How do early childhood education programs meet the challenge of engaging families in their child’s early learning and development? NAEYC’s Engaging Diverse Families (EDF) project sought answers to this question. The project's goals were to develop a research-based definition of family engagement, identify exemplary family engagement practices in early childhood programs, and share what was learned with the field of early care and education by assembling a tool kit of materials to help programs more effectively engage families in children’s early learning.

The following materials lay the foundation and highlight effective practices for DLLs. They have been purposely selected to work together in helping you gain knowledge that is culturally and linguistically responsive to the needs of DLL children.

Family involvement matters for young children’s cognitive and social development. But what do effective involvement processes look like, and how do they occur? This research brief summarizes the latest evidence base on effective involvement—that is, the research studies that link family involvement in early childhood to outcomes and programs that have been evaluated to show what works....