FAMILY-SCHOOL-COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP – THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ASPECTS

Abstract

The question of how to link a family and school is the latest pedagogical issue, which attracts an increasing attention of researchers, educators and practitioners in order to emphasize the im­portance of family-school partnerships, a need for a more active and effective involvement of parents in the school life and work, and the importance of cooperation with the community that incorporates both the family and the school system. In this regard, the paper presents key assump­tions of one of the most quoted and most implemented models of the overall partnership of family, school and community, designed by Joyce Epstein and his associates in the nineties of the last century. Starting from the theory of overlapping the spheres of influence, the model specially emphasizes the operationalization of the six types of parental involvement (parenting, communi­cating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making and collaborating with the community). In addition, the authors of the model suggest five steps to be taken in order to effectively link families, schools and communities – forming an action team, raising funds and other forms of support, identifying starting points, developing the three-year and one-year action plan, continuing to plan and work.

The paper also emphasizes that in the past three decades there was written an impressive number of studies and scientific papers, which exploited different theories, models and partner­ship programs of a family, school and community, and analyzed the effects of their implementa­tion in practice. On the basis of such analysis, there were made very important conclusions, which provided very useful guidelines and recommendations for conducting further research, education policy and practice. Accordingly, the paper indicates characteristics of a successful partnership and certain principles selected by the eminent experts in this field, as guidelines for the effective implementation of the partnership program in practice. Since the analysis of the situation in prac­tice has shown that building an effective family-school-community partnership is followed by a number of challenges, the experts emphasize a commitment to building trust and cooperative rela­tions, i.e. willingness to accept the philosophy of partnerships and the principle of shared respon­sibility, as particularly important. In this regard, the conclusion of the paper emphasizes that, al­though the interaction among teachers, pupils, parents and community members could be related to many problems and barriers, good partnership programs provide a basis for establishing the base of trust, and conditions for the efficient problem resolution, which make the more empowered partners.