Padres Lideres: Evolving From Service-Oriented Parental Involvement to Advocacy-Oriented Parental Engagement

• In Event: Bridging Multiple Worlds: Innovative Cultural Partnerships Among Students, Families, Schools, Communities, and Universities From Preschool Through College

Abstract

Objectives
This mixed-methods case study analyzed Latino immigrant parents’ summative and formative evaluation of their participation in the Padres Lideres parent leadership program. Padres Lideres adopts the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) Parent School Partnership (PSP) curriculum. Padres Lideres serves Spanish-speaking low-income immigrant parents and is designed to build sociocultural and intellectual capital of parents in navigating the education system and advocating for their children, school, and communities through collaborative means.

Theoretical Perspectives
Bridging Multiple Worlds Theory (Cooper, 2011) provides an ecological approach for examining how families learn to navigate their wellbeing across institutions affecting their access to education. This framework is complemented by Freirean (1983; 1993) and funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992) theories. These perspectives frame the Padres Lideres activity system through which parents’ conscientizacion evolved as they named, reflected critically and acted by writing and re-writing themselves as cultural brokers, mediators, leaders and advocates for their children’s education. Cummins’ (1986) empowerment framework also framed participants’ empowerment in recognizing their own power, advocacy and negotiation of power as institutional bridges and cultural brokers for their children’s education across and within school ecologies.

Research Methods
The Padres Lideres program evaluation assessed its effectiveness with a mixed-methods approach. Quantitative data sources included an enrollment form with demographic information and two separate pre- and post-intervention parent questionnaires. Qualitative data sources included written responses to 16 weekly end-of-session open-ended parent questionnaires that were coded for themes with attention to bridging, cultural brokering, mediation, concientización, and development of socio-cultural and intellectual capital. Additional data sources included weekly journal entries and field notes by the program investigator, with presentation artifacts shown and discussed by parents during sessions.

Results
On the pre-intervention questionnaire, Padres Lideres parents exhibited U.S. mainstream parental beliefs about the importance of school engagement; however, these beliefs did not translate into socio-cultural and intellectual capital essential for supporting their children’s education in pivotal ways targeted by the PSP program. In particular, the pre-post comparison and end-of-session data indicated parents acquired greater capital to act independently and in collaboration with other parents and educators to negotiate and support their children’s education and school. Participants’ altered conscientizacion of how the U.S. education system works and its vital role in advocacy for their children’s education stood out. Overall, participants evolved from service-oriented parental involvement (e.g., volunteering in school events) to collaborative advocacy-oriented parental engagement (e.g., engaging educators to negotiate academic resources).

Significance
This study underscores that parental involvement is not synonymous with parental engagement. The latter is more action-oriented and reflects capital essential for brokering and mediating of students’ college pathways. Our findings reveal that a parent leadership program designed for these purposes achieves these goals through active dialogic engagement of participants.

Author

• Zuleyma Nayeli Rogel, University of California - Santa Barbara