ABSTRACT
The application of developmental/ecological theory to understanding how multiple layers of context, and in particular the family-school link, play a role in student learning is nothing new to education and developmental science. It is well-established that a student’s success in school is multidetermined—by characteristics that reside within the student, experiences in familiar contexts, and more distal influences of culture and society (Pianta & Walsh, 1996). Families provide experiences and set up educational expectations that are consistently and often powerfully linked to students’ early and later schooling outcomes (Bornstein & Tamis-LeMonda, 1989; McWayne, Hampton, Fantuzzo, Cohen, & Sekino, 2004; Morrison & Cooney, 2002; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network [NICHD EC-CRN], 2003; NICHD ECCRN & Duncan, 2003; Sameroff, Seifer, Baldwin, & Baldwin, 1993). Similarly, an entire literature exists to support the notion that experiences with teachers in classrooms make a difference in what and how students learn at school (Hamre & Pianta, 2001, 2005; Mashburn et al., 2008; Rowan, Correnti, & Miller, 2002; Sanders & Rivers, 1996). The primary emphasis of this chapter, however, is an oft -overlooked and underappreciated mesosystem element of the ecological framework, which sits at the intersection of these influential microsystems—family-school partnerships. Moving away from historically static, reductionistic views of family and school roles in the lives of students, these partnerships reflect recognition of the dynamic nature of shared responsibility and collaboration between parents and school practitioners for supporting students’ learning across their academic career (Christenson, 2004; Christenson & Sheridan, 2001). As such, family-school partnerships are operationalized as multidimensional, including components that range from communication between parents and teachers to parents’ contributions to learning in the home (Epstein, 1996).
