Advances in Family School Community Partnering A Practical Guide For School Mental Health Professionals and Educators 2nd Edition Gloria E. Miller

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“This book offers concrete ideas, rooted in research, for building a continuous
improvement system of high-impact family-school-community partnerships.
An abundance of specific considerations for reaching diverse families, such
as those whose children have gender identity issues, special needs, a military
service background, or are newcomers or refugees are provided along with
tools with immediate practical application. I consider this book a must for
everyone in the field of family-school-community partnerships.”
— Anne T. Henderson, senior consultant, National Association
for Family, School and Community Engagement
“The importance of partnering among home, school, and community has long
been touted in the research literature as a best practice for educating youth,
however, there are few examples of effective collaborations in part because
the skills to create them are not evident. In this book, Miller, Stanley, and
Banerjee provide a roadmap for education professionals to follow in bringing
together this triad of microsystems in which a child develops. Beginning with a
theoretical framework informed by extant scholarship and drawing upon their
own work and the work of other leading scholars in school psychology, these
authors address collaboration generally and in regard to different demographic,
geographical, and exceptionality contexts. Using a host of practical strategies
and recommendations, they take the mystery out of creating strong partnerships,
making this book a must-read for any educator or school-based mental health
professional who wants to establish strong and effective collaborations.”
—Frank C. Worrell, PhD, professor and director of
School Psychology, Graduate School of Education,
University of Berkeley, CA, president-elect,
American Psychological Association
“Gloria Miller and other talented researchers and school professionals explain
and expand a multi-tiered framework to engage families in their children’s
education. Universal connections engage all families, and targeted interactions
respond to students’ special needs and talents. The chapters add new ideas
and useful tools to improve school, family, and community partnerships with
new technologies and in diverse communities. This is an important book for
researchers and educators at all grade levels.”
—Joyce Epstein, PhD, director, Center on School,
Family, and Community Partnerships, National
Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS),
professor of Education
“If anyone wants to read a stimulating, timely and actionable book, Advances
in Family-School Community Partnering is a must-read. There is much to like
about this book. It discusses in a clear, straightforward manner the importance of
community partnerships with a focus on equity, integration of technology, and
developmental considerations. This indispensable practical guide will inspire
and aid countless school mental health professionals and educators, guiding
them wisely toward improving family-school community partnerships.”
— Patricia A. Edwards, PhD, professor,
Department of Teacher Education,
Michigan State University
“In this important and timely book, the authors offer a clear and compelling
case for thinking about and practicing family and community engagement as
a multi-tiered system, one that involves various learning spaces, from birth
through high school. The attention to issues of gender, cultural, developmental,
and linguistic diversity makes the book particularly relevant to school systems
today, and the culminating cases are sure to spark conversation among a range
of audiences.”
— Margaret Caspe, PhD, consultant to
the National Association for Family,
School, and Community Engagement
“I am highly impressed with Advances in Family-School-Community

Partnering: A Practical Guide for School Mental Health Professionals and
Educators. This uniquely targeted book provides innovative perspectives
with its practical and focused insights on essential partnerships in education.
I especially appreciated the authors’ inclusion of chapters on underrepresented
populations such as students with intellectual disabilities, recent immigrants,
and refugees. This book provides deep and thoughtful coverage of practices
to foster strong trusting relationships between practitioners and families. With
its undergirding in evidence-based practices, this text is a must for all mental
health professionals and special educators.”
— Todd Sundeen, PhD, associate professor and
program coordinator, College of
Education and Behavioral Sciences,
University of Northern Colorado
“Advances in Family-School-Community Partnering: A Practical Guide for

School Mental Health Professionals and Educators is an exceptional resource
on family-school-community partnering. Its integration of family, school, and
community ecologies with a poignant focus on cultural responsiveness truly
emphasizes partnerships, acknowledging and celebrating the myriad ways that
families support and care for their children. This resource seamlessly integrates
research and practice with practical and useable resources, which makes it
accessible and relevant to school professionals, community leaders, as well as
future educators and mental health professionals. This book is assured to be an
impactful resource, with clear guidance for forming and sustaining family, school,
and community partnerships to support student learning and development.”
— S. Andrew Garbacz, PhD, associate professor,
UW-Madison, associate editor, Journal
of School Psychology
Advances in Family-School-
Community Partnering
Family-School-Community Partnering (FSCP) is a multidimensional process

in which schools, families, and communities work together to ensure the
academic, social, and emotional success of students. In this new edition,
the authors evaluate advances to a multitiered model of FSCP that further
incorporates community alliances.
Section I covers legislative, empirical, and theoretical underpinnings and
updates. Practical strategies are discussed to develop, deliver, and evaluate a
cohesive system of support to improve student outcomes. Chapter addendums
detail the specific approaches and associated resources to advance FSCP
from infancy through adulthood. In Section II, current researchers and
practitioners consider how to enhance collaborative partnerships with
military, migrant/refugee, and rural communities and support gender identity
and varied developmental abilities. Four culminating case stories are
designed to facilitate ideas for the intentional integration of FSCP domains
into readers’ ongoing practices.
School psychologists, counselors, educators, administrators, and social
workers will learn how to strategically implement this partnering at all levels
of schooling.
Gloria E. Miller, PhD, is an endowed professor at the University of Denver

whose work focuses on early language, literacy, and social-emotional
learning and elevating all families’ voices as collaborators in their children’s
education.
Amanda Arthur-Stanley, PhD, is a practicing school psychologist and adjunct

professor. She completes developmental assessments for young children aged
0–6 and partners with families around young children’s social-emotional
development.
Rashida Banerjee, PhD, is a professor at the University of Denver. Her

work focuses on effective family, professional, and community partnerships,
appropriate assessment, inclusive intervention, and interdisciplinary workforce
development.
Advances in Family-School-
Community Partnering
A Practical Guide for School Mental
Health Professionals and Educators
Second Edition
Gloria E. Miller, Amanda

Arthur-Stanley, and Rashida Banerjee
Second Edition published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Taylor & Francis
The right of Gloria E. Miller, Amanda Arthur-Stanley, and Rashida
Banerjee to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by
them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Miller, Gloria E., author. | Arthur-Stanley, Amanda, author. |
Banerjee, Rashida, author.
Title: Advances in family-school-community partnering : a practical
guide for school mental health professionals and educators / Gloria
E. Miller, Amanda Arthur-Stanley, Rashida Banerjee.
Other titles: The power of family-school partnering (FSP)
Description: Second edition. | New York : Routledge, 2021. | Revised
edition of: The power of family-school partnering (FSP), c2011 /
Cathy Lines. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021018896 (print) | LCCN 2021018897 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138502031 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138502093
(paperback) | ISBN 9781315144733 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Educational counseling—Study and teaching. |
School children—Mental health services. | School psychology.
Classification: LCC LB1027.5 .L485 2021 (print) | LCC LB1027.5
(ebook) | DDC 371.4—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021018896
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021018897
ISBN: 978-1-138-50203-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-50209-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-14473-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781315144733
Contents
List of Figures, Tables, Text Boxes ix

Foreword xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xxi
About the Authors and Contributors xxii
SECTION I
FSCP Foundations 1
1 A Multitiered Framework for Family-School-Community

Partnering 3
G L O R I A E . M IL L E R, AMANDA ART HUR- S TANL EY,
A N D R A S H I D A BANE RJE E
2 Foundational Theories and Cultural, Sociological, and

Philosophical Considerations for Family-School-
Community Partnering 24
A M A N D A A RT HUR- S TANL E Y, GL ORI A E . MI L L ER,
3 Universal Family-School-Community Partnering 44

4 Targeted and Intensive Family-School-Community Partnering 75

R A S H I D A B A NE RJE E , GL ORI A E . MI L L E R, AND
A M A N D A A RTHUR- S TANL E Y
5 Family-School-Community Partnering: Where Are We Now?

Where Are We Going? 104
G L O R I A E . M IL L E R AND DARCY HUT CHI NS
viii Contents
SECTION II
FSCP Considerations 131
6 Understanding and Supporting Military Families Through

Family-School-Community Partnerships 133
L O N D I J . S E G L E R AND MARK C. P I S ANO
7 Gender Identity Considerations for Family-School-

Community Partnerships 154
TO D D A . S AVA GE AND L E S L I E L AGE RS T ROM
8 Family-School-Community Partnering With Immigrant

and Refugee Families 174
R O B Y N S . H E S S AND VANJA P E JI C
9 Supporting Students With Intellectual and Developmental

Disabilities Through Family-School-Community Partnerships 198
D E VA D R I TA TAL APAT RA AND JE ANI NE COL E MA N
10 Considerations for Family-School Partnerships in Rural

Communities 222
S H A N N O N R . HOL ME S AND S US AN M. S HE RI DA N
11 Case Stories in Family-School-Community Partnering 246

Index 259
Figures, Tables, Text Boxes
Figures
0.1 Family-School-Community Partnering Framework xix
5.1 Continuum of Impact 106
Tables
1.1 Additional Laws Guiding FSCP 7
1.2 Conceptual Shifts From Parent Involvement to Family-School-
Community Partnering 10
2.1 Theoretical Influences on Family-School-Community Partnering 31
4.1 Evidence-Based and Recommended Resources to Support FSCP
in Upper Tier 92
8.1 School-Wide Supports With Practice Examples 186
9.1 Resources to Demystify Terminology for First-Time Families in
Special Education 207
9.2 Selected Discussion Areas for Family and School Collaboration 208
9.3 Family Versus School Responsibilities 212
10.1 Challenges, Strengths, and Potential Partnership Strategies That
Can Be Used in Rural Schools 224
10.2 Communication Strategies to Help Build Strong Relationships 227
10.3 Conjoint Behavioral Consultation (CBC) Stages, Objectives, and
Examples 235
Text Boxes
3.1 Practices to Foster Strong Relationships 48
3.2 Practices to Foster a Welcoming Environment 51
3.3 Practices to Foster Multidirectional Communication 56
3.4 Practices to Foster a Mutual Understanding 62
4.1 Practices to Foster Upper-Tier Relationships 83
4.2 Practices to Foster Upper-Tier Welcoming Environments 86
4.3 Practices to Foster Upper-Tier Multidirectional Communication 91
x Figures, Tables, Text Boxes
4.4 Practices to Foster Upper-Tier Mutual Understanding 98
5.1 Element 1: Create an Inclusive Culture 115
5.2 Element 2: Build Trusting Relationships 115
5.3 Element 3: Design Capacity-Building Opportunities 116
5.4 Element 4: Dedicate Necessary Resources 116
Foreword
2020 boldly unveiled the importance of family-school-community partnering

to the American public as the pandemic shuttered school buildings and brought
education immediately into the home. Suddenly and daily, people watched
stories of online learning and families and teachers discovering new ways of
communicating and collaborating. And the inequities in America’s educational
system stared at the nation, exposing significant variability in access to inter-
net, devices, support, and supervision.
As school buildings reopen in the post-pandemic world, mental health pro-
fessionals and educators will be searching for resources on how to better part-
ner with families and close the glaring opportunity gaps. They should grab this
book as soon as it is published! Perfect content and perfect timing. Training
programs should mandate its use. Districts should provide widespread access.
Upon reading, professionals will only wish they had known all the power-
ful information before the pandemic. A clear partnering roadmap awaits them.
They will want it on their shelves and at their fingertips.
Thought-provoking questions and real-life case studies encourage readers
to actively apply the practical strategies to their everyday worlds. Diverse
resources abound. Individual chapters offer specific hands-on information
about unique family circumstances—military, gender identity, intellectual and
development disabilities, rural locations, and immigrants and refugees.
Multicultural sensitivity, care, and humility emerge as central themes
throughout. The authors courageously discuss historic racial discrimination,
bias and marginalization within the FSCP context. The reader comes away with
a powerful realization—schools and families and communities can together
create a more just, understanding, and inclusive national reality.
The book’s title, Advances in Family-School-Community Partnering, accu-
rately describes the significant growth of the family–school collaboration arena
during the past ten years, since the publication of the first work. The original
text provided the “nuts and bolts” of what was then seen as a significant shift
from traditional parent involvement to active, two-way partnering focused on
student learning. This new version spells out the vital community role, while
continuing to incorporate a tiered framework and the essential, research-
based partnering ingredients—strong relationships, welcoming environments,
xii Foreword
multidirectional communication, and mutual understanding. Careful selection
of language, topics, and research provides an easily absorbed and utilized body
of knowledge. Prediction: this enhanced volume will become a valued, classic
FSCP resource for years to come—steering professionals, families, and com-
munities as they continue to strengthen meaningful and partnering practices.
*Dr. Cathy Lines was the lead author of the original text, The Power of
Family-School Partnering (FSP): A Practical Guide for School Mental
Health Professionals and Educators. Very early in her career, she observed
how much children benefitted when their adult worlds, home and school
and community, worked together. Thus, a partnering passion guided her 40
years in the field—as a school psychologist, district coordinator, adjunct
professor, state FSCP consultant, national representative, chair of the Colo-
rado Special Education Advisory Committee (CSEAC) and the State Advi-
sory Council for Parent Involvement in Education (SACPIE), and parent.
Her work contributed to policy changes, legislative considerations, training
opportunities, and resource development. In her retirement, she continues
to actively advocate for evidence-based FSCP as an independent education
writer. clines1@comcast.net
Preface
In our former practitioner-oriented text on family-school-partnering, published

a decade ago, The Power of Family-School Partnering (FSP): A Practical Guide
for School Mental Health Professionals and Educators (Lines et al., 2011), we
introduced a multitiered framework to engage families in their children’s edu-
cation and learning. Since its publication, the role of collaborative partnering
between families and schools has increased in prominence and importance as
have multitiered systems of school reform. Legal precedents in the United States
and around the world, now more than ever, require partnership processes and
practices designed within a comprehensive framework to increase the effective-
ness of health, mental health, and education service delivery. The burgeoning
empirical literature in the last decade continues to validate the need for an inte-
grated, multitiered system of support across homes, schools, and communities
to enhance the school and life success of all children and youth. We use the terms
children, youth, and students interchangeably to reflect all ages from infants to
young adults who receive general and special education and other specialized
services (e.g., academic, occupational, physical, speech, social-emotional, and
behavior therapies) from professionals who work collaboratively and coopera-
tively with families to ensure their health, development, and well-being. These
advances have led to important and significant conceptual enhancements and
structural changes in this edition.
Conceptual Enhancements
A major conceptual enhancement is an increased focus on the role of com-
munity partners within a multitiered system of support. We have intentionally
included more ideas for collaborating with community agencies, institutions,
and leaders. This reflects the national and international efforts to ensure mem-
bers from community resource agencies, businesses, and religious and politi-
cal leaders are at the table when developing school and home partnerships.
Consequently, we also revised our title and the associated acronym to Family-
School-Community Partnering (FSCP).
A second conceptual enhancement is a stronger emphasis on culturally respon-
sive family-school-community partnerships. The human migration occurring
xiv Preface
globally, the historic racism that has existed and persists, and the increasing
diversity reflected in our schools all require greater attention to culture, race, and
ethnicity. Critical inequities and racial biases are essential to uncover, recognize,
and address to make FSCP a reality. The completion of this book occurred during
a year of turmoil that included growing impatience with continued racial injus-
tices, as well as a widening COVID-19 pandemic, and great political divides in
the United States and globally. The Annie E. Casey Foundation (2020) recently
shared poignant U.S. statistics regarding the state of children and families, noting
a lack of health insurance, economic instability, and racial and ethnic inequi-
ties as pressing needs for families (www.aecf.org/resources/kids-families-and-
covid-19/). Additionally, the realities of the pandemic have required that much
schooling be delivered remotely or in a hybrid model, which has further revealed
and exacerbated the systems of privilege in our society. More than ever before,
efforts are needed to repair trust and relationships with innovations and refor-
mulations of FSCP systems and practices. Indeed, these realities underscore the
importance of school as a public health resource for all and we have ampli-
fied and expanded socioecological theory and principles in the framing of ideas
across each chapter.
A third conceptual enhancement is a greater emphasis on family involve-
ment and engagement throughout a student’s educational trajectory. It has long
been recognized that family involvement in education is a significant factor
from preschool to high school and even after graduation. Over the last decade,
more research has been conducted to further substantiate the important role
families play in their children’s development and education and how the form
and function of these roles change over time. As a result, greater attention
has been given to ideas for differentiating FSCP domains and practices across
formal and informal learning environments from infancy to postgraduation
careers or higher education settings.
A fourth conceptual enhancement is the inclusion of technological advances
that can significantly enhance FSCP efforts. Indeed, over the last decade
the technological revolution has proliferated many innovations for sharing
information and joint decision-making. In this revision, we have intention-
ally updated and included representative examples of technological innova-
tions that might be used for planning, implementing, and evaluating FSCP,
that are especially relevant for enhancing relationships, building welcoming
environments, fostering multidirectional communication, and creating mutual
understanding.
Structural Changes
In addition to these conceptual enhancements, several structural changes were
made in the revision process. We condensed our previous six chapters into
five chapters that now comprise Section I. The chapters in Section I include
a review of historical, legislative, empirical, and theoretical influences to
help frame our FSCP multitiered model. The focus is on the strategies to
Preface xv
develop, deliver, and evaluate an integrated system of support that advances
family, school, and community partnerships from infancy to high school and
beyond. Updates to our philosophy, premises, and processes are outlined con-
sidering our stronger emphasis on cultural humility and the incorporation of
research on racial disparities, equity, and social justice. Universal as well as
upper-tier FSCP practices and programs published within the last decade also
are forwarded and organized within the four domains critical to all partnership
efforts: strong relationships, welcoming environments, multidirectional com-
munication, and mutual understanding.
For this edition, we also invited current FSCP researchers and practitioners
to add their perspectives of important circumstances and conditions critical
to the partnership processes and practices introduced in Section I. The first
five chapters in Section II focus on a specific context (i.e., military, refugee or
immigrant, or rural communities) or important child-focused issue (i.e., gender
identity and developmental disability). The final chapter in Section II contains
four fictional case stories written by graduate students, preparing to be edu-
cators, special educators, or school mental health providers, which we hope
will be used to facilitate important conversations about how ideas in previous
chapters might be adapted to “real-life” situations.
Chapter-by-Chapter Overview
There are 11 chapters overall: five chapters in Section I and six chapters in Sec-
tion II. Each chapter begins with the key objectives that are subsequently eluci-
dated and addressed more fully with accompanying references and resources.
Each chapter ends with a set of discussion questions to encourage a self-reflec-
tive review and in-depth discourse of the associated topics.
Section I
Chapter 1, A Multitiered Framework for Family-School-Community Part-
nering, focuses on the historical, legislative, and research trends and concep-
tual shifts in family, school, and community partnering over the past three
decades. We also introduce our terminology and rationale for a multitiered
family, school, and community partnering (FSCP) framework to support posi-
tive student and adult outcomes across four critical domains: strong relation-
ships, welcoming environments, multidirectional communication, and mutual
understanding. The remaining chapters in the book follow this framework in
discussing specific and focused contents and topics across multiple contexts
and with varied stakeholders and family demographics.
Chapter 2, Foundational Theories and Cultural, Sociological, and Philo-
sophical Considerations for Family-School-Community Partnering, outlines
historical theories underpinning current ecocultural systems thinking about
FSCP. A new logic model is described to operationalize many of these con-
cepts. Critical racial, ethnic, and sociological considerations are reviewed to
xvi Preface
set the stage for FSCP embodying multicultural oriented care that values and
focuses on strengths, intersectionality, and cultural humility. Based on this
groundbreaking work, overarching philosophical beliefs are described that
must permeate all partnership efforts.
Chapter 3, Universal Family-School-Community Partnering, begins with
a discussion of essential system- and school-wide FSCP features. In the
remainder of the chapter, specific research-supported, high-impact universal
approaches are organized as subtopics within the four unifying FSCP domains
introduced in Chapter 1 to build strong relationships, create welcoming settings,
foster multidirectional communication, and develop a mutual understanding
of expectations across schools, homes, and communities. Considerations for
embedding multicultural oriented care and technological advances are woven
throughout. The chapter ends with a separate section on developmental issues
and adaptations to promote all students’ long-term school and life success.
Specific examples of Universal FSCP strategies and practices along with
resource links also are provided.
Chapter 4, Targeted and Intensive Family-School-Community Partnering,
reviews upper-tier targeted and intensive partnering practices and programs
that are designed to foster differentiated services and resource allocation.
We identify the key features that distinguish the upper-tier partnering prac-
tices from the universal-tier partnering. We build on approaches discussed
in Chapter 3 to provide research supported and recommended strategies and
approaches that practitioners can use to promote trust and capacity of the
family through culturally responsive welcoming environments and mutual
understanding. We discuss approaches for teaming and conflict resolution
such as conjoint problem-solving, facilitated individualized plans, and other
conflict resolution strategies and ideas to increase student voice and partici-
pation on adult decision-making teams. Similar to Chapter 3, specific exam-
ples of upper-tier FSCP strategies and practices along with resource links are
provided.
Chapter 5, Family-School-Community Partnering: Where Are We Now?
Where Are We Going?, describes contemporary national and state FSCP prac-
tices and policies with illustrative examples from districts and schools in
Colorado. As the Colorado Director of Family Partnerships, coauthor Darcy
Hutchins has played a critical role in the development of high-impact initia-
tives across the state. Difficulties that have plagued FSCP researchers and
practitioners when adopting FSCP priorities and prototypes are identified
along with ideas from implementation science on how to overcome these chal-
lenges. A newly approved state-level framework to promote the development
and evaluation of equitable and sustainable, multitiered FSCP is reviewed
with examples of associated rubrics, guiding questions, and promising prac-
tices. In the final section, four recommendations are forwarded to cultivate
and disseminate future research, practice, and policy to engage all families,
schools, and communities as partners in promoting students’ educational and
life success.
Preface xvii
Section II
In Chapter 6, Understanding and Supporting Military Families Through
Family-School- Community Partnerships, coauthors Londi Segler and Mark
Pisano clarify critical military terminology and concepts and important condi-
tions that affect military families and students. In recent years, military fami-
lies have expressed continuing concerns about a lack of support and resources
available in civilian public schools during a deployment of a family mem-
ber. The impact extends across all branches of the military. However, whereas
Active-Duty families living on a military base have available support programs
on their installations, Guard and Reserve families living among civilian com-
munities typically do not have access to similar family support. The social-
emotional struggles and plight of military families during the deployment
cycle and the key factors affecting the multitiered support for these families in
public school systems are reviewed, and the importance of military-informed
FSCP is stressed. Research on successful interventions and available resources
are outlined with recommendations for family-school-community partnerships
that can support military families in public schools.
In Chapter 7, Gender Identity Considerations for Family-School-Community
Partnerships, coauthors Todd Savage and Leslie Lagerstrom present impor-
tant background information on students and families who have expressed or
have taken on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or other gender iden-
tities during childhood through young adulthood. Transgender and gender-
diverse children and youth constitute a growing population of students with
unique social, emotional, behavioral, and mental health and academic needs
compared to their cisgender peers. All school personnel must be prepared
to respond to these needs as a means of optimizing transgender and gender-
diverse students’ potential for success in school and throughout life. From
policy development to creating positive school climates, schools can employ
many actions to foster greater collaboration with families on prevention
and intervention implementation within a Multi-Tiered System of Support
(MTSS) framework. Actions schools can take in a tiered format are high-
lighted to support transgender and gender-diverse students and their families
in a culturally responsive manner.
In Chapter 8, Family-School-Community Partnering With Immigrant and
Refugee Families, coauthors Robyn Hess and Vanja Pejic provide an over-
view of the key concepts related to school-based support for refugee and
immigrant children and youth and their families. Important social, emotional,
and educational implications for best practices are organized using the lens of
Family-School-Community Partnering. The diversity of immigrant and refu-
gee populations and the degree to which they are located across various regions
in the United States limits the generalizability of any one approach. Instead,
this review covers an array of promising partnership practices implemented
in school and community settings that have led to positive student adjustment
and a reduction in hardships experienced by families. Recommendations are
xviii Preface
forwarded to enhance universal and targeted services and interventions for this
population.
In Chapter 9, Supporting Students With Intellectual and Developmen-
tal Disabilities Through Family-School-Community Partnerships, coauthors
Devadrita Talapatra and Jeanine Coleman offer strategies to foster a coordi-
nated and consistent network of supportive services between homes, schools,
and communities for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities
(IDD). Laws and policies are reviewed that universally apply and impact fami-
lies with very young children to youth with IDD who are graduating and tran-
sitioning into adulthood. The main focus, however, is on targeted and intensive
partnering practices to foster strong, welcoming, and culturally relevant rela-
tionships between community and school professionals who work with the
student and their families from birth to adulthood. The importance of collab-
orative and regular communication and greater mutual understanding of the
intersectionality of IDD is highlighted to support culturally and linguistically
diverse children and families within a comprehensive service delivery system.
In Chapter 10, Considerations for Family–School Partnerships in Rural
Communities, coauthors Shannon Holmes and Susan Sheridan identify the
unique factors that can affect the promotion of FSCP and students’ healthy
development in rural communities. In this environment, respectful, consis-
tent, and collaborative interactions between families, educators, and com-
munity members are critical to support children’s learning, social-emotional
competence, and behavioral skills. Partnership strategies that build connec-
tions between these stakeholders are often complicated by limited finances,
travel distances, and restrictive access to professionals, services, and other
community resources. These hurdles increase the need for effective conjoint
problem-solving as a universal and upper-tier strategy for building family-
school-community partnerships in rural settings. Recommendations are for-
warded to advance the science and practice of rural FSCP.
Finally, Chapter 11, Case Stories in Family-School-Community Partnering,
includes four case stories adapted from those submitted by graduate students
preparing to be general and special educator and school mental health practi-
tioners who were enrolled in a required Family Collaboration and Consultation
course at the University of Denver. Case stories are used within the course
to foster deep thinking about FSCP. Students work collaboratively in small
groups to compose a fictional story based on their composite experiences that
reflect interpersonal mismatches and systemic dilemmas often faced in real
life when trying to support students’ schooling and life success. These stories
are then used to facilitate conversations on how to integrate ideas across the
chapters to envision and advocate for equitable, transformative and sustainable
multitiered family, school, and community partnership efforts in the future.
Our FSCP Logo

A new accompanying visual was developed to reflect the important changes and
additions in this updated edition. (See Figure 0.1) Similar to ideals forwarded
Preface xix
in our prior text, the new logo and acronym for Family-School-Community
Partnering, or FSCP, was incorporated into a three-dimensional pyramid to
reflect the need for a coordinated multitiered system of support. Dotted lines
within the pyramid demark a fluid versus rigid continuum of universal, targeted,
and intensive supports. The pyramid rests on a solid platform representing a
core foundational multicultural care orientation that must underlie and permeate
through all partnering efforts.
Three major changes were made to our previous logo incorporated into the
center of the pyramid that originally pictured two adult-like figures actively
turning an object resembling a jump rope. A child-like figure was displayed
between them hopping over several shaded rotations of the rope with arms
uplifted. At the highest rotation, the child’s head was represented by a red
circle, the only color in the logo, and a solid line encircled this illustration.
The first change to our new FSCP logo was to the two nongendered, adult
caregiver figures. They are now joined together in the middle supporting a
much younger child figure. The intent of this change was to highlight the
importance of considering home and school collaborative partnerships from
birth to promote a student’s rise to success.
Second, instead of a solid circle, this “family unit” is now encircled by an array
of interconnected lines that represent interlocking shoulders and arms. Above
these lines is a series of ovals that signify the heads of multiple stakeholders who
play a role in elevating and raising up a child. These changes were intended to
further emphasize that successful FSCP must move beyond what each system
(i.e., home, school, and community) does in isolation to instead ensure all stake-
holders have the capacity to partner on positive and collective actions.
Figure 0.1 Family-School-Community Partnering Framework

xx Preface
Third, shading variations were made to the oval heads of the figures included
on the circle to portray the diversity within our society and the sociocultural
foundation underlying FSCP. This addition also reflects our belief that
successful partnerships require authentic and respectful interactions and a
willingness to mutually appreciate and integrate each other’s worldviews,
historical experiences, situated conditions, and honored customs and traditions.
Overall, our revised logo is designed to illustrate a strong commitment to ensure
every student achieves educational and life success through collaborative
partnerships across culturally diverse homes, schools, and communities.
Target Audience
The audience for this new edition is again targeted to professionals who often
team together with families to support student success, including teachers,
paraprofessionals, special educators, nurses, occupational, speech and lan-
guage, and physical therapists, and mental health professionals, such as school
psychologists, counselors, and social workers. Additionally, the information
covered in this text will be highly relevant to school administrators, commu-
nity leaders, and policy makers committed to fostering and encouraging strong
relational engagement between schools, homes, and communities. We think
this text can be a useful standalone or supplemental text in core preservice
classes for future educators, administrators, and school or community mental
health and healthcare professionals. We also hope that it will be used within
communities of practice to encourage shared professional learning between
families and community members who desire further information on how to
engage and advocate for effective FSCP.
References
Annie E. Casey Foundation. (2020, December). Kids, families and Covid-19: Pandemic
pain points and the urgent need to respond. https://assets.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/
aecf-kidsfamiliesandcovid19-2020.pdf
Lines, C., Miller, G. E., & Arthur-Stanley, A. (2011). School-based practice in action
series: The power of Family-School Partnering (FSP): A practical guide for school
mental health professionals and educators. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge our families for their patience and support throughout
the writing of this book: Joe and Ricky (Erica) Czajka; Michael, Henry, Charlie,
and Abby Stanley; and Deb Banerjee.
We are thankful to the many families and students with whom we have engaged
with over the years who have indelibly impressed upon us the importance of
mutually respectful and collaborative partnerships.
A heartfelt thanks is extended to the many graduate students with whom we
have had the pleasure of teaching over the years who have fueled our continued
passion to promote alliances between homes, schools, and communities
through their strong commitment to equity and social justice when they enter
their respective educational fields.
We appreciate the visionaries at the Exceptional Student Leadership Unit of
the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) whose advocacy for FSCP in
Colorado has significantly and positively impacted the lives of many students
and families. This work has been propelled to new heights in the last seven
years by our colleague Dr. Darcy Hutchins, the current director of Family,
School, and Community Partnerships at CDE.
We are especially grateful to Mary-Margaret Simpson, who devoted countless
hours to editing our chapters and tracking down references. She kept the proj-
ect moving along with her strong editorial skills and ongoing encouragement.
Amanda Devine and Grace McDonnell, our editor and support team at Rout-
ledge, answered our many questions and provided ongoing feedback during the
writing of this text. We offer special thanks to Mikyla Bowen, who designed
our logo and helped us put our vision of FSCP into art.
And finally, to Dr. Cathy Lines, for her vision, dedication, and enthusiasm for
FSCP as something that can change a student’s school and life success for the
better. Dr. Lines worked before her retirement as a consultant to CDE and as a
school psychologist within the Cherry Creek School District. It was her spirit and
motivation that led to the completion of our first text, The Power of Family-School
Partnering (FSP): A Practical Guide for School Mental Health Professionals and
Educators in 2011. She has continued to champion this work by encouraging us
to accept the subsequent invitation a decade later to complete a second text and
providing support behind the scenes to assure its completion.
About the Authors and Contributors
All three authors are passionate about family-school-community partnering

and have backgrounds as former public and private school educators, university
faculty, mental health practitioners, and early interventionists.
Gloria E. Miller, PhD, is an endowed professor in the Morgridge College of

Education in the Department of Teaching and Learning Sciences at the Uni-
versity of Denver. Before pursuing graduate studies, she was a teacher at a
public and a private school serving students with learning disabilities. She
received her MA, MS, and PhD degrees from the University of Wisconsin-
Madison and began her academic career in the psychology department at
the University of South Carolina. As a former teacher, school psychologist,
consultant, and researcher on local, regional, national, and international
projects, her work has stressed prevention and intervention to promote early
literacy and behavioral, social, and emotional learning within classrooms
and at home through authentic collaboration with families that capitalizes on
cultural and personal strengths, life experiences, values, and traditions. She
is looking forward to “rewiring” (versus retiring) next year to devote more
time to interprofessional partnerships with newcomer immigrant and refu-
gee families, educators, health and mental health practitioners, and commu-
nity members to ensure all children’s academic and life success. Gloria also
looks forward to spending more time hiking, gardening, skiing, and post-
COVID traveling the world with her husband of over 40 years and young
adult daughter.
Amanda Arthur-Stanley, PhD, is a practicing school psychologist. She works
full-time at Child Find completing developmental evaluations for children
aged birth through 6 years old and helping coordinate evaluations between
the school district and the Department of Human Services. Amanda received
her MA and PhD degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and
earned her psychologist license through the State of Colorado. She adjunct
teaches graduate courses for local universities in addition to her school dis-
trict responsibilities. Amanda is a parent to three wonderful children, Henry,
About the Authors and Contributors xxiii
Charlie, and Abby, and strives to balance working full-time with staying con-
nected to her young children’s school experiences.
Rashida Banerjee, PhD, is a professor and chair in the Department of Teach-
ing and Learning Sciences at the University Denver. Her research areas
are effective community, family, and professional partnerships, appropriate
assessment of young children, especially issues around diversity, inclusive
intervention for young children, and interdisciplinary early childhood work-
force development. Rashida has published articles, book chapters, received
grants, and presented at numerous national and international conferences
on these topics. Her research and funded projects focus on preparing well-
qualified early childhood and early childhood special educators. She has
served on the Division for Early Childhood Board and the DEC Recom-
mended Practices Committee responsible for ensuring the development and
use of evidence-based practices in early childhood. She serves as the editor
for Journal for International Special Needs Education.
Contributing Authors
Jeanine Coleman, PhD, is a clinical associate professor and program direc-

tor of the Early Childhood Special Education program in the Teaching &
Learning Sciences Department at the University of Denver. She has a mas-
ter’s degree in Early Childhood Special Education and received her PhD
from the University of Denver in the Child, Family & School Psychology
program. Her research interests include families with children with neu-
rodevelopmental disorders, assessments methods for young children, and
working with families going through the early intervention/special educa-
tion processes. Coleman is also working on projects regarding the imple-
mentation of interprofessional education to address the needs of children
and families with early childhood mental health needs and the expressed
emotion of families with children with intellectual disability.
Robyn S. Hess, PhD, ABPP, School Psychology, is a professor of School
Psychology at the University of Northern Colorado and training director for
the High Plains Psychology Internship Consortium. She has a long-standing
interest in children’s mental health and culturally responsive practices with
a focus on increasing access to mental health services for children and their
families, especially those from immigrant and refugee populations. Her
publications have appeared in several journals including School Psychology
Quarterly, Psychology in the Schools, and most recently, Journal of Rural
Special Education. She has served on the Committee for Psychological Test-
ing and Assessment, the Executive Board for Division 16, School Psychology,
and the American Academy of School Psychologists, the School Psychology
Specialty Council, and the School Psychology Round Table.
xxiv About the Authors and Contributors
Shannon Holmes, PhD, is an assistant professor in Educational, School &
Counseling Psychology at the University of Missouri. She earned her PhD
degree in school psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and
completed a postdoctoral fellowship through the Institute of Education Sci-
ences Interdisciplinary Research and Training Program. She is passionate
about increasing the accessibility of evidence-based interventions and qual-
ity of services available to youth with disruptive behaviors. As a result, her
areas of interest include the application of implementation science to school
psychology, the measurement and promotion of fidelity of implementation,
and family-school partnerships.
Darcy Hutchins, PhD in Education Policy from the University of Maryland-
College Park, is the director of Family, School, Community Partnerships
for the Colorado Department of Education (CDE). She provides support to
districts to implement family partnership programs for student success, par-
ticularly through parent participation on school and district accountability
committees. Hutchins staffs the State Advisory Council for Parent Involve-
ment in Education (SACPIE), teaches in the Morgridge College of Educa-
tion at the University of Denver, and serves on various state and national
advisory boards. She began her career as a first-grade teacher in Baltimore
City Schools. She has been fortunate to witness examples across the world
about how family, school, and community partnerships positively impact
students. A simple positive phone call or home visit can change the trajec-
tory of a student’s education.
Leslie Lagerstrom is the creator of the blog Transparenthood, which chroni-
cles her family’s experience raising a transgender child. Through her writ-
ing, she has built a national advocacy platform for transgender children and
their families. Her essays have been featured in three anthologies, turned
into a stage production that toured the United States, and in The Huffington
Post. Lagerstrom’s essays have also been chosen for three Listen to Your
Mother shows, a series of live, on-stage readings across North America.
Committed to spreading awareness, she is frequently invited to speak in
front of audiences across the country, which include K-12 school communi-
ties, college students and university administrators, medical professionals,
and employees of Fortune 500 companies.
Vanja Pejic, PhD, has a passion for Family-School-Community Partnering
(FSCP) that started long before her educational training in school psychol-
ogy. Her family resettled to the United States from Bosnia and Herzegovina
when she was in the fourth grade. For Pejic, school became a source of
connection, growth, and voice. Pejic’s own childhood experiences as well
as her clinical work with immigrant and refugee children and their families
taught her the value of centering family voices and fostering connection
and mutual understanding between family and school, all critical elements
of FSCP. Pejic is a staff psychologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an
instructor for Harvard Medical School. Her research and clinical interests
About the Authors and Contributors xxv
focus on culturally attuned behavioral health practice with special interest
in immigrant and refugee populations.
Mark C. Pisano, EdD, is in his 38th year as a school psychologist with the
Department of Defense schools in Ft. Bragg, NC, and has been in private
practice for 26 years. His professional focus is on military families and
children and how to best support their needs during and after deployment.
He has presented workshops and seminars across the country to mental
health providers as well as colleges and universities. He is the author of
the National Association of School Psychologists Best Practices chapter
on military families and has worked internationally for the Department of
Defense testing military children in international schools in Uruguay and
Bolivia. Pisano has collaborated with Sesame Street and its military family
curriculum for over the past 15 years, presenting with Sesame Street rep-
resentatives and walk-around Muppet characters at national conventions as
well as connecting materials with military families.
Todd A. Savage, PhD, NCSP, has been a professor in the school psychology
program at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls (UWRF) since 2008.
He is also a former president of the National Association of School Psy-
chologists (NASP). Savage earned his doctorate from the University of
Kentucky in 2002 and, prior to his current position at UWRF, he was on
the faculty of the school psychology program at New Mexico State Univer-
sity. His scholarly research interests include LGBTQ+ issues in education
with an emphasis on gender diversity, culturally responsive practice, social
justice matters in the schooling process, and school safety and crisis preven-
tion, preparedness, and intervention. As the African proverb goes, it takes a
village to raise a child; thus, it is essential that families, schools, and com-
munities work together to optimize every student’s potential for academic,
social, emotional, and behavioral success and beyond.
Londi J. Segler, PhD, is a school psychologist in Denver, CO. She began her
work with students as a contracted youth director for the United States Army
and Air Force Military Chapels in Germany and the United Kingdom. After
her time with the military, she began working with international schools in
Belgium and Malaysia to consult on best practices for working with highly
mobile students. After seeing the increased need for mental health support
for highly mobile students, she moved back to the United States and earned
her PhD in school psychology from the University of Denver, focusing her
dissertation on the lived experiences of military families with students with
disabilities. Upon reflection of her time overseas and now in the United
States, she firmly believes that the partnership between families, schools,
and communities is the necessary agent to ensure positive educational and
mental health outcomes for students.
Susan M. Sheridan, PhD, is George Holmes University Professor of Edu-
cational Psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research
acknowledges the significance of families in children’s social-behavioral
xxvi About the Authors and Contributors
adjustment and academic success. She studies family–school partnerships,
parent–teacher (conjoint) behavioral consultation, social–behavioral inter-
ventions, parent engagement, early childhood intervention, and rural edu-
cation. Sheridan has authored 210 books, chapters, and journal articles. A
fellow of Division 16 of the American Psychological Association (APA)
and past-president of the Society for the Study of School Psychology, she
received the 1993 Lightner Witmer award by APA’s Division of School
Psychology for early career accomplishments; the 2005 Presidential Award
from the National Association of School Psychologists; the 2014 University
of Nebraska Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Award; the 2015
Senior Scientist Award for lifetime career accomplishments from APA’s
Division of School Psychology; and the 2019 University of Wisconsin’s
Educational Psychology Distinguished Alumni Award.
Devadrita Talapatra, PhD, is an associate professor of School Psychology
in the Teaching and Learning Sciences Department at the University of
Denver’s Morgridge College of Education. She believes that strong col-
laborations between schools and families are pivotal to the work of school
psychologists and if we are to enact meaningful change in the lives of chil-
dren with disabilities, families, schools, and communities must work in
concert. Consequently, Talapatra’s research and practice focus on enhanc-
ing culturally relevant and family-centered services for youth with intellec-
tual disabilities (ID) and their families and on training school psychologists
to increase their services for students with ID and their families.
Section I
FSCP Foundations
1 A Multitiered Framework for
Family-School-Community
Partnering
Gloria E. Miller, Amanda Arthur-Stanley,
and Rashida Banerjee
After reviewing this chapter, the reader will:

• Identify legislative and terminology shifts in the role families play in
education.
• Summarize the research literature regarding the outcomes of collaborative
FSCP.
• Describe the essential characteristics of a multitiered framework for FSCP.
Introduction
Families, schools, and communities all share responsibility for raising,
guiding, and teaching children in our society. Students’ success is much more
likely when these critical “spheres of influence” “overlap” (Epstein, 1995).
This premise is based on the philosophy that persons in each of these contexts
have unique knowledge, information, experiences, and perspectives crucial
to student development and learning. Thus, greater opportunities to improve
student outcomes and overcome learning challenges occur when these parties
collaborate to cooperatively construct complementary learning across all
contexts where children and youth live and learn (Bouffard & Weiss, 2008).
Indeed, when schools and communities work together with families to
support learning, children tend to succeed, not just in school, but throughout
life (Henderson & Berla, 1994).
This chapter begins with an overview of legislative precedents in the
United States that have strengthened and firmly established the families’
role in children’s education. Next, we review how such policies have led to
critical conceptual changes about families’ role in education over time with
resulting shifts in terminology and perspectives. We then explain our ratio-
nale for employing the term Family-School-Community Partnering and the
acronym FSCP. Following this, we briefly summarize the burgeoning research
literature published since the last edition of the book in 2011 which continues
to demonstrate positive student and adult outcomes and school-wide and
community benefits associated with successful FSCP. The chapter ends with
a compelling rationale for promoting multitiered FSCP including key and
DOI: 10.4324/9781315144733-2
4 Gloria E. Miller et al.
unifying characteristics underlying this framework. This framework is subse-
quently employed throughout the text to review empirically validated FSCP
practices and programs across multiple contexts.
Legislative Precedents for FSCP

Successful collaboration and consultation between homes, schools, and com-
munities is essential, not only because students spend a majority of time out of
school, but also because environmental conditions within the family and com-
munity have a dramatic influence on the degree to which students are engaged
and perform in school (Christenson & Reschly, 2010). The family’s role in a
child’s education has a long history of legislative support in the United States
leading up to its current inclusion in most educational policies and reform
efforts (Molina, 2013). Indeed, the inclusion of families has long been an aspi-
rational part of federal education legislation in the United States.
Family Inclusion in General Education Legislation

Family involvement in decisions about their child’s education was first explic-
itly introduced in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of
1965 (ESEA, 1965). In this general education law, parental involvement was
mandated through representation on school advisory boards and opportunities
to participate in schoolwide and classroom activities. A new Title I component
was introduced that provided additional funding for schools with a high per-
centage of students from low-SES backgrounds. Amendments to the ESEA
were passed in 1978 (Education Amendments, 1978), further specifying that
parent advisory councils (PACs) be developed with family members represen-
tative of the school demographics. Specific funding was provided for PACs to
provide resources for learning at home and to ensure all information be deliv-
ered to parents in their native language. This updated law also stipulated that
evaluations of parent involvement and student instructional programs were to
be conducted.
While some progress was made to further involve parents, there was a grow-
ing recognition that some students (and their families) were being left behind.
An influential bipartisan national policy, titled GOALS, 2000: Educate Amer-
ica Act, was passed in 1994 (GOALS, 2000, 1994). This policy identified eight
national goals to achieve by 2000 to increase access and equity in education.
The overall emphasis of this policy was to promote partnerships that would
increase the social, emotional, and academic growth of children, and parental
involvement and participation was specifically mentioned. To further promote
these goals, even more sweeping legislative reforms were instituted in 2001
during the reauthorization of the ESEA, which became known as the No Child
Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2001). Integral connections between home and school
and the recognition of parents’ role in their children’s learning were explicitly
recognized. Calls were made for parents to be included in critical decisions
A Multitiered Framework for FSCP 5
that affect the education of their children and for regular, two-way, and mean-
ingful communication. For Title I schools, additional requirements specified
the need for written involvement policies and compacts to be developed with
representative parental input and approval. These policies and compacts were
to describe how parents would be supported to promote a child’s learning and
how ongoing communication between home and school was to occur.
Mandates for school, family, and community engagement have been further
spelled out in the most recent reauthorization of our general education law, the
Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015). Greater attention has been given to
efforts to optimize educational opportunities for all students. Local educational
agencies (i.e., school districts) are required to conduct outreach to all parents
and family members, to establish expectations and objectives for meaningful
family involvement, and to build school capacity through connections with the
community. Additional mandates have specifically called for 1% of all Title
I funding to be used to promote home-based programs, information dissemi-
nation, and collaboration with community-based organizations. Professional
development is also required
to educate teachers, specialized instructional support personnel, principals,

and other school leaders, and other staff, with the assistance of parents,
in the value and utility of parental contributions and how to reach out to,
communicate with, and work with parents as equal partners, implement and
coordinate parent programs, and build ties between parents and the school.
(ESSA, 2015, p. 78)
State education regulations have closely followed national legislative man-

dates to engage and involve parents in their children’s schooling (Weiss &
Stephen, 2010). Indeed, laws promoting the collaboration of educators and
families to support student learning and social-emotional development have
been enacted in two-thirds of the states in the country (Belway et al., 2010).
Family Inclusion in Special Education Legislation

Similar directives are found in the concomitant federal laws adopted in the
United States to ensure free and appropriate public education in the least-
restrictive environment for students with disabilities and their families.
From the inception and passage of the initial version of this law, the Educa-
tion for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA, 1975), parent consent and
involvement has been mandated as an essential aspect of all decisions regard-
ing special educational evaluation, placement, services, and implementation.
Each reauthorization of this special education law, which was relabeled as the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1997, has outlined spe-
cific guidelines for the inclusion of families in all special education supports
and services for students from birth to age 21 who meet the eligibility criteria
for a developmental delay (i.e., up to age 8) or for one of 13 disabilities.
The procedural safeguards to promote more parental involvement have been
strengthened for Individual Family Service planning (IFSP, for children from
birth to age 3) and Individualized Education Program (IEP, for students from
age 3 to 21) planning. In fact, the most recent reauthorization of the Individuals
with Disabilities Improvement Education Act (IDEA, 2004) clearly heightened
and safeguarded family participation as a critical component of all educational
decision making concerning a child’s developmental, educational or career
planning from infancy to postgraduation (Talapatra et al., 2018). Families are
guaranteed the right to be fully informed of their own and their child’s proce-
dural safeguards, including the right to due process, to review all educational
records of their child, to obtain an independent educational evaluation, and to
receive “prior written notice” on matters concerning identification, evaluation,
or placement (Trainor, 2010). Overall, federal laws have progressively solidi-
fied guidelines that families must be fully informed and equal team members
to ensure the rights of students with disabilities (Molina, 2013).
In summary, while the idea of involving parents in the education of their
children is not a new idea, traditionally, in practice, the focus has been on
the child, with the family in the background. Strong FSCP, however, requires
working “with” families instead of working “for” families. School staff have
an important role to play in these efforts. See Table 1.1 for a brief summary of
the role of family participation in other national legislation.
Conceptual Shifts in FSCP

Changes in how schools and districts work with families and communities
have been accompanied by important conceptual shifts in purpose and practice.
These shifts can be attributed to a renewed emphasis and deeper appreciation of
the ecological systems that influence students’ development, learning, and well-
being (Patrikakou, 2016). Such conceptual shifts, when accompanied by uni-
fied system changes, are more cost-effective, sustainable, and ultimately lead
to equitable learning opportunities for all students (Adelman & Taylor, 2018).
The first substantial conceptual shift over time has been the adoption of a
broader array of terms to replace the term parental involvement. Newer terms
are more closely aligned with the concept of partnerships between homes,
schools, and communities. While “parent involvement” was used in most prior
legislations, this term connoted a restricted focus on a static family role and
often promoted activities primarily located on school grounds. Alternatively,
newer terms, such as “parent participation,” “engagement,” and “collabora-
tion,” have been adopted that more strongly emphasize collaborative partner-
ships and the fact that communities also need to be integrated into educational
reform efforts (Adelman & Taylor, 2018). Indeed, calls for educational part-
nerships are now clearly incorporated into most contemporary federal policies.
The Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships,
forwarded by Mapp and Kuttner in 2013 and subsequently adapted by the
U.S. Department of Education in 2016, is that education is a mutual endeavor
Table 1.1 Additional Laws Guiding FSCP
Legislation/Policy FSCP Impact

Achieving a Better Life Authorizes tax-advantaged family savings
Experience (ABLE) Act of accounts for students with disabilities to cover
2014 expenses including education, housing, and
transportation.
Americans with Disabilities Protects persons with disabilities from unlawful
Act (ADA) of 1990 and ADA discrimination in the administration of child
Amendment Act of 2008 welfare programs, activities, and services.
Child Care and Development Ensures family involvement in childcare settings.
Block Grant (CCDBG) Act
of 2014
Comprehensive Community Underscores meaningful participation of the
Mental Health Services family to develop an individualized service
for Children with Serious plan.
Emotional Disturbances
(Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services
Administration, 2016)
Family Educational Rights and Gives parents certain protections and rights with
Privacy Act (FERPA, 1974) regard to their children's education records.
Head Start Act (2007) Emphasizes the role of the family and promoting
parent, family, and community engagement
throughout the program.
Higher Education Opportunities Requires disclosure of institutional and financial
Act (HEOA, 8) aid information to all enrolled students and
approved family members.
Maternal, Infant, and Early Provides services for parents with children with
Childhood Home Visiting developmental needs under kindergarten age.
Program (MIECHV, 2010;
Reauthorized in 2017)
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Protects parents and prospective parents with
Act of 1973 disabilities from unlawful discrimination in
the administration of child welfare programs,
activities, and services.
Workforce Innovation and Outlines income determination purposes for
Opportunity Act families and provides competitive grants for
(WIOA, 2014) workplaces that utilize community partnerships
and effective technology.
Based on “Special Education Laws” by D. Talapatra and J. Coleman. (2019). [Book chapter draft.]
Adapted with permission by the authors.
guided by communities, families, and schools. A roadmap is provided to guide

improved learning and achievement for all students that is achieved by fostering
each partner’s capabilities, confidence, and cognition and by building sustain-
able connections as a part of all design, implementation, and evaluative efforts.
A similar call for collaborative partnerships to ensure all students’ educational
and life success was captured in the combined policy statement released in
2015 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Depart-
ment of Education. These two federal agencies joined forces to underscore the
need for cooperation across national, state, and local agencies to employ, fur-
ther develop, and continuously improve family-school-community partnering
policies, procedures, and best practices.
A second conceptual shift has been the recognition that FSCP must begin
when a child is born and continue across all developmental levels. Legisla-
tive initiatives clearly outline the role of continued collaborative partnerships
throughout a child’s schooling. Rather than reducing family participation as a
child matures, researchers have demonstrated the importance of promoting a
family’s role during middle and high school (Benner et al., 2016; Hill & Tyson,
2009). Attention to FSCP is especially critical during educational transitions,
including the entry into formal schooling, moving into a new school, transi-
tioning between schools, and transitioning out of school into the workforce or
higher education (Kreider et al., 2007). To be sure, adaptations to collaborative
partnerships between homes, schools, and communities are needed as students
mature from “cradle to career.” However, the importance of mutual responsi-
bility remains constant.
A third conceptual shift is the emphasis on ameliorating inequities in edu-
cation by ensuring greater participation of families who represent the diver-
sity within our society and public schools (Jones, 2014). Prior legislative
mandates to include and involve families, often over-emphasized activities
at the school under the direction of school staff. In many cases, this led to the
exclusion of minority, disenfranchised, newly acculturated, or poor families.
More recent regulations recognize the multiple ways that families are: sup-
porters of learning and development; encouragers of an achievement iden-
tity, a positive self-image, and a “can do” spirit; monitors of time, behavior,
boundaries, and resources; models of lifelong learning and enthusiasm for
education; advocates/activists for improved learning opportunities; and col-
laborative decision-makers on educational options and school improvement
and reform (Mapp & Kuttner, 2013). Indeed, recent reviews of successful
FSCP endeavors acknowledge the subtle and varied ways families engage in
their children’s education within and outside of the school building (Coleman,
2012; Jeynes, 2010).
A fourth conceptual shift has occurred regarding the notion of communi-
cation. In the past, the primary flow of information was one-directional in
that information was disseminated from the school to the home in the form
of announcements, requests, or notices. The emphasis now is on two-way and
multidirectional communication endeavors where family and community input
are consistently sought and valued in making decisions about schooling and
education. Contemporary models of FSCP recognize the importance of recip-
rocal information sharing where all parties can send or request information
and feedback (Christenson & Reschly, 2010). In addition, new advances in
technology have created multiple venues and modalities for communication
between homes, schools, and communities (Constantino, 2016).
A fifth conceptual shift has been the promotion of shared learning and lead-
ership between key stakeholders. The current trend is to promote accountabil-
ity in partnerships by ensuring all partners are knowledgeable about data-based
decision-making. Opportunities for joint training of educators, families, and
community members have increased impressions of mutual support during
collaboration resulting in better documentation of fidelity and student out-
comes (Strobach, 2017).
A final conceptual change has highlighted the need for preservice and in-
service preparation of educators to ensure they enter the field with the knowl-
edge, aptitude, and skills to effectively collaborate with families. Many states
have preservice educator standards and postgraduation educator performance
review criteria that require documentation of effective work with families
(Brown et al., 2014). While educators often desire a strong partnership with
families, they also self-report feeling ill-equipped, unprepared, and less effica-
cious about collaborating or communicating effectively with families (Patte,
2011) and these sentiments are even more pronounced about partnering with
families from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds (Banerjee &
Luckner, 2014; D’Haem & Griswold, 2016). Unfortunately, recent reviews of
preservice higher education preparation and curriculum reveal limited cov-
erage of FSCP that is often restricted to a few lectures and with almost no
required supervised fieldwork (Miller et al., 2013).
A summary of these significant shifts can be found in Table 1.2. Overall,
these ongoing conceptual shifts to transform and promote successful FSCP
require strategic realignment and deployment of home, school, and community
services and resources. Further descriptions of evidence-based approaches to
promote these shifts are described in upcoming chapters.
Our Choice of Terminology

The terms adopted for the title of our first edition and this second edition were
selected on the basis of several important considerations linked to the above
shifts. These terms also recognize that student academic and life successes are
best promoted when multiple, contextual systems across homes, schools, and
communities work in synchronized cooperation.
Family was chosen over “parent” as the first term in the title to refer to
a broad array of caretakers who are important contributors to a child’s life.
The term family as used here is inclusive of members who may or may not
live together but who share a common history, a significant bond, and who
play an important role in a child’s development and upraising. Such persons
can include biological relatives (e.g., parents, older siblings, grandparents,
aunts, uncles, and cousins) as well as legal relatives (e.g., adoptive parents and
legal guardians) and close nonrelatives (e.g., personal friends and significant
others). We prefer this connotation since it represents multiple ways domestic
Table 1.2 Conceptual Shifts From Parent Involvement to Family-School-Community
Partnering
Parent Involvement Family-School-Community Partnering

Involvement primarily occurs with Partnering can occur with all legal and
parents or legal guardians and begins significant caretakers and begins
when a child enters formal schooling, when a child is born, is fostered
is heaviest during elementary school, regularly across all developmental
tapers off during transitions, and ends levels, increases at critical transitions,
upon graduation. and continues beyond high school.
Involvement efforts are viewed primarily Partnering efforts are viewed as a shared
as the school’s responsibility, with responsibility, with family members
parents having designated roles. playing multiple roles.
The school is the exclusive setting Multiple settings are used as sites for
for school-initiated conferences, an array of occasions and learning
meetings, or organized events. opportunities initiated by the school,
families, or the community.
The cultural and linguistic diversity The cultural and linguistic diversity
within a school is under-represented within a school is well represented
in school governance and student in school governance and student
decision-making. decision-making.
Communication is initiated by the school Communication can be initiated by the
to provide or request information, home or the school to promote shared
largely through written notices or decision-making, through a variety of
phone calls. modalities.
Staff and families have a few isolated Staff and families have multiple and
and separate occasions to learn new shared occasions to learn new
information and practice skills. information and practice skills.
configurations exist and vary from society to society based on culture, politics,
economics, and other social factors and forces (Woitaszewski et al., 2012).
Indeed, our conception goes beyond the U.S. Census Bureau government
definition of family as “a group of two people or more (one of whom is the
householder), related by birth, marriage, or adoption and residing together”
(U.S. Census Bureau, 2011).
Our concept of family includes the myriad of situations in which people
cohabitate without a formally established relationship dependent upon legal
and/or blood relations. We do not assume that family members must reside
together in a dwelling under the ownership of one member. Families can
include two or more people who regard themselves as a family and who carry
out the functions that families typically perform. These people may or may
not be related by blood or marriage and may or may not usually live together
(Poston et al., 2003, p. 79). In many communities, children are raised in kin-
ship groups by nonrelated adults who offer important support and fulfill criti-
cal caretaking functions due to the elimination or absence of connections to
one’s family of origin and/or extended family. Indeed, our definition of family
is most aligned with a recent sociological perspective offered by Lamanna et
al. (2018), who identify a “family” as “a relationship in which people, usually
related by ancestry, marriage, or adoption: (1) form an economic, and/or oth-
erwise practical unit to care for children or other dependents, (2) consider their
identity to be significantly attached to the same group, and (3) commit to main-
taining that group over time” (p. 4). This includes people in familial relation-
ships created in the absence of connections to one’s family of origin and/or
extended family.
School as employed here comprehensively refers to persons in teaching and
nonteaching roles employed by a formal education setting or district who have
regular direct and indirect contact with families. Indeed, teachers who work
with a child every day in the classroom often are buoyed by other professionals
and staff who provide support to students and families. These support individu-
als include administrators, school social workers, school counselors, school
nurses, and school psychologists. However, we also include in our defini-
tion school personnel who have a tremendous and often under-acknowledged
impact on students and families, such as paraprofessionals, front office or food
service staff, janitors, bus drivers, and volunteers. Thus, our use of the term
school represents the significant contributions of many school affiliated per-
sons who can have an important influence on FSCP.
Community has been added into the title of the revised edition in recogni-
tion of the fact that schools are highly affected by individuals and institutions
within a local and broader state and national context. Joyce Epstein (1995)
considered the community as a critical sphere of influence in students’ learn-
ing and well-being. Communities have increasingly played a larger role in
educational reform in acknowledgment of the fact that the challenges faced
in American public schools cannot be solved by educators or families alone.
There is a great need for schools and communities to work together to address
significant external barriers to learning (e.g., limited extramural opportuni-
ties, violent neighborhoods, high unemployment, and family dysfunction) that
severely limit the success of many students attending our schools today (Adel-
man & Taylor, 2018). These researchers have called for the development of a
comprehensive, unified, and equitable system to facilitate student (and family)
engagement and reengagement in learning. In this edition of the book, the term
community refers to persons in a variety of occupations across community
agencies, institutions, and organizations who have direct and indirect influence
on schools, students, and/or family members. This definition can include, but
is not limited to, policy makers, business and nonprofit leaders, employers,
and coworkers, religious and spiritual guides, health and mental professionals,
librarians, and after-school coaches or mentors.
Partnering, in the first edition, was selected over similar yet distinct terms
for several reasons (Lines et al., 2011). Involvement was not selected because
it connotes obliged or necessary participation in a prescribed versus jointly
identified effort and is too closely associated with activities that primarily take
place within versus outside the school (e.g., volunteering, coming to confer-
ences or meetings, attending school events). The term collaboration, while it
does refer to a cooperative relationship between families and educators who
are working toward a common goal, does not fully represent the role of mul-
tiple caretakers or highlight that such endeavors must occur within and outside
the school and school day (Emerson et al., 2012). The term engagement is
widely used to capture multiple constructs for how families and schools can
work effectively together; however, it was not selected because such encoun-
ters might be viewed as time-limited or for specified occasions (Ferlazzo,
2011). Thus, the term partnering was retained for several reasons. Partnering
as a verb can denote a dynamic, ongoing endeavor between multiple stake-
holders working toward a common objective that transcends environments.
Partnering also refers to any number of approaches to develop positive, pro-
ductive and overlapping intersections and relationships across home, school,
and community systems (Patrikakou, 2016). The term partnering or partner-
ship also better reflects the team approach commonly employed in schools to
address the social, emotional, behavioral, and academic needs of all students
from birth to young adulthood (Sheridan et al., 2016). Finally, our conceptu-
alization of partnering represents preferred versus obligatory, sustained versus
time-limited, an active versus passive pursuit of mutually established long-
term goals and when used as a noun, signifies a stable entity both within and
outside the school building.
One final decision that had to be made regarding the new title was a determi-
nation of which term to place in the initial position. The decision to place fam-
ily before school or community highlights the central and integral role families
have in decision-making about students’ school and life success. This deci-
sion also reflects a strong commitment to increase the participation of fami-
lies in educational decision-making through approaches that are grounded in
mutual respect and a strength-based philosophy. Such partnering is designed
to capitalize on the unique vantage point families have from which to help a
child succeed (Dunst & Trivette, 2009). Sequencing families before schools
and communities also focuses attention on the whole child and the fact that
the home is a critical context for complementary learning (Bouffard & Weiss,
2008). Indeed, schools can no longer work in a vacuum to ensure the academic
and life success of all students (Arias & Morillo-Campbell, 2008). In sum-
mary, our definition of family-school-community partnering (i.e., FSCP) can
be simply defined as relational, collaborative engagement before, during, and
after formal schooling that helps ensure students’ social, emotional, behav-
ioral, and academic success (Lines et al., 2011).
Research Supporting Positive FSCP Outcomes

Over time FSCP researchers have focused more specifically on the contexts
and processes that such shifts have on critical student and adult outcomes
(Reschly & Christenson, 2012). The critical role family has on student learn-
ing has a long history of empirical support. School reforms that focus solely on
teacher quality, teaching approaches, and the curriculum are missing the boat
since by some estimates, almost half of the influence on learning is accounted
for by family and community engagement factors (Adelman & Taylor, 2018).
Bryk and colleagues noted that schools with strong family engagement were
four times more likely to improve student reading over time and ten times more
likely to improve student learning gains in mathematics (Bryk et al., 2010).
One set of researchers has claimed, based on a longitudinal analysis of a
national data set, that parental involvement is not helpful in promoting stu-
dents’ academic success (Robinson & Harris, 2014). However, these findings
have been largely discredited due to the use of outdated indices that do not
represent the current ways researchers assess families’ engagement in their
children’s education; the primary focus on standardized test scores; and, the
broad generalizations made in light of conflicting findings across different
cultures and grade levels (Ferlazzo, 2011; Price-Mitchell, 2014). Much more
research suggesting the opposite has been conducted since the last edition.
Indeed, numerous studies in the United States and other countries continue to
provide strong and convincing evidence of the positive returns that occur from
strong home, school, and community partnerships.
Overall, the research literature on FSCP clearly suggests that families from all
backgrounds and life circumstances are critically important to students’ school
and life success. Indeed, “the beneﬁts of engaging families in children’s educa-
tion are among the most convincing and consistent ﬁndings in the educational
literature” (Sheridan et al., 2016, p. 1). Next, a brief representative portion of
this literature is reviewed on student and adult outcomes followed by impor-
tant school-wide and community benefits. For further excellent coverage of this
work, see Christenson and Reschly (2010) and Sheridan and Kim (2016).
Student and Adult Outcomes

Researchers have continued to demonstrate multiple ways that FSCP contrib-
utes to students’ academic performance before and following high school grad-
uation. Measurable gains in student grades and achievement scores are found
when parents and teachers have favorable impressions of collaborative part-
nerships (Amatea & Dolan, 2009; Tran, 2014). Students in schools ranked high
in FSCP score significantly higher on standardized assessments, earn more
academic credits, are more likely to attend college (Weihua & Williams, 2010),
and evidence positive social-emotional outcomes (Fan & Williams, 2010).
These findings have been observed across all age levels and with a range of
academic subjects (El Nokali et al., 2010; LaRocque et al., 2011). Most notable
is the fact that these findings recognize the importance of subtle, often over-
looked ways that families support education in the home. Jeynes (2010, 2013,
2017) has conducted several meta-analyses on outcomes of students who live
in families from different income levels and cultural backgrounds. His work
has revealed that family members are critical “academic socialization” agents
whose “less-visible” educational beliefs and expectations (e.g., setting high
educational expectations, engaging in high-quality parent–child interactions,
and employing authoritative parenting) are as highly or even more predictive
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metaphysics, inverting the usual mode of definition given by our
erudite scholars, call the invisible types the only reality, and
everything else the effects of the causes, or visible prototypes—
illusions. However contradictory their various elucidations of the
Pentateuch may appear on their surface, every one of them tends to
show that the sacred literature of every country, the Bible as much
as the Vedas or the Buddhist Scriptures, can only be understood and
thoroughly sifted by the light of Hermetic philosophy. The great
sages of antiquity, those of the mediæval ages, and the mystical
writers of our more modern times also, were all Hermetists. Whether
the light of truth had illuminated them through their faculty of
intuition, or as a consequence of study and regular initiation, virtually,
they had accepted the method and followed the path traced to them
by such men as Moses, Gautama-Buddha, and Jesus. The truth,
symbolized by some alchemists as dew from heaven, had
descended into their hearts, and they had all gathered it upon the
tops of mountains, after having spread clean linen cloths to receive
it; and thus, in one sense, they had secured, each for himself, and in
his own way, the universal solvent. How much they were allowed to
share it with the public is another question. That veil, which is
alleged to have covered the face of Moses, when, after descending
from Sinai, he taught his people the Word of God, cannot be
withdrawn at the will of the teacher only. It depends on the listeners,
whether they will also remove the veil which is “upon their hearts.”
Paul says it plainly; and his words addressed to the Corinthians can
be applied to every man or woman, and of any age in the history of
the world. If “their minds are blinded” by the shining skin of divine
truth, whether the Hermetic veil be withdrawn or not from the face of
the teacher, it cannot be taken away from their heart unless “it shall
turn to the Lord.” But the latter appellation must not be applied to
either of the three anthropomorphized personages of the Trinity, but
to the “Lord,” as understood by Swedenborg and the Hermetic
philosophers—the Lord, who is Life and Man.
The everlasting conflict between the world-religions—Christianity,
Judaism, Brahmanism, Paganism, Buddhism, proceeds from this
one source: Truth is known but to the few; the rest, unwilling to
withdraw the veil from their own hearts, imagine it blinding the eyes
of their neighbor. The god of every exoteric religion, including
Christianity, notwithstanding its pretensions to mystery, is an idol, a
fiction, and cannot be anything else. Moses, closely-veiled, speaks
to the stiff-necked multitudes of Jehovah, the cruel, anthropomorphic
deity, as of the highest God, burying deep in the bottom of his heart
that truth which cannot be “either spoken of or revealed.” Kapila cuts
with the sharp sword of his sarcasms the Brahman-Yoggins, who in
their mystical visions pretend to see the highest one. Gautama-
Buddha conceals, under an impenetrable cloak of metaphysical
subtilties, the verity, and is regarded by posterity as an atheist.
Pythagoras, with his allegorical mysticism and metempsychosis, is
held for a clever impostor, and is succeeded in the same estimation
by other philosophers, like Apollonius and Plotinus, who are
generally spoken of as visionaries, if not charlatans. Plato, whose
writings were never read by the majority of our great scholars but
superficially, is accused by many of his translators of absurdities and
puerilities, and even of being ignorant of his own language;[510] most
likely for saying, in reference to the Supreme, that “a matter of that
kind cannot be expressed by words, like other things to be
learned;”[511] and making Protagoras lay too much stress on the use
of “veils.” We could fill a whole volume with names of misunderstood
sages, whose writings—only because our materialistic critics feel
unable to lift the “veil,” which shrouds them—pass off in a current
way for mystical absurdities. The most important feature of this
seemingly imcomprehensible mystery lies perhaps in the inveterate
habit of the majority of readers to judge a work by its words and
insufficiently-expressed ideas, leaving the spirit of it out of the
question. Philosophers of quite different schools may be often found
to use a multitude of different expressions, some dark and
metaphorical—all figurative, and yet treating of the same subject.
Like the thousand divergent rays of a globe of fire, every ray leads,
nevertheless, to the central point, so every mystic philosopher,
whether he be a devotedly pious enthusiast like Henry More; an
irascible alchemist, using a Billingsgate phraseology—like his
adversary, Eugenius Philalethes; or an atheist (?) like Spinoza, all
had one and the same object in view—man. It is Spinoza, however,
who furnishes perhaps the truest key to a portion of this unwritten
secret. While Moses forbids “graven images” of Him whose name is
not to be taken in vain, Spinoza goes farther. He clearly infers that
God must not be so much as described. Human language is totally
unfit to give an idea of this “Being” who is altogether unique.
Whether it is Spinoza or the Christian theology that is more right in
their premises and conclusion, we leave the reader to judge for
himself. Every attempt to the contrary leads a nation to
anthropomorphize the deity in whom it believes, and the result is that
given by Swedenborg. Instead of stating that God made man after
his own image, we ought in truth to say that “man imagines God after
his image,”[512] forgetting that he has set up his own reflection for
worship.
Where, then, lies the true, real secret so much talked about by the
Hermetists? That there was and there is a secret, no candid student
of esoteric literature will ever doubt. Men of genius—as many of the
Hermetic philosophers undeniably were—would not have made fools
of themselves by trying to fool others for several thousand
consecutive years. That this great secret, commonly termed “the
philosopher’s stone,” had a spiritual as well as a physical meaning
attached to it, was suspected in all ages. The author of Remarks on
Alchemy and the Alchemists very truly observes that the subject of
the Hermetic art is man, and the object of the art is the perfection of
man.[513] But we cannot agree with him that only those whom he
terms “money-loving sots,” ever attempted to carry a purely moral
design (of the alchemists) into the field of physical science. The fact
alone that man, in their eyes, is a trinity, which they divide into Sol,
water of mercury, and sulphur, which is the secret fire, or, to speak
plain, into body, soul, and spirit, shows that there is a physical side
to the question. Man is the philosopher’s stone spiritually—“a triune
or trinity in unity,” as Philalethes expresses it. But he is also that
stone physically. The latter is but the effect of the cause, and the
cause is the universal solvent of everything—divine spirit. Man is a
correlation of chemical physical forces, as well as a correlation of
spiritual powers. The latter react on the physical powers of man in
proportion to the development of the earthly man. “The work is
carried to perfection according to the virtue of a body, soul, and
spirit,” says an alchemist; “for the body would never be penetrable
were it not for the spirit, nor would the spirit be permanent in its
supra-perfect tincture, were it not for the body; nor could these two
act one upon another without the soul, for the spirit is an invisible
thing, nor doth it ever appear without another garment, which
garment is the soul.”[514]
The “philosophers by fire” asserted, through their chief, Robert
Fludd, that sympathy is the offspring of light, and “antipathy hath its
beginning from darkness.” Moreover, they taught, with other
kabalists, that “contrarieties in nature doth proceed from one eternal
essence, or from the root of all things.” Thus, the first cause is the
parent-source of good as well as of evil. The creator—who is not the
Highest God—is the father of matter, which is bad, as well as of
spirit, which, emanating from the highest, invisible cause, passes
through him like through a vehicle, and pervades the whole universe.
“It is most certain,” remarks Robertus di Fluctibus (Robert Fludd),
“that, as there are an infinity of visible creatures, so there is an
endless variety of invisible ones, of divers natures, in the universal
machine. Through the mysterious name of God, which Moses was
so desirous of him (Jehova) to hear and know, when he received
from him this answer, Jehova is my everlasting name. As for the
other name, it is so pure and simple that it cannot be articulated, or
compounded, or truly expressed by man’s voice ... all the other
names are wholly comprehended within it, for it contains the property
as well of Nolunty as volunty, of privation as position, of death as life,
of cursing as blessing, of evil as good (though nothing ideally is bad
in him), of hatred and discord, and consequently of sympathy and
antipathy.”[515]
Lowest in the scale of being are those invisible creatures called by
the kabalists the “elementary.” There are three distinct classes of
these. The highest, in intelligence and cunning, are the so-called
terrestrial spirits, of which we will speak more categorically in other
parts of this work. Suffice to say, for the present, that they are the
larvæ, or shadows of those who have lived on earth, have refused all
spiritual light, remained and died deeply immersed in the mire of
matter, and from whose sinful souls the immortal spirit has gradually
separated. The second class is composed of the invisible antitypes
of the men to be born. No form can come into objective existence—
from the highest to the lowest—before the abstract ideal of this form
—or, as Aristotle would call it, the privation of this form—is called
forth. Before an artist paints a picture every feature of it exists
already in his imagination; to have enabled us to discern a watch,
this particular watch must have existed in its abstract form in the
watchmaker’s mind. So with future men.
According to Aristotle’s doctrine, there are three principles of
natural bodies: privation, matter, and form. These principles may be
applied in this particular case. The privation of the child which is to
be we will locate in the invisible mind of the great Architect of the
Universe—privation not being considered in the Aristotelic
philosophy as a principle in the composition of bodies, but as an
external property in their production; for the production is a change
by which the matter passes from the shape it has not to that which it
assumes. Though the privation of the unborn child’s form, as well as
of the future form of the unmade watch, is that which is neither
substance nor extension nor quality as yet, nor any kind of
existence, it is still something which is, though its outlines, in order to
be, must acquire an objective form—the abstract must become
concrete, in short. Thus, as soon as this privation of matter is
transmitted by energy to universal ether, it becomes a material form,
however sublimated. If modern science teaches that human thought
“affects the matter of another universe simultaneously with this,” how
can he who believes in an Intelligent First Cause, deny that the
divine thought is equally transmitted, by the same law of energy, to
our common mediator, the universal ether—the world-soul? And, if
so, then it must follow that once there the divine thought manifests
itself objectively, energy faithfully reproducing the outlines of that
whose “privation” was first born in the divine mind. Only it must not
be understood that this thought creates matter. No; it creates but the
design for the future form; the matter which serves to make this
design having always been in existence, and having been prepared
to form a human body, through a series of progressive
transformations, as the result of evolution. Forms pass; ideas that
created them and the material which gave them objectiveness,
remain. These models, as yet devoid of immortal spirits, are
“elementals,“properly speaking, psychic embryos—which, when their
time arrives, die out of the invisible world, and are born into this
visible one as human infants, receiving in transitu that divine breath
called spirit which completes the perfect man. This class cannot
communicate objectively with men.
The third class are the “elementals” proper, which never evolve
into human beings, but occupy, as it were, a specific step of the
ladder of being, and, by comparison with the others, may properly be
called nature-spirits, or cosmic agents of nature, each being confined
to its own element and never transgressing the bounds of others.
These are what Tertullian called the “princes of the powers of the
air.”
This class is believed to possess but one of the three attributes of
man. They have neither immortal spirits nor tangible bodies; only
astral forms, which partake, in a distinguishing degree, of the
element to which they belong and also of the ether. They are a
combination of sublimated matter and a rudimental mind. Some are
changeless, but still have no separate individuality, acting
collectively, so to say. Others, of certain elements and species,
change form under a fixed law which kabalists explain. The most
solid of their bodies is ordinarily just immaterial enough to escape
perception by our physical eyesight, but not so unsubstantial but that
they can be perfectly recognized by the inner, or clairvoyant vision.
They not only exist and can all live in ether, but can handle and
direct it for the production of physical effects, as readily as we can
compress air or water for the same purpose by pneumatic and
hydraulic apparatus; in which occupation they are readily helped by
the “human elementary.” More than this; they can so condense it as
to make to themselves tangible bodies, which by their Protean
powers they can cause to assume such likeness as they choose, by
taking as their models the portraits they find stamped in the memory
of the persons present. It is not necessary that the sitter should be
thinking at the moment of the one represented. His image may have
faded many years before. The mind receives indelible impression
even from chance acquaintance or persons encountered but once.
As a few seconds exposure of the sensitized photograph plate is all
that is requisite to preserve indefinitely the image of the sitter, so is it
with the mind.
According to the doctrine of Proclus, the uppermost regions from
the zenith of the universe to the moon belonged to the gods or
planetary spirits, according to their hierarchies and classes. The
highest among them were the twelve ŭper-ouranioi, or supercelestial
gods, having whole legions of subordinate demons at their
command. They are followed next in rank and power by the
egkosmioi, the intercosmic gods, each of these presiding over a
great number of demons, to whom they impart their power and
change it from one to another at will. These are evidently the
personified forces of nature in their mutual correlation, the latter
being represented by the third class or the “elementals” we have just
described.
Further on he shows, on the principle of the Hermetic axiom—of
types, and prototypes—that the lower spheres have their
subdivisions and classes of beings as well as the upper celestial
ones, the former being always subordinate to the higher ones. He
held that the four elements are all filled with demons, maintaining
with Aristotle that the universe is full, and that there is no void in
nature. The demons of the earth, air, fire, and water are of an elastic,
ethereal, semi-corporeal essence. It is these classes which officiate
as intermediate agents between the gods and men. Although lower
in intelligence than the sixth order of the higher demons, these
beings preside directly over the elements and organic life. They
direct the growth, the inflorescence, the properties, and various
changes of plants. They are the personified ideas or virtues shed
from the heavenly ulê into the inorganic matter; and, as the
vegetable kingdom is one remove higher than the mineral, these
emanations from the celestial gods take form and being in the plant,
they become its soul. It is that which Aristotle’s doctrine terms the
form in the three principles of natural bodies, classified by him as
privation, matter, and form. His philosophy teaches that besides the
original matter, another principle is necessary to complete the triune
nature of every particle, and this is form; an invisible, but still, in an
ontological sense of the word, a substantial being, really distinct from
matter proper. Thus, in an animal or a plant, besides the bones, the
flesh, the nerves, the brains, and the blood, in the former, and
besides the pulpy matter, tissues, fibres, and juice in the latter, which
blood and juice, by circulating through the veins and fibres,
nourishes all parts of both animal and plant; and besides the animal
spirits, which are the principles of motion; and the chemical energy
which is transformed into vital force in the green leaf, there must be
a substantial form, which Aristotle called in the horse, the horse’s
soul; Proclus, the demon of every mineral, plant, or animal, and the
mediæval philosophers, the elementary spirits of the four kingdoms.
All this is held in our century as metaphysics and gross
superstition. Still, on strictly ontological principles, there is, in these
old hypotheses, some shadow of probability, some clew to the
perplexing “missing links” of exact science. The latter has become so
dogmatical of late, that all that lies beyond the ken of inductive
science is termed imaginary; and we find Professor Joseph Le Conte
stating that some of the best scientists “ridicule the use of the term
‘vital force,’ or vitality, as a remnant of superstition.”[516] De Candolle
suggests the term “vital movement,” instead of vital force;[517] thus
preparing for a final scientific leap which will transform the immortal,
thinking man, into an automaton with a clock-work inside him. “But,”
objects Le Conte, “can we conceive of movement without force? And
if the movement is peculiar, so also is the form of force.”
In the Jewish Kabala, the nature-spirits were known under the
general name of Shedim and divided into four classes. The Persians
called them all devs; the Greeks, indistinctly designated them as
demons; the Egyptians knew them as afrites. The ancient Mexicans,
says Kaiser, believed in numerous spirit-abodes, into one of which
the shades of innocent children were placed until final disposal; into
another, situated in the sun, ascended the valiant souls of heroes;
while the hideous spectres of incorrigible sinners were sentenced to
wander and despair in subterranean caves, held in the bonds of the
earth atmosphere, unwilling and unable to liberate themselves. They
passed their time in communicating with mortals, and frightening
those who could see them. Some of the African tribes know them as
Yowahoos. In the Indian Pantheon there are no less than
330,000,000 of various kinds of spirits, including elementals, which
latter were termed by the Brahmans the Daityas. These beings are
known by the adepts to be attracted toward certain quarters of the
heavens by something of the same mysterious property which
makes the magnetic needle turn toward the north, and certain plants
to obey the same attraction. The various races are also believed to
have a special sympathy with certain human temperaments, and to
more readily exert power over such than others. Thus, a bilious,
lymphatic, nervous, or sanguine person would be affected favorably
or otherwise by conditions of the astral light, resulting from the
different aspects of the planetary bodies. Having reached this
general principle, after recorded observations extending over an
indefinite series of years, or ages, the adept astrologer would require
only to know what the planetary aspects were at a given anterior
date, and to apply his knowledge of the succeeding changes in the
heavenly bodies, to be able to trace, with approximate accuracy, the
varying fortunes of the personage whose horoscope was required,
and even to predict the future. The accuracy of the horoscope would
depend, of course, no less upon the astrologer’s knowledge of the
occult forces and races of nature, than upon his astronomical
erudition.
Eliphas Levi expounds with reasonable clearness, in his Dogme et
Rituel de la Haute Magie, the law of reciprocal influences between
the planets and their combined effect upon the mineral, vegetable,
and animal kingdoms, as well as upon ourselves. He states that the
astral atmosphere is as constantly changing from day to day, and
from hour to hour, as the air we breathe. He quotes approvingly the
doctrine of Paracelsus that every man, animal, and plant bears
external and internal evidences of the influences dominant at the
moment of germinal development. He repeats the old kabalistic
doctrine, that nothing is unimportant in nature, and that even so
small a thing as the birth of one child upon our insignificant planet
has its effect upon the universe, as the whole universe has its own
reäctive influence upon him.
“The stars,” he remarks, “are linked to each other by attractions
which hold them in equilibrium and cause them to move with
regularity through space. This net-work of light stretches from all the
spheres to all the spheres, and there is not a point upon any planet
to which is not attached one of these indestructible threads. The
precise locality, as well as the hour of birth, should then be
calculated by the true adept in astrology; then, when he shall have
made the exact calculation of the astral influences, it remains for him
to count the chances of his position in life, the helps or hindrances
he is likely to encounter ... and his natural impulses toward the
accomplishment of his destiny.” He also asserts that the individual
force of the person, as indicating his ability to conquer difficulties and
subdue unfavorable propensities, and so carve out his fortune, or to
passively await what blind fate may bring, must be taken into
account.
A consideration of the subject from the standpoint of the ancients,
affords us, it will be seen, a very different view from that taken by
Professor Tyndall in his famous Belfast address. “To supersensual
beings,” says he, “which, however potent and invisible, were nothing
but species of human creatures, perhaps raised from among
mankind, and retaining all human passions and appetites, were
handed over the rule and governance of natural phenomena.”
To enforce his point, Mr. Tyndall conveniently quotes from
Euripides the familiar passage in Hume: “The gods toss all into
confusion, mix everything with its reverse, that all of us, from our
ignorance and uncertainty, may pay them the more worship and
reverence.” Although enunciating in Chrysippus several Pythagorean
doctrines, Euripides is considered by every ancient writer as
heterodox, therefore the quotation proceeding from this philosopher
does not at all strengthen Mr. Tyndall’s argument.
As to the human spirit, the notions of the older philosophers and
mediæval kabalists while differing in some particulars, agreed on the
whole; so that the doctrine of one may be viewed as the doctrine of
the other. The most substantial difference consisted in the location of
the immortal or divine spirit of man. While the ancient Neo-platonists
held that the Augoeides never descends hypostatically into the living
man, but only sheds more or less its radiance on the inner man—the
astral soul—the kabalists of the middle ages maintained that the
spirit, detaching itself from the ocean of light and spirit, entered into
man’s soul, where it remained through life imprisoned in the astral
capsule. This difference was the result of the belief of Christian
kabalists, more or less, in the dead letter of the allegory of the fall of
man. The soul, they said, became, through the fall of Adam,
contaminated with the world of matter, or Satan. Before it could
appear with its enclosed divine spirit in the presence of the Eternal, it
had to purify itself of the impurities of darkness. They compared “the
spirit imprisoned within the soul to a drop of water enclosed within a
capsule of gelatine and thrown in the ocean; so long as the capsule
remains whole the drop of water remains isolated; break the
envelope and the drop becomes a part of the ocean—its individual
existence has ceased. So it is with the spirit. As long as it is
enclosed in its plastic mediator, or soul, it has an individual
existence. Destroy the capsule, a result which may occur from the
agonies of withered conscience, crime, and moral disease, and the
spirit returns back to its original abode. Its individuality is gone.”
On the other hand, the philosophers who explained the “fall into
generation” in their own way, viewed spirit as something wholly
distinct from the soul. They allowed its presence in the astral capsule
only so far as the spiritual emanations or rays of the “shining one”
were concerned. Man and soul had to conquer their immortality by
ascending toward the unity with which, if successful, they were finally
linked, and into which they were absorbed, so to say. The
individualization of man after death depended on the spirit, not on his
soul and body. Although the word “personality,” in the sense in which
it is usually understood, is an absurdity, if applied literally to our
immortal essence, still the latter is a distinct entity, immortal and
eternal, per se; and, as in the case of criminals beyond redemption,
when the shining thread which links the spirit to the soul, from the
moment of the birth of a child, is violently snapped, and the
disembodied entity is left to share the fate of the lower animals, to
gradually dissolve into ether, and have its individuality annihilated—
even then the spirit remains a distinct being. It becomes a planetary
spirit, an angel; for the gods of the Pagan or the archangels of the
Christian, the direct emanations of the First Cause, notwithstanding
the hazardous statement of Swedenborg, never were or will be men,
on our planet, at least.
This specialization has been in all ages the stumbling-block of
metaphysicians. The whole esoterism of the Buddhistical philosophy
is based on this mysterious teaching, understood by so few persons,
and so totally misrepresented by many of the most learned scholars.
Even metaphysicians are too inclined to confound the effect with the
cause. A person may have won his immortal life, and remain the
same inner-self he was on earth, throughout eternity; but this does
not imply necessarily that he must either remain the Mr. Smith or
Brown he was on earth, or lose his individuality. Therefore, the astral
soul and terrestrial body of man may, in the dark Hereafter, be
absorbed into the cosmical ocean of sublimated elements, and
cease to feel his ego, if this ego did not deserve to soar higher; and
the divine spirit still remain an unchanged entity, though this
terrestrial experience of his emanations may be totally obliterated at
the instant of separation from the unworthy vehicle.
If the “spirit,” or the divine portion of the soul, is preëxistent as a
distinct being from all eternity, as Origen, Synesius, and other
Christian fathers and philosophers taught, and if it is the same, and
nothing more than the metaphysically-objective soul, how can it be
otherwise than eternal? And what matters it in such a case, whether
man leads an animal or a pure life, if, do what he may, he can never
lose his individuality? This doctrine is as pernicious in its
consequences as that of vicarious atonement. Had the latter dogma,
in company with the false idea that we are all immortal, been
demonstrated to the world in its true light, humanity would have been
bettered by its propagation. Crime and sin would be avoided, not for
fear of earthly punishment, or of a ridiculous hell, but for the sake of
that which lies the most deeply rooted in our inner nature—the desire
of an individual and distinct life in the hereafter, the positive
assurance that we cannot win it unless we “take the kingdom of
heaven by violence,” and the conviction that neither human prayers
nor the blood of another man will save us from individual destruction
after death, unless we firmly link ourselves during our terrestrial life
with our own immortal spirit—our God.
Pythagoras, Plato, Timæus of Locris, and the whole Alexandrian
school derived the soul from the universal World-Soul; and the latter
was, according to their own teachings—ether; something of such a
fine nature as to be perceived only by our inner sight. Therefore, it
cannot be the essence of the Monas, or cause, because the anima
mundi is but the effect, the objective emanation of the former. Both
the human spirit and soul are preëxistent. But, while the former
exists as a distinct entity, an individualization, the soul exists as
preëxisting matter, an unscient portion of an intelligent whole. Both
were originally formed from the Eternal Ocean of Light; but as the
theosophists expressed it, there is a visible as well as invisible spirit
in fire. They made a difference between the anima bruta and the
anima divina. Empedocles firmly believed all men and animals to
possess two souls; and in Aristotle we find that he calls one the
reasoning soul—νοῦς, and the other, the animal soul—ψυχή.
According to these philosophers, the reasoning soul comes from
without the universal soul, and the other from within. This divine and
superior region, in which they located the invisible and supreme
deity, was considered by them (by Aristotle himself) as a fifth
element, purely spiritual and divine, whereas the anima mundi
proper was considered as composed of a fine, igneous, and ethereal
nature spread throughout the universe, in short—ether. The Stoics,
the greatest materialists of ancient days, excepted the Invisible God
and Divine Soul (Spirit) from any such a corporeal nature. Their
modern commentators and admirers, greedily seizing the
opportunity, built on this ground the supposition that the Stoics
believed in neither God nor soul. But Epicurus, whose doctrine
militating directly against the agency of a Supreme Being and gods,
in the formation or government of the world, placed him far above
the Stoics in atheism and materialism, taught, nevertheless, that the
soul is of a fine, tender essence, formed from the smoothest,
roundest, and finest atoms, which description still brings us to the
same sublimated ether. Arnobius, Tertullian, Irenæus, and Origen,
notwithstanding their Christianity, believed, with the more modern
Spinoza and Hobbes, that the soul was corporeal, though of a very
fine nature.
This doctrine of the possibility of losing one’s soul and, hence,
individuality, militates with the ideal theories and progressive ideas of
some spiritualists, though Swedenborg fully adopts it. They will never
accept the kabalistic doctrine which teaches that it is only through
observing the law of harmony that individual life hereafter can be
obtained; and that the farther the inner and outer man deviate from
this fount of harmony, whose source lies in our divine spirit, the more
difficult it is to regain the ground.
But while the spiritualists and other adherents of Christianity have
little if any perception of this fact of the possible death and
obliteration of the human personality by the separation of the
immortal part from the perishable, the Swedenborgians fully
comprehend it. One of the most respected ministers of the New
Church, the Rev. Chauncey Giles, D.D., of New York, recently
elucidated the subject in a public discourse as follows: Physical
death, or the death of the body, was a provision of the divine
economy for the benefit of man, a provision by means of which he
attained the higher ends of his being. But there is another death
which is the interruption of the divine order and the destruction of
every human element in man’s nature, and every possibility of
human happiness. This is the spiritual death, which takes place
before the dissolution of the body. “There may be a vast
development of man’s natural mind without that development being
accompanied by a particle of love of God, or of unselfish love of
man.” When one falls into a love of self and love of the world, with its
pleasures, losing the divine love of God and of the neighbor, he falls
from life to death. The higher principles which constitute the
essential elements of his humanity perish, and he lives only on the
natural plane of his faculties. Physically he exists, spiritually he is
dead. To all that pertain to the higher and the only enduring phase of
existence he is as much dead as his body becomes dead to all the
activities, delights, and sensations of the world when the spirit has
left it. This spiritual death results from disobedience of the laws of
spiritual life, which is followed by the same penalty as the
disobedience of the laws of the natural life. But the spiritually dead
have still their delights; they have their intellectual endowments and
power, and intense activities. All the animal delights are theirs, and
to multitudes of men and women these constitute the highest ideal of
human happiness. The tireless pursuit of riches, of the amusements
and entertainments of social life; the cultivation of graces of manner,
of taste in dress, of social preferment, of scientific distinction,
intoxicate and enrapture these dead-alive; but, the eloquent
preacher remarks, “these creatures, with all their graces, rich attire,
and brilliant accomplishments, are dead in the eye of the Lord and
the angels, and when measured by the only true and immutable
standard have no more genuine life than skeletons whose flesh has
turned to dust.” A high development of the intellectual faculties does
not imply spiritual and true life. Many of our greatest scientists are
but animate corpses—they have no spiritual sight because their
spirits have left them. So we might go through all ages, examine all
occupations, weigh all human attainments, and investigate all forms
of society, and we would find these spiritually dead everywhere.
Pythagoras taught that the entire universe is one vast system of
mathematically correct combinations. Plato shows the deity
geometrizing. The world is sustained by the same law of equilibrium
and harmony upon which it was built. The centripetal force could not
manifest itself without the centrifugal in the harmonious revolutions
of the spheres; all forms are the product of this dual force in nature.
Thus, to illustrate our case, we may designate the spirit as the
centrifugal, and the soul as the centripetal, spiritual energies. When
in perfect harmony, both forces produce one result; break or damage
the centripetal motion of the earthly soul tending toward the centre
which attracts it; arrest its progress by clogging it with a heavier
weight of matter than it can bear, and the harmony of the whole,
which was its life, is destroyed. Individual life can only be continued if
sustained by this two-fold force. The least deviation from harmony
damages it; when it is destroyed beyond redemption the forces
separate and the form is gradually annihilated. After the death of the
depraved and the wicked, arrives the critical moment. If during life
the ultimate and desperate effort of the inner-self to reunite itself with
the faintly-glimmering ray of its divine parent is neglected; if this ray
is allowed to be more and more shut out by the thickening crust of
matter, the soul, once freed from the body, follows its earthly
attractions, and is magnetically drawn into and held within the dense
fogs of the material atmosphere. Then it begins to sink lower and
lower, until it finds itself, when returned to consciousness, in what the
ancients termed Hades. The annihilation of such a soul is never
instantaneous; it may last centuries, perhaps; for nature never
proceeds by jumps and starts, and the astral soul being formed of
elements, the law of evolution must bide its time. Then begins the
fearful law of compensation, the Yin-youan of the Buddhists.
This class of spirits are called the “terrestrial” or “earthly
elementary,” in contradistinction to the other classes, as we have
shown in the introductory chapter. In the East they are known as the
“Brothers of the Shadow.” Cunning, low, vindictive, and seeking to
retaliate their sufferings upon humanity, they become, until final
annihilation, vampires, ghouls, and prominent actors. These are the
leading “stars” on the great spiritual stage of “materialization,” which
phenomena they perform with the help of the more intelligent of the
genuine-born “elemental” creatures, which hover around and
welcome them with delight in their own spheres. Henry Kunrath, the
great German kabalist, has on a plate of his rare work, Amphitheatri
Sapientiæ Æternæ, representations of the four classes of these
human “elementary spirits.” Once past the threshold of the sanctuary
of initiation, once that an adept has lifted the “Veil of Isis,” the
mysterious and jealous goddess, he has nothing to fear; but till then
he is in constant danger.
Although Aristotle himself, anticipating the modern physiologists,
regarded the human mind as a material substance, and ridiculed the
hylozoïsts, nevertheless he fully believed in the existence of a
“double” soul, or spirit and soul.[518] He laughed at Strabo for
believing that any particles of matter, per se, could have life and
intellect in themselves sufficient to fashion by degrees such a
multiform world as ours.[519] Aristotle is indebted for the sublime
morality of his Nichomachean Ethics to a thorough study of the
Pythagoric Ethical Fragments; for the latter can be easily shown to
have been the source at which he gathered his ideas, though he
might not have sworn “by him who the tetractys found.”[520] Finally,
what do we know so certain about Aristotle? His philosophy is so
abstruse that he constantly leaves his reader to supply by the
imagination the missing links of his logical deductions. Moreover, we
know that before his works ever reached our scholars, who delight in
his seemingly atheistical arguments in support of his doctrine of fate,
these works passed through too many hands to have remained
immaculate. From Theophrastus, his legator, they passed to Neleus,
whose heirs kept them mouldering in subterranean caves for nearly
150 years;[521] after which, we learn that his manuscripts were
copied and much augmented by Apellicon of Theos, who supplied
such paragraphs as had become illegible, by conjectures of his own,
probably many of these drawn from the depths of his inner
consciousness. Our scholars of the nineteenth century might
certainly profit well by Aristotle’s example, were they as anxious to
imitate him practically as they are to throw his inductive method and
materialistic theories at the head of the Platonists. We invite them to
collect facts as carefully as he did, instead of denying those they
know nothing about.
What we have said in the introductory chapter and elsewhere, of
mediums and the tendency of their mediumship, is not based upon
conjecture, but upon actual experience and observation. There is
scarcely one phase of mediumship, of either kind, that we have not
seen exemplified during the past twenty-five years, in various
countries. India, Thibet, Borneo, Siam, Egypt, Asia Minor, America
(North and South), and other parts of the world, have each displayed
to us its peculiar phase of mediumistic phenomena and magical
power. Our varied experience has taught us two important truths,
viz.: that for the exercise of the latter personal purity and the
exercise of a trained and indomitable will-power are indispensable;
and that spiritualists can never assure themselves of the
genuineness of mediumistic manifestations, unless they occur in the
light and under such reasonable test conditions as would make an
attempted fraud instantly noticed.
For fear of being misunderstood, we would remark that while, as a
rule, physical phenomena are produced by the nature-spirits, of their
own motion and to please their own fancy, still good disembodied
human spirits, under exceptional circumstances, such as the
aspiration of a pure heart or the occurrence of some favoring
emergency, can manifest their presence by any of the phenomena
except personal materialization. But it must be a mighty attraction
indeed to draw a pure, disembodied spirit from its radiant home into
the foul atmosphere from which it escaped upon leaving its earthly
body.
Magi and theurgic philosophers objected most severely to the
“evocation of souls.” “Bring her (the soul) not forth, lest in departing
she retain something,” says Psellus.[522]
“It becomes you not to behold them before your body is

initiated,
Since, by always alluring, they seduce the souls of the
uninitiated,”
says the same philosopher, in another passage.[523]

They objected to it for several good reasons. 1. “It is extremely
difficult to distinguish a good dæmon from a bad one,” says
Iamblichus. 2. If a human soul succeeds in penetrating the density of
the earth’s atmosphere—always oppressive to her, often hateful—
still there is a danger the soul is unable to come into proximity with
the material world without that she cannot avoid; “departing, she
retains something,” that is to say, contaminating her purity, for which
she has to suffer more or less after her departure. Therefore, the
true theurgist will avoid causing any more suffering to this pure
denizen of the higher sphere than is absolutely required by the
interests of humanity. It is only the practitioner of black magic who
compels the presence, by the powerful incantations of necromancy,
of the tainted souls of such as have lived bad lives, and are ready to
aid his selfish designs. Of intercourse with the Augoeides, through
the mediumistic powers of subjective mediums, we elsewhere speak.
The theurgists employed chemicals and mineral substances to
chase away evil spirits. Of the latter, a stone called Μνίζουριν was
one of the most powerful agents.
“When you shall see a terrestrial demon approaching,

Exclaim, and sacrifice the stone Mnizurin,”
exclaims a Zoroastrian oracle (Psel., 40).

And now, to descend from the eminence of theurgico-magian
poetry to the “unconscious” magic of our present century, and the
prose of a modern kabalist, we will review it in the following:
In Dr. Morin’s Journal de Magnétisme, published a few years since
in Paris, at a time when the “table-turning” was raging in France, a
curious letter was published.
“Believe me, sir,” wrote the anonymous correspondent, “that there
are no spirits, no ghosts, no angels, no demons enclosed in a table;
but, all of these can be found there, nevertheless, for that depends
on our own wills and our imaginations.... This mensabulism[524] is an
ancient phenomenon ... misunderstood by us moderns, but natural,
for all that, and which pertains to physics and psychology;
unfortunately, it had to remain incomprehensible until the discovery
of electricity and heliography, as, to explain a fact of spiritual nature,
we are obliged to base ourselves on a corresponding fact of a
material order....
“As we all know, the daguerreotype-plate may be impressed, not
only by objects, but also by their reflections. Well, the phenomenon
in question, which ought to be named mental photography,
produces, besides realities, the dreams of our imagination, with such
a fidelity that very often we become unable to distinguish a copy
taken from one present, from a negative obtained of an image....
“The magnetization of a table or of a person is absolutely identical
in its results; it is the saturation of a foreign body by either the
intelligent vital electricity, or the thought of the magnetizer and those
present.”
Nothing can give a better or a more just idea of it than the electric
battery gathering the fluid on its conductor, to obtain thereof a brute
force which manifests itself in sparks of light, etc. Thus, the electricity
accumulated on an isolated body acquires a power of reaction equal
to the action, either for charging, magnetizing, decomposing,
inflaming, or for discharging its vibrations far away. These are the
visible effects of the blind, or crude electricity produced by blind
elements—the word blind being used by the table itself in
contradistinction to the intelligent electricity. But there evidently
exists a corresponding electricity produced by the cerebral pile of
man; this soul-electricity, this spiritual and universal ether, which is
the ambient, middle nature of the metaphysical universe, or rather of
the incorporeal universe, has to be studied before it is admitted by
science, which, having no idea of it, will never know anything of the
great phenomenon of life until she does.
“It appears that to manifest itself the cerebral electricity requires
the help of the ordinary statical electricity; when the latter is lacking
in the atmosphere—when the air is very damp, for instance—you
can get little or nothing of either tables or mediums....
“There is no need for the ideas to be formulated very precisely in
the brains of the persons present; the table discovers and formulates
them itself, in either prose or verse, but always correctly; the table
requires time to compose a verse; it begins, then it erases a word,
corrects it, and sometimes sends back the epigram to our address ...
if the persons present are in sympathy with each other, it jokes and
laughs with us as any living person could. As to the things of the
exterior world, it has to content itself with conjectures, as well as
ourselves; it (the table) composes little philosophical systems,
discusses and maintains them as the most cunning rhetorician
might. In short, it creates itself a conscience and a reason properly
belonging to itself, but with the materials it finds in us....

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“I am highly impressed with Advances in Family-School-Community

“Advances in Family-School-Community Partnering: A Practical Guide for

Family-School-Community Partnering (FSCP) is a multidimensional process

Gloria E. Miller, PhD, is an endowed professor at the University of Denver

Amanda Arthur-Stanley, PhD, is a practicing school psychologist and adjunct

Rashida Banerjee, PhD, is a professor at the University of Denver. Her

Gloria E. Miller, Amanda

ISBN: 978-1-138-50203-1 (hbk)

List of Figures, Tables, Text Boxes ix

1 A Multitiered Framework for Family-School-Community

2 Foundational Theories and Cultural, Sociological, and

3 Universal Family-School-Community Partnering 44

4 Targeted and Intensive Family-School-Community Partnering 75

5 Family-School-Community Partnering: Where Are We Now?

6 Understanding and Supporting Military Families Through

7 Gender Identity Considerations for Family-School-

8 Family-School-Community Partnering With Immigrant

9 Supporting Students With Intellectual and Developmental

10 Considerations for Family-School Partnerships in Rural

11 Case Stories in Family-School-Community Partnering 246

2020 boldly unveiled the importance of family-school-community partnering

In our former practitioner-oriented text on family-school-partnering, published

Our FSCP Logo

Figure 0.1 Family-School-Community Partnering Framework

All three authors are passionate about family-school-community partnering

Gloria E. Miller, PhD, is an endowed professor in the Morgridge College of

Jeanine Coleman, PhD, is a clinical associate professor and program direc-

After reviewing this chapter, the reader will:

Legislative Precedents for FSCP

Family Inclusion in General Education Legislation

to educate teachers, specialized instructional support personnel, principals,

State education regulations have closely followed national legislative man-

Family Inclusion in Special Education Legislation

Conceptual Shifts in FSCP

Legislation/Policy FSCP Impact

guided by communities, families, and schools. A roadmap is provided to guide

Our Choice of Terminology

Parent Involvement Family-School-Community Partnering

Research Supporting Positive FSCP Outcomes

Student and Adult Outcomes

“It becomes you not to behold them before your body is

says the same philosopher, in another passage.[523]

“When you shall see a terrestrial demon approaching,

exclaims a Zoroastrian oracle (Psel., 40).

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