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Survey EPPs on Preparing Educators for Equitable Family Engagement

African american family drawing with color pencilsDecades of research confirm the importance of families, schools, and community working together to launch students on successful trajectories. Yet, teachers attribute lack of preparation as one of their greatest barriers to building relationships with families and their greatest fear for failure. As a result, in January of 2020, the National Association for Family School and Community Engagement (NAFSCE) partnered with AACTE, CAEP, MAEC, the NEA, and selected faculty and state leaders to form the Pre-Service Family Engagement Consortium to enhance how educators are prepared to engage families and communities.

This work is rooted in five core beliefs and values co-developed by the consortium members:

  • That diversity, equity, inclusion and racial justice are a cornerstone of educator preparation for family engagement. 
  • That providing teacher candidates with authentic opportunities to listen to, learn from, and share and reflect with families and community members throughout their coursework, clinical experiences, and student teaching is paramount. 
  • That rigorously analyzing and addressing how educators are prepared for family engagement will help ensure that engagement becomes integrated into what educator preparation programs do. 
  • That it is important to co-develop, advocate for, and promote model policies, standards, and processes that foster stronger systems of accountability for the preparation of educators for family engagement. 
  • That the platform of educator preparation for authentic family and community engagement is part of the broader effort to bring about racial justice and equity.

We invite you to lend your voice to this project! We are inviting deans, department heads and chairs of colleges of teacher education to complete our National Survey of Educator Preparation in Family Engagement by October 31. The goal of the survey is to understand how educator preparation programs are preparing education candidates for effective family engagement, identify promising practices, and learn and share innovative approaches. Please complete or forward the survey as you see fit.

 We look forward to sharing the results of the survey when it is complete! 

Margaret Caspe , Ph.D., is the NAFSCE pre-service and credentialing services consultant. She co-leads the Pre-Service Family Engagement Consortium, a collaborative of national partners and state and higher education teams dedicated to supporting educator preparation in family engagement.


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