Megan Gavin, 
a 2014 New School Doctoral Program graduate, published her dissertation as a book, Parental Participation in Honduran Schools: Understand How and Why Learning Happens. The book includes a foreword from the current Minister of Education in Honduras, endorsements from donor and lending agencies, and reflections from academic institutions including The New School.
This important book provides a rich description and analysis of the complexities of parental participation in the rural education terrain of Honduras, focusing on that country’s groundbreaking Programa Hondureno de Educacion Comunitaria (PROHECO) community school program. The study contained in these pages combines theory and extensive, in-depth fieldwork to reveal both the process and impact of parental participation, with policy implications for educational systems globally.
“Megan Gavin’s book is an impressive contribution to the literature on parental involvement in education. Her account of her fieldwork in Honduras is compelling and a pleasure to read. The book demonstrates the great value of how experience in Central America can inform social science analysis and help to formulate realistic and sensible conclusions.”
–Dr. Michael Cohen, Director and Professor of International Affairs, The New School Milano School for International Affairs
“School reforms in Central America over the past twenty-five years have received outsized attention in the international development community. Four countries in particular – El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras – all undertook deep reforms to improve accountability and governance in education systems as well as student outcomes. More recently, the swinging political pendulum has put these reforms under the microscope, and today, the Honduran PROHECO schools are the only reforms left standing. Yet they are also the least studied and the least well understood. Gavin’s book is an important contribution and lends insights for policymakers and researchers across the globe. No one else could have written this book.”
–Dr. Alec Ian Gershberg, Chair, Urban Policy Analysis & Management Program, Milano School for International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy
Purchase the book here.
To contact Megan Gavin please email: gavim708@newschool.edu
