Date of Award

5-2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Executive Leadership

First Supervisor

Dr. Jason Berman

Second Supervisor

Dr. Jeanette Silvers

Abstract

School, family, and community engagement has the potential to significantly improve urban education and make urban schools more competitive with their suburban counterparts. This quantitative research study probed the viability of engaging teachers around strategies to increase their functional behavior levels towards school, family, and community partnerships by inviting them to participate in a training session on Epstein’s Six Types of Involvement Framework at an urban district in upstate New York. Forty participants were invited through flyers and email notifications, to be part of a control and treatment groups. Fifteen participants signed up for the control group and 15 for the treatment group. The same survey questions on functional behaviors towards school, family, and community involvement were administered to both groups before and after a six-hour training. Results showed that the training was sufficient to enable teachers to improve their functional behavior towards volunteering and collaboration with the community. However, the training was less successful in improving functional behaviors towards parenting, decision making, learning at home, and communication. Notwithstanding, teachers level of interest in these areas was relatively higher post training. The study suggests that urban school districts should invest more resources and training of teachers, to enlist families and the community as effective partners in education.

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