Community Engaged Parent Education: Strengthening Civic Engagement Among Parents and Parent Educators

We introduce Community Engaged Parent Education as a model for civic engagement in parent education. In Community Engaged Parent Education, the parent educator weaves the public dimensions of parenting into the everyday practice of group parent education. It is not a curriculum but a community-collaborative way of teaching all parenting topics by connecting parents' personal concerns to public issues. We describe the origins, principles, and core practices of this approach. Then we present evaluation data demonstrating that parent educators can learn to implement this approach to parent education, and that parents respond with a variety of forms of civic engagement.