Which Public Do Public Schools Serve? Critical Ethnographic Perspectives on Home-School Connections in Schooling

Session Submission Type: Symposium

Abstract

The papers included in this symposium take an anthropological approach to studying the ways public school teachers and immigrant parents negotiate tensions between varying home and school socialization practices, diverse expectations for parental participation, and federal and district policies that support or constrain equitable access to educational opportunities. The authors present ethnographic evidence of the ways in which teachers and (im)migrant groups learn, negotiate, and redefine the norms for belonging and participation in society. The findings encourage us to examine which methodologies and theories match the complexity of our questions about who the “public” is, what the “public good” means, and our own scholarly accountability to “public” education and its constituents.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Section 5: Social Context of Research on Schools and Communities

Chair

• Marta P. Baltodano, Loyola Marymount University

Papers

• Affection as Revelation: Teachers’ Assumptions About the Lives of Young Children of Immigrants - Jennifer Keys Adair, The University of Texas - Austin

• Comparisons on Early Educations’ Cultural Negotiations From an Activity Theoretic Approach - Angela E. Arzubiaga, Arizona State University

• Parent Involvement as Ritualized Practice - Fabienne Doucet, New York University

• Parental Expectations for Public Schools: Working Together to Make Dreams Come True - Ariana Mangual Figueroa, Rutgers University

Discussant

• Kris D. Gutiérrez, University of Colorado - Boulder