Family Life Education: Principles and Practices for Effective Outreach

A practical, how-to guide to developing, implementing, evaluating, and sustaining effective family life education programs

Drawing on the best scholarship and their own years of professional experience, the authors of this thoroughly updated edition begin by discussing the foundations of family life education and encourage readers to develop their own outreach philosophies. The book then helps readers learn principles and methods for reaching out to the public and how to form and use community collaborations and use principles of social marketing to promote programs.

Stephen F. Duncan is a professor in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University.  He received a Masters degree in Family Sciences (Family Life Education emphasis) from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. in Family Studies from Purdue University. He has authored or coauthored numerous outreach publications for lay audiences and professionals, written hundreds of articles for newspaper columns, been interviewed numerous times for television, radio, and magazine outlets, and directed nationally recognized outreach family life education programs. He served as an Extension Family Life Specialist at Auburn University in Alabama for 5 years and held a similar position at Montana State University for over 7 years. At BYU he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in family life education and directs outreach projects for the School of Family Life. He directs the Forever Families website (www.foreverfamilies.byu.edu) and was content director for Real Families, Real Answers, a Rocky Mountain Emmy Award-nominated documentary series appearing on public television channels nationwide. He has certification as a Family Life Educator.

Dr. Duncan has actively contributed to the scholarship of family life education, authoring numerous articles on outreach programs and evaluation, many of which have appeared in leading family life education outlets. He serves or has served on several editorial boards, including Family Relations, Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy, and Family Science Review. 

H. Wallace (Wally) Goddard is retired from being a Family Life Specialist at the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service. His earlier experience included serving as an Extension Family and Child Development Specialist at Auburn University for over 6 years, during which time he developed Principles of Parenting, a broad parenting program that has been adopted by several states, and The Great Self Mystery, a youth identity program that has been adopted by national organizations. He was also one of four scholars invited to develop the National Extension Parent Education Model, which is the base document for all extension parent education. He writes monthly columns for several Web magazines on various family subjects and has authored general audience family books.

In addition to work in Extension, he also provided content expertise to Stephen R. Covey when he wrote The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families. Experience in both university and business settings has provided a wealth of background in family life education. He also has graduate training in instructional psychology and certification as a Family Life Educator.

During 14 years of work with the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service, he developed a television series for public television, programs on parenting, personal well-being, and parenting and worked on the national team that developed a model of couple relationships. Many of his programs can be seen at: http://uaex.edu/health-living/personal-family-well-being/

He has served as chair of the Education and Enrichment section of the National Council on Family Relations, the premier family professional organization in the world, and is an NCFR Fellow and recipient of the Margaret E. Arcus Outstanding Family Life Educator Award.