Digital Communities of Practice, Parent Involvement, and School Reform

• In Event: Philly Under Fire: Counternarratives on School Reform, Pedagogy, and Community Voices

Abstract

Purpose of Research
Current scholarship on family involvement generally sorts itself into two clusters. The first is that of parents’ observable actions within school settings. The second cluster involves the school- like activities that parents do within their homes, such as reading to their children, verbalizing high expectations for academic achievement, or creating purposeful opportunities for their children to engage with the world. [i] This work seeks to add to current literature on family involvement by adding a third sphere: how families consider the modes by which to seek the information required to make decisions-- and the mechanisms they access in order to do so.

Rapidly- changing neighborhoods amidst “revitalization” present opportunities for families from differing social and economic worlds to connect, respond to, and share information about schools. In this sense, parent information surfaces as a critical component of parent involvement.

Theoretical Framework
Fundamental to this venture, then, are the epistemological footprints of New Literacy Studies scholars, who argue that literacy is embedded within the commonplace exchanges of everyday life[ii]. Infused within literacies are relations of power-- both apparent and unseen-- and the domains through which people negotiate those relationships.

Critical Race Theory provides an additional lens through which to complicate traditional assumptions about information access and parent involvement. CRT begins with the assertion that racism is not aberrant in the United States; rather, it is constructed into the very architecture of American life[iii]. This scholarship distinguishes schools as social institutions for race relations, and aims to address the daily indignities embedded within school policy and infrastructure.

Methods, Modes of Inquiry, and Data Sources
This year- long ethnographic study combines traditional ethnographic methods with components of digital ethnography—the “mining” of online information to tell a story about users. The study follows parents through the labyrinthine task of gaining admission to a sought-after public school—and the resources from which they draw in order to do so.

The questions guiding this research are as follows:
· What pathways of information exist for families to learn more about their local schools?
· How might these pathways differ based on families’ social, racial or ethnic backgrounds, if at all?
· What information is privileged, and who has access to it?
· What might these differences reveal to educators about creating opportunities for parent involvement?

Results
Findings suggest that parent social networks are key in securing information about their local public schools. Initiated in real- life contexts, these social networks mature in digital/online communities such as listserves, websites, and forums, and reflect the beliefs, attitudes, and social capital of their members.

Educational Significance of the Study
Over the course of the last thirty years, parent involvement has been widely recognized as a major key to student academic success and locally- based school reform. Online communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991) are fast becoming vital forums for public collaboration. The emergence of these online communities brings to us opportunities for innovative scholarship about citizens as both creators and consumers of education discourse.

Author

• Alesha Gayle, Temple University