by Osama Al-Mahdi
Bahrain Teachers College, University of Bahrain, P.O. Box 32038, Kingdom of Bahrain.
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21013/97881940692257
Family-school connections had received increasing attention in the past decades due to their potential benefits for children’s learning. However, the educational and research community is still working to give a clear explanation for what family-school connections really stands for, which is understood to be a complicated concept. This chapter begins by presenting different definitions of family-school connections. Afterwards it will discuss various theoretical perspectives in this educational area, which includes: Piaget cognitive development theory (Piaget, 1981), Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978), the funds of knowledge theory (Moll et al., 1992), Bourdieu’s social capital theory (Bourdieu, 1986), Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory(Velez-Agisto, et al., 2017), the overlapping family and school spheres (Epstein, 2011), Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler framework (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1995; 1997; 2005), and the structural and relational approach in understanding family-school connections (Kim & Sheridan, 2015). The chapter will conclude with a discussion about the implications of these theoretical perspectives on the research and educational field.
Keywords: Family-school connections, educational theories, theoretical modeling
This chapter is a part of: Contemporary Advances in Education | Edition (2019) (Eds. Sunil Sharma, FCS & Tian Chuanmao, PhD)
© 2020, CSMFL Publications & its authors.