If you haven’t noticed, we’ve been very busy in the Early Childhood Education (ECE) world lately, especially in Colorado. The Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) Office of Early Childhood (OEC), now the Department of Early Childhood, contracted with Marzano Research to develop a family engagement framework through a collaborative effort.
The family engagement framework came to life through a comprehensive process of collecting, reviewing, and aligning existing strategic plans at the local, regional, state, national, and international levels. These existing strategic plans were also compared to research-based components and best practices in the world of family engagement to put together recommendations. The recommendations were provided to OEC staff and Birth-5 system partners for feedback. All of this work led to the final framework. This blog will take you through some of the key components of the framework and the corresponding report.
First, let’s define what family engagement even means. We believe effective family engagement should be a systematic, intentional, and strengths-based process of engaging in two-way communication and building positive, goal-oriented relationships with families and children. At the heart of this is valuing and respecting the diversity of each family’s context. It is so important to have robust family engagement because it is necessary for children’s healthy growth and development.
The framework is visually represented in this graphic. The outer green ring represents the four organizing principles in which the framework is grounded. The multi-colored inner ring represents the outcomes that can be achieved when family engagement is effective. These principles and outcomes are aligned with the vision that all Colorado children, families, and early childhood professionals be valued, healthy, and thriving.
Let’s dig into the four grounding principles that make up this framework.
- Family-Centered: Families are at the center of relationship-building, decision-making, interactions, communications, and children’s learning. Family engagement practices recognize that a child’s family is their first teacher and caregiver, and this understanding is the cornerstone of developing strong partnerships with families.
- Equity: Family engagement must be equitable because equitable access promotes healthy norms and destigmatization. All families must have access to resources and opportunities for engagement with the goal of positive outcomes for all families. Partners must enter a social contract where both families and professionals communicate expectations and goals. Finally, engagement opportunities must be accessible regardless of families’ level of or approach to engagement.
- Cultural and Linguistic Responsiveness: Opportunities and resources for family engagement must meet families’ cultural and linguistic needs. Children’s lives are rooted in their families and communities, so centering families in the context of their culture, language, home, and community is paramount in building strong connections with children and their families. Acknowledging and accepting the need to engage all families also recognizes the strengths that come from their diverse backgrounds.
- Inclusiveness: This principle recognizes that respecting diversity in terms of ability, language, values, customs, traditions, expectations, and attitudes is essential for family engagement. Engagement is a collaborative process shared by families and community partnerships that optimizes children’s growth, development, and learning. Inclusive partnerships are intentional about creating environments where all families are welcomed, engaged, and valued.
For examples of how these principles encourage family engagement and ways to translate these principles into action, check out the full report.
In addition to the grounding principles, the framework outlines six desired outcomes of family engagement:
- Families as Advocates and Leaders
- Responsive Parenting
- Strengthened Families
- Parent Resilience
- Positive and Goal-oriented Relationships
- Children are Healthy and Thriving
The benefits and rationale for each outcome are also detailed in the full report.
We are incredibly proud of the hard work that went into this project and can’t wait to see how it is implemented across the world of Early Childhood Education.
