CHAPTER III

THINKING AND WORKING AS PARTNERS

 What is Partnership ?

The word partnership refers to a

relationship that involves close
cooperation between people who
have joint rights and responsibilities
(Merriam-Webster OnLine, 2006).
 As early as
Seeley proposed that

1989
educators move from thinking
of their relationship with
students’ families in terms of
service of service delivery –
provider and client or of
professionals and target
populations – to one of
partnership characterized by
common goals and
complementary efforts.
 “a true partnership is a
transforming vision of school life PARTNERSHIP
based on collegiality,
experimentation, mutual support,
and joint problem solving. It is
based on the assumption that
parents and educators are
members of a partnership who
have a common goal: generally
improving the school and
supporting the success of all
children in the school.”
According to SEELEY
 Common Beliefs and Expectations

1
A belief that all families are
knowledgeable experts who
powerfully influence their
children’s in-school and out-
of-school learning
 Common Beliefs and Expectations

2 An expectation that educators

will seek ways to reach out, listen
to, and understand the unique
needs, perspectives, and
strengths of families and to use
that information to enhance the
unique learning.
 Common Beliefs and Expectations

3 A belief that sharing

responsibility for educating
children can best be fostered by
schools developing a school-wide
climate characterized by trust,
two-way communication, and
mutual support in achieving their
educational aims for students.
 Common Beliefs and Expectations

4An expectation that educators

will develop positive, non
problematic ways to interact with
families in the educational
process of their children, and
recognizing that this may look
different for different families.
 Common Beliefs and Expectations

5
A belief that sharing responsibility for
educating children can best be
fostered by reaching out and
engaging members of the larger
community in developing their assets
and resources to support the
development of children and families.
COLLABORATIVE STRATEGIES ……………..........................................................................…

USED BY INDIVIDUAL

TEACHERS
 Many educators are committed to developing
positive and collaborative relationships with their
students’ families so that students can become
more confident and competent learners.
Three types of relationship-building strategies have been
depicted in the professional literature:

a. Reaching out and sharing

oneself with families
Reaching out and sharing
Many educators emphasize the
oneself with families
need to establish personal
relationships with their students’
families characterized by trust and
understanding. One strategy for
creating such relationships is to
reach out and share oneself with
students’ families. A teacher might
reach out and become known to
students’ families in a number of
different ways.
Three types of relationship-building strategies have been
depicted in the professional literature:

b.
Valuing and affirming family
expertise and ways of
knowing
Valuing and affirming family
expertise An effective strategy for building
trusting relationships with families
that can directly influence how
teachers develop their instruction
is to make it part of their routine to
invite families to share their
perspective and expertise about
their child. Rather than assume
that the educator is the sole
expert, these educators look for
ways to learn from and use the
parents’ perspective.
Three types of relationship-building strategies have been
depicted in the professional literature:

c.
Involving parents as
significant participants in
children’s learning.
 Teachers’ assumptions about the
family environment of their
Involving students can either build links
parents as between home and school or
significant sever them. In the separation and
participants remediation paradigms, the
diverse social, economic,
in children’s linguistic and cultural practices of
learning. some families are represented as
serious deficits rather than as
valued knowledge.
School-Wide Collaborative Strategies
 In contrast to the strategies implemented solely by an
individual teacher in her classroom, many educators are
joining forces to focus on building more collaborative
relations with families through changing school-wide
routines and practices that affect an entire school, grade
level, or special program of services.
 The team often uses a group problem-solving approach to assess and
redesign family-school activities. This entails inviting important
stakeholders/constituencies to work with the school team in;

a.identifying b. determinin
the primary g the
concerns priorities
experienced
in the
among
classroom these
or school concerns
c. e.
deciding planning
who will
be d. an activity
and
follow-up
f.
involved implementi
ng the
selecting activity and
a goal conducting
a follow-up.
Redesigning School or Program Orientations

Many educators hold meetings

at the beginning of the school
year to introduce parents or
students to the school and its
staff.
Rethinking Problem-Solving Meetings

Educators have a long

tradition of meeting with
parents, usually the mother,
when children are
experiencing difficulties at
school.
Revising Written Communications
Another type of climate-building
strategy involves the written
communications sent from the school
to parents. The way in which school
memos or letters are written always
sends a powerful message to parents
about the relationships that the school
wants to have with them.
 Weiss and Edwards (1992) emphasize that a school staff must
examine the messages they send to parents. If the school staff wants to
send consistent and positive messages to parents about collaboration,
they may need to examine and possibly revise existing letters so that
they send such messages as:
“We want to build a working partnership
with you/families”
“We know that your input is essential
for the educational success of your
child”
“If there is a problem, we can and will
work together with you to find a
solution.”
Using School Climate Dimensions to Redesign School
Routines
Before making changes in a particular family-
school routine, we must determine what are
the current norms of their school, how these
norms organize interactions with and beliefs
about students’ families, the consequences
of these interactional patterns and beliefs,
and what alternative ways of relating might
be developed.
 WEISS AND EDWARDS

In 1992 They recommend that

the staff look at how
they are interacting
with families with an
eye toward
addressing the goal
they wish to meet.
4 Aspects of a
School’s
Organizational
Climate
 1992
They describe four WEISS AND EDWARDS
aspect of a school’s
organizational climate
that can be used to
determine whether
existing school routines In
are having these desired
effects and to redesign
those routines: the
school’s culture, milieu,
social system, and
ecology.
1
The first aspect of school
climate, the culture, is
defined as the belief systems,
values, general cognitive
structure, and meanings that
characterize the social
environment. A school’s
culture is composed of beliefs
associated with how children
learn, with the value of
education in one’s life, and etc.
2
The second aspect of school
climate, the milieu of the
organization, refers to the
characteristics of persons and
groups involved with the
organization. A school’s milieu
captures the characteristics of
the specific persons and
groups that make up the
family-school community.
3
The third aspect, the social
system, consists of the patterned
ways in which school, staff, family
members, and students relate
with one another. These
relationship patterns might range
from being hierarchal to
collaborative, from shared
leadership to solitary leadership,
from adversarial to allied, from
alienated to close, and from task
focused to emotion focused.
4 The fourth aspect, the
ecology, is composed of the
physical and material
aspects of the
organizational
environment. In a school,
this might encompass;
a The
arrangement
and condition of
classrooms and
b The design
and
c
Signs and
other spaces condition bulletin
designated for of school boards
particular buildings
purposes
d e The
f
Letters condition of
The
telephone
and and
computer
messages intercom system
systems;
g h i
Quality of
Money Time educational
materials;
g kThe nature
surrounding
Allocation
neighborho
of
od and
resources transportati
on systems.
Developing Your Skills in Family-School Collaboration
 As you can see, collaborating
with families may take many
forms. Underlying these various
educational practices are some
important skills.
 6
IMPORTANT SKILLS
 SKILL 1
-Understanding Yourself,
Your Personal Reactions,
and Attitudes Teachers
may have this common
reaction to the idea of
reaching out and learning
from families
 SKILL 2
-Understanding and Valuing
Family and Community
Strengths Traditionally, many
educators viewed nontraditional
family forms, families with
limited incomes, those from
minority groups, and those with
children born out of wedlock as
being deficient and defective.
 SKILL 3
-Reaching Out and
Communicating. There
had always been
communication between
school staff and students’
families.
 SKILL 3
-This requires that you learn
how to:
 Reach out and communicate
with students’ families
 Design family-school
interactions for all students’
families
 Tie family-school contact to
children’s learning
 SKILL 4
-Understanding and
Appreciating Family Diversity
Family diversity refers to the
different elements that shape
family members’ sense of
identity, such as family’s
composition, culture, economic
circumstances, and religious
beliefs.
SKILL 4
Appreciating/honoring family cultural diversity
means;
 Reaching out to people with cultural
identities different from your own by
learning about the assumptions, belief
systems, role perceptions, and
prejudices that may affect how
families rear children and interact with
the school and the larger community;
SKILL 4
Appreciating/honoring family cultural diversity
means;
 Reaching out to people with cultural
identities different from your own by
learning about the assumptions, belief
systems, role perceptions, and
prejudices that may affect how
families rear children and interact with
the school and the larger community;
SKILL 4
Appreciating/honoring family cultural diversity
means;

 Developing opportunities to
incorporate the unique skills of
families from different cultural
contexts into their children’s
learning;
SKILL 4
Appreciating/honoring family cultural diversity
means;

 Creating comfortable and

respectful relationships with
them ;
SKILL 4
Appreciating/honoring family cultural diversity
means;

 Tailoring family-school activities to

the constraints and capacities of
the individual families. ;
 SKILL 5
-Building in Opportunities for
Positive No problematic Family-
School Interaction Collaborative
educators are creating
opportunities for interaction
with parents that are driven
more by a desire to build
positive alliances with them
rather than to respond only to
problems.
 SKILL 6
-Creating Active and Co-
Decision-Making Roles in
Planning and Problem Solving
and Accessing Needed Services
To develop strong and
collaborative relationships with
students and their families you
should create active and co-
decision-making roles for them
in matters concerning their
child.
 Get ½ sheet of Paper
And answer the ff. Question.
As a future educator how will you
develop positive collaborative
relationships with your students’
families so that your students can
become more confident and
competent learners?