Effective practices for school-family-community collaboration: a matter of principle!
School-family-community (SFC) collaboration has become a popular topic, and research on the subject has shown that it promotes academic success regardless of the student’s age, grade, socioeconomic background or personal characteristics. So why mess with a good thing?
To promote school persistence and success, education must be perceived as a broad social issue.
However, one need only ask any parent, teacher or community member how they succeeded in establishing SFC collaboration to understand how much the process can vary from one person to another and just how complex it can be depending on the context.
Nonetheless, our literature review on the subject has shown that certain principles can facilitate the process. To promote school persistence and success, education must be perceived as a broad social issue for which SFC collaboration can be used as a tool to mobilize stakeholders to work together in a coherent manner toward a common goal through shared collective responsibility. This will require a sustained dialogue between the different school, family and community stakeholders concerned with the student’s academic success.
Furthermore, it takes time to establish quality SFC collaboration relationships. That is why it is important to plan appropriate times to meet. So get out your diaries!
Main researcher
Serge J. Larivée, Université de Montréal
Deposit of the research report: May 2017