• The ASPIRE Survey: Establishing Resources for Engagement via a Web-Based Application
    Posted on January 1, 2013

    Aspects of the school reform movement call for and include parent engagement; a widely defined and loosely implemented term encompassing academic and non-academic interaction between school and families. Research underscores the importance and efficacy of parent engagement but few tools exist to assess the specific but multiple resources a school community contains and then align them with the specific academic and non-academic needs of the school. Emergent web and “smart” technologies are allowing social infrastructures to reform the methodology of their missions as software applications are built around specific needs. A pilot program within an underperforming high school in the northeastern United States demonstrated the use of a database web application in garnering six dimensions (assets, skills, professions, interests, relationships, and physical environment) of school community interaction to use in supporting family and community interaction with the curriculum as well as ancillary non-curricular programs within the school. The use of the web application in less traditional and broader resource to consumer contexts is explored in this presentation.