Building Family, School, and Community Partnerships

  This text focuses on understanding different types of family structures, cross cultural issues that teachers need to be aware of, and building strong family/school/community relationships.  There are manyfeatures that adapt well to practicing teachers.    Updated information for teachers to help understand and deal with the changing family structure, especially gay and lesbian parents, grandparents as parents, and blended and divorced families. Tools are provided for assessing and evaluating the effectiveness of parent involvement programs, activities, and initiatives; In this age of accountability, these tools are particularly valuable. Advocacy and classroom strategies are provided across all chapter topics and themes. These strategies provide classroom teachers with practical and measurable tools for strengthening their parent involvement activities. These strategies also constitute an important part of in-service training; Inclusion practice continues to expand, and this textbook provides excellent information on a variety of disabilities, developmental delays, and other special needs. Working with parents of children with special needs is discussed, and numerous advocacy and classroom strategies are presented for working with these children and parents.     It is designed to be practical, useful, and informative for many different professionals who work with and are engaged in professional development and implementation with children and their families.

Kay Wright, EdD, is Professor of Child and Family Studies in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences at Eastern Kentucky University.  During the past 26 years of work in the field of early childhood education, she has been a preschool and kindergarten teacher, a consultant with the Kentucky Department of Education, Director of the Child Development Center at Eastern, and an early childhood teacher educator.  She was instrumental in the founding of Ecumencial Preschool and served on its board for several years.  Most recently, Dr. Wright has been involved in the implementation of the Interdisciplinary Early Childhood Education Certificate for teachers preparing to work with children from birth to primary school in Kentucky.  She has served as the president of the Kentucky Association for Children Under Six and has served in a variety of service capacities through professional organizations.  She has also coordinated several state training grants and written numerous publications for the Kentucky Department of Education.  Dr. Wright has conducted many workshops at the state, local, and national levels and has authored publications in the field of early childhood education.  Her professional interests include emergent curriculum, literacy and families, and exploring the ongoing needs of families through the lifespan. 

Dolores (Dee) Stegelin, PhD, is Professor and Program Coordinator of Early Childhood Education in the Eugene T. Moore School of Education,College of Health, Education, and Human Development, at Clemson University.  Dr. Stegelin's research interests are in early childhood advocacy and policy, early literacy, parent education, public school early childhood programs, and inclusion of children with special needs.  She is the author of three textbooks, and has published in numerous professional journals.  Dr. Stegelin is the co-director of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Project at Clemson University, an interdisciplinary initiative utilizing the National Center for Educational Statistics ECKL-S database.  She is public policy chair for the South Carolina Association for the Education of Young Children; serves on the research committeeof the Association of Childhood Education International (ACEI) and on the conference committee for the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators(NAECTE) and is active in the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).

Lynn Hartle, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Early Childhood Education in the Department of Child, Family, and Community Sciences at the University of Central Florida.  After 10 years as a Montessori preprimary directress, her career in higher education spans 20 years at five universities, where she has taught more than 14 different graduate and undergraduate courses, many online.  Each class is taught with consideration of the role of technology in teaching and her research interest - how to differentiate learning experiences for children typically developing and those with special needs from culturally and linguistically diverse families.  She has also been involved in grant-funded projects, the most recent of which is the U.S. Department of Education 2005 Early Childhood Educator Professional Development (ECEPD) Program Grant.  These teaching experiences grounded in research are synthesized in her first co-authored book, and in various journals.  She is a frequent speaker at national conferences and holds board positions on Readiness Coalitions and the National Association for Early Childhood Teacher Educators.  She is currently the president of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, Technology and Young Children Interest Forum.