The Relationship between Administrator Qualifications and Family Engagement

McCormick Institute for Early Childhood

BY McCormick Center  | August 25, 2014

A woman wearing glasses and a suit is smiling in front of a flag.

Sim Loh is a family partnership coordinator at Children’s Village, a nationally-accredited Keystone 4 STARS early learning and school-age enrichment program in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, serving about 350 children. She supports children and families, including non-English speaking families of immigrant status, by ensuring equitable access to education, health, employment, and legal information and resources on a day-to-day basis. She is a member of the Children First Racial Equity Early Childhood Education Provider Council, a community member representative of Philadelphia School District Multilingual Advisory Council, and a board member of Historic Philadelphia.


Sim explains, “I ensure families know their rights and educate them on ways to speak up for themselves and request for interpretation/translation services. I share families’ stories and experiences with legislators and decision-makers so that their needs are understood. Attending Leadership Connections will help me strengthen and grow my skills in all domains by interacting with and hearing from experienced leaders in different positions. With newly acquired skills, I seek to learn about the systems level while paying close attention to the accessibility and barriers of different systems and resources and their impacts on young children and their families.”

As researchers and policymakers learn more about the factors that influence teaching and learning in early childhood settings, the importance of family engagement is emerging as an essential element. National, state, and local family involvement projects are engaging thousands of practitioners, parents, and leaders in family involvement networks, professional development initiatives, training and technical assistance systems, and workgroups to devote more resources toward family engagement.1


There is evidence that director qualifications are related to instructional leadership practices and learning environments in early childhood programs,2 but an understanding about the influence of program administrators on practices to garner family engagement is limited. In a meta-analysis of studies, Mendoza and her colleagues found that program-parent relationships were strengthened through improving relational trust, social respect, personal regard, and reciprocally valued perceptions of one another’s competence and integrity.3Encouraging staff to deepen and change their perspective about family-centered practices can lead to subtle shifts in staff–family connections.4


The purpose of the current study was to explore how directors’ qualifications are related to factors that contribute to family engagement practices in early childhood programs. … Download this resource to read the rest of the research.


This resource is part of our Research Note series.

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Leadership Connections Testimonial From Jamie Fishman

By Jamie Fishman • September 18, 2026
This conference definitely helps our business. Like I said, it's really an opportunity for us to highlight all the products that we have that are new and exciting. I try to bring and highlight things that are new this year. Pretty much everything on this table are new products for 2026. And what makes this conference different? I think it's just really there's a lot of decision makers here, which is really good for us as a business to be talking to childcare owners, to actually, the providers that are in the classroom, and connect with even larger centers that have multiple locations. And it gives us that time to really have that in-person connection that we don't often get to have. So it's kind of like a bang for your buck you get to see lots of different customers over a short course of time because the conference is only a day and so it gives us a chance to connect with a lot of customers and get our products out there. 
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