Empowering Family-Teacher Partnerships: Building Connections Within Diverse Communities prepares students to work collaboratively with families and community professionals in support of children's early education and development. Students are invited to develop a personal philosophy of family involvement to guide their work with families and to join a community of learners in relying upon their collective insights and problem-solving skills to address family involvement challenges. The author takes a student-centered approach to delivering substantive information and framing activities, providing: (a) comprehensive coverage of the diversity of family lives represented in classrooms and strategies for working with those families; (b) challenges to family involvement and strategies for addressing them; (c) strategies for communicating effectively with and empowering families, and (d) reflections, activities, tip boxes, and field assignments designed to facilitate students' skills in building positive family-school-community partnerships.

Empowering Family-Teacher Partnerships: Building Connections Within Diverse Communities by Thomas M. Coleman prepares students to work collaboratively with families and community professionals in support of children's early education and development. The author takes a student-centered approach to delivering substantive information and framing activities. Students are invited to develop a personal philosophy of family involvement to guide their work with families and to join a community of learners in relying upon their collective insights and problem-solving skills to address family involvement challenges.

This volume will address the most current perspectives and issues related to general and special education inclusion and will be written by leaders in the field with particular expertise in this area. This volume will be an excellent resource for special educators, administrators, mental health clinicians, school counsellors, and psychologists.

Family-School-Community Partnering (FSCP) is a multidimensional process in which schools, families, and communities work together to ensure the academic, social, and emotional success of students. In this new edition, the authors evaluate advances to a multitiered model of FSCP that further incorporates community alliances. Section I covers legislative, empirical, and theoretical underpinnings and updates. Practical strategies are discussed to develop, deliver, and evaluate a cohesive system of support to improve student outcomes. Chapter addendums detail the specific approaches and associated resources to advance FSCP from infancy through adulthood. In Section II, current researchers and practitioners consider how to enhance collaborative partnerships with military, migrant/refugee, and rural communities and support gender identity and varied developmental abilities. Four culminating case stories are designed to facilitate ideas for intentional integration of FSCP domains into readers’ ongoing practices. School psychologists, counselors, educators, administrators, and social workers will learn how to strategically implement this partnering in all levels of schooling.

Early childhood education (ECE) has always been intertwined with the use of developmentally appropriate practice (DAP). To support excellence in ECE, it is critical how the knowledge about individual children and child development principles combined with the knowledge of effective early learning practices. Effective early childhood education involves an interdisciplinary collaborative process that is influenced by many factors. We present these aforementioned realities in Educating Young Children With and Without Exceptionalities: New Perspectives. In addition, we argue that general and special educators need to focus on applying new knowledge to better address critical issues that advance the field of educator preparation and improve educational outcomes for young children. Early childhood research confirms the need for intensive intervention and remedial education—we need to avoid approaches that are “too little” or “too late.” Also proven to yield positive results for children are practices familiar to early childhood educators. These practices include relationship-based teaching and learning; partnering with families; adapting teaching for children from different backgrounds and for individual children; active, meaningful, and connected learning; and smaller class sizes. Evidence of the benefits of these practices suggests that they should be extended more widely into the elementary grades.

Richard Ruiz has inspired generations of scholars in language planning and multilingual education with his unique orientations to language as a problem, a right and a resource. This volume attests to the far-reaching impact of his thinking and teaching, bringing together a selection of his published and unpublished writings on language planning orientations, bilingual and language minority education, language threat and endangerment, voice and empowerment, and even language fun, accompanied by contributions from colleagues and former students reflecting and expanding on Ruiz’ ground-breaking work. This book will be of great interest to both undergraduate and postgraduate students in language planning and multilingual education, Indigenous and minority education, as well as to junior and senior researchers in those fields.

A focus on the developmental progress of children before the age of eight helps to inform their future successes, including their personality, social behavior, and intellectual capacity. However, it is difficult for experts to pinpoint best learning and parenting practices for young children. Early Childhood Development: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is an innovative reference source for the latest research on the cognitive, socio-emotional, physical, and linguistic development of children in settings such as homes, community-based centers, health facilities, and school. Highlighting a range of topics such as cognitive development, parental involvement, and school readiness, this multi-volume book is designed for educators, healthcare professionals, parents, academicians, and researchers interested in all aspects of early childhood development.

In the schools of today, English learners are the fastest-growing segment of the student population. As such, it is increasingly imperative to educate these students properly, while still practicing inclusion for overall student success. The Handbook of Research on Pedagogies and Cultural Considerations for Young English Language Learners is an authoritative research publication on research-based, theoretical frameworks and best practices for teaching young English language learners. Featuring exhaustive coverage on a variety of topics and perspectives such as co-teaching, inclusion, and social awareness, this publication is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, and students seeking current research on the examination of how diverse backgrounds, cultures, and experiences contribute to curriculum and pedagogy for bilingual young learners.

During the past 40 years, the rapid pace and complex nature of social change has created a stress-filled environment for families. New challenges such as AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), drug abuse, increasing crime, economic malaise, moral deterioration, and increases in mental health problems contribute to the increasing stress in families. Historically, our society has looked to the family and the school to deal with the dynamics of social change. However, families have not received needed support for effectively dealing with these changes, and schools still function within designs more suited to the past than to the present or the future. A new paradigm based on a family-school-community learning and support system is needed. The focus of this book is on strengthening the early childhood educator's position in creating supportive relationships with families, particularly with those who are in at-risk situations. The book's goal is to promote new ways of thinking about and relating to families, with the focus on strengthening families and family-school relationships. The book has five chapters: (1) "At-Risk Families: The Context"; (2) "Empowering At-Risk Families"; (3) "Understanding the Barriers to Empowerment"; (4) "Insights on Relating to the Needs of At-Risk Families"; and (5) "Supporting At-Risk Families." Contains 190 references. (TJQ)