Three Necessary Mindset Shifts for Effective Family Engagement
Research is clear that effective family engagement can improve student outcomes, including attendance and academics, for all students; even more so for historically underserved subgroups of students. In fact, family engagement is twice as likely to predict student success as family socioeconomic status (Mapp & Henderson 2002). However, three mindset shifts serve as enabling precursors that can enhance and accelerate the positive impacts of family engagement.
The value of digital AND in-person family engagement
Increasing the impact of limited resources can be achieved by intentionally balancing digital and in-person engagement strategies. Think of digital engagement as the “connective tissue” of family-school partnerships. Effective digital engagement allows districts and schools to stay attuned to their community’s evolving needs and build a strong support base for all students by fostering every day, trust-based relationships with families.
“Adding text to our school communication has been so powerful. Many parents work and are able to text vs talk on the phone midday. I love being able to chat with our bilingual families. We use it daily in our school. The most powerful tool for communication as of yet for our school.” – Chris Barszcz, Associate Principal, Green Bay Public Schools, WI
Enhancing In-Person Family Engagement with Digital “Wrap-Arounds”
Digital engagement can also significantly enhance the impact of in-person activities such as parent-teacher conferences, learning nights, and home visits. Using digital tools, site and district leaders can efficiently gather information from families to shape programming, boost attendance, and streamline logistics management, including scheduling and identifying resource needs like childcare and translation services. Universally designed technology tools also help maintain ongoing engagement with families before, during, and after events, enabling leaders to gather feedback, monitor progress, and continuously improve practices.
In addition to the value digital engagement brings in the form of daily relationship building, digital engagement can also be used as “wrap-around” support to enhance in-person engagement events. It can also allow educators to engage a greater number of families using fewer resources. Allow in-person events and activities to have an even greater impact by utilizing effective digital engagement before, during, and after events:
- Digital outreach to gather needs and wishes from families to shape events
- Quick digital reminders and encouragement to attend events and activities
- Digital support to manage logistics to create efficiencies and access to events
- Ongoing pre-event, mid-event, and post-event digital engagement
- Gather feedback for celebrations, improvements and enhancements
- Keep a digital pulse on families to build a partnership that leads to deeper in-person engagement
Reinforcing Effective Digital Family Engagement During In-Person Events
The value of face-to-face, in-person engagement can not be understated. The events can also be more resource-intensive and therefore can not fully support engagement on their own. When given the opportunity to share space with families, it’s a great time to reinforce and provide support to accelerate digital engagement efforts.
- Identify platforms and other mechanisms for have families engage with – use in-person events to teach families how to engage and why (and provide opportunities to practice accessing platforms)
- Putting faces and voices to school staff to help them understand the role of each, how they will be engaging digitally in between in-person events, and why engaging digitally will better support their child
- In-person events can build community between families, which can help build digital inter-family networking, where families help other families understand digital systems of engagement
TalkingPoints supports the three essential mindset shifts needed to ensure districts can realize the power that effective family engagement has to improve student outcomes. This has been validated by rigorous, externally validated causal research showing TalkingPoints leads to higher academic performance, lower absenteeism, and gap closure in both areas, as shown below.
TalkingPoints has the power to improve outcomes in your district! To learn more about our Universal Family Engagement platform and effective family engagement strategies, visit TalkingPoints.
About TalkingPoints
TalkingPoints is an education technology nonprofit with the mission to drive student success by unlocking the superpower of effective family-school partnerships. The TalkingPoints award-winning Universal Family Engagement platform helps educators improve student and district outcomes through scalable, research-based best practices for family engagement. Across districts nationwide, TalkingPoints has empowered more than five million educators and families, facilitating nearly one billion conversations that drive student success.
Named by Common Sense Education as “the best overall family communication platform for teachers and schools,” TalkingPoints leads to gains in attendance rates and academic performance, as shown by rigorous, externally validated causal research. To learn more, view our TED Talk or visit talkingpts.org.
