Chapter 21: Teaching About Family, Neighborhood, and Community Effects on Child And Adolescent Development

Families and communities can be studied in classes from many academic disciplines. In educational psychology classes, the topic generally pertains to understanding how families contribute to students’ academic adjustment, which includes students’ learning, development, behavior, motivation, and performance. Learning about the ways that families, communities, and schools interact to influence student learning and development is essential in many educational psychology classes. Further, because so many students in our classes will be or are practicing educators, it is important for them to learn how to apply that knowledge in practice so that they can partner with parents to foster students’ well-being.