Schools and families : creating essential connections for learning /

School achievement is difficult for students who experience discontinuity between school, home, and peer environments. This volume provides a rationale and a set of guidelines for promoting fruitful, healthy relationships between families and schools. The authors provide a review of the literature, examining the theoretical and empirical base for family involvement as full partners in the educational process. Drawing on Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory (Ecology of Human Development, 1981), the authors argue that school personnel should focus on the quality of parent-school relationships, giving families access, ownership, and meaningful opportunities to provide input. Schools and parents need to learn about students and their learning needs from each other. The volume offers a conceptual framework, examines attitudinal and school climate issues, and concludes with checklists, inventories, and concrete educational reform strategies. Although this book breaks little new ground, it is clearly written, well organized, comprehensive, and draws on well-chosen, up-to-date references. It will interest school psychologists, educational psychologists, school counselors, teachers, school administrators, educational policy makers and specialists in educational leadership and administration. Robert C. Pianta and Daniel J. Walsh's High Risk Children in Schools (1996) offers a complementary perspective and would make first-rate companion reading. Graduate, research, and faculty collections. J. A. Gamradt University of New Mexico