Preparing Teachers to Partner With Multilingual Families and Families of Children With Disabilities: A Systematic Review

Family–teacher collaboration plays a critical role in PK–12 schools for multilingual students and students with disabilities. Teacher preparation programs prepare future teachers to collaborate with families before they enter the classrooms, yet little is known regarding the extent to which programs prepare teacher candidates to collaborate with these specific family populations. In this systematic review, the authors synthesize 27 studies conducted in teacher preparation programs that train teachers to collaborate with (a) families of students with disabilities, (b) multilingual families, or (c) multilingual families of students with disabilities. Most studies investigated the collaboration with families of students with disabilities (n = 21), while some investigated multilingual families (n = 8), and very few examined collaborations with families of students who are dually identified, multilingual students with disabilities (n = 2). In a thematic analysis, we identified two family–teacher collaboration program models and several class activities across four types of teacher preparation program models. Our critique identifies methodological strengths and weaknesses of the literature, practice and policy implications, and a call for future research to equitably center family voice in family–teacher investigations.