity building work. New efforts focus on building the capacity of schools and systems to foster the beliefs, values, and behaviors that allow for authentic family engagement. We know that these are the conditions that enable parent-teacher partnership to develop and thrive, and, ultimately, provide the opportunity for all children to flourish at school and beyond.

To learn more about how Family Engagement Lab can help your state, school or district,
contact us today.

About the Author

Elisabeth O'Bryon is co-Founder and Chief Impact Officer at Family Engagement Lab. Elisabeth was previously the Director of Research and Evaluation at GreatSchools where she worked to design and implement evaluation projects, with a particular focus on rapid-cycle research approaches. Elisabeth recently co-authored 45 Strategies that Support Young Dual Language Learners, a resource that provides practical, developmentally appropriate strategies for supporting children and families from diverse backgrounds and creating inclusive early childhood classrooms that foster the success of young DLLs.

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