Family-School Connections: Different Theoretical Perspectives and their Implications for Teacher Education

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 paper 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 paper concludes with a discussion about the implications of these theoretical perspectives on the research and educational field.