Commentary: Strengthening Networks and Attachments to Promote Child Development

Abstract

This chapter provides a commentary highlighting important points raised in the preceding chapters and offering new insights. The chapter considers how research on processes and pathways of family–school partnerships can inform the development of strategies to promote the academic socialization of students. Building the social capital of parents and teachers is a critical approach for aligning the family and school systems and promoting student academic achievement. The formal communication methods typically used by educators to promote the academic socialization of students may be sufficient for parents who are well educated, but they are often not effective for less educated parents and those from minority racial/ethnic backgrounds. This chapter describes alternative strategies for increasing social capital that build upon the informal, natural helping patterns of parents. Engaging paraeducators, who are community members with important roles in schools, is one strategy to connect the formal network of school with the informal helping networks of the community. Establishing learning collaboratives that include parents, community members, and parents in a partnership to plan and implement quality improvement projects is another potentially fruitful strategy. This chapter also affirms the critical importance of parent–child and teacher–student attachments. Teachers can strengthen parent–child relationships by adopting a family-centered approach to education, and parents can strengthen teacher–student attachments by investing in building parent–teacher partnerships.