Research for Equity: Research-Practice Partnerships in Family Engagement Research

• In Event: 46.075 - Data Use and inquiry in Research-Practice Partnerships: Insights From Four Case Examples

Abstract

Objectives

This paper illuminates the potential of a research-partnership model to produce culturally nuanced, mutualistic, and equity-oriented knowledge that is academically rigorous and relevant to practice (Coburn et al., 2013). We identify approaches that promote trust-building, collaboration, and cultural relevance while working with highly vulnerable populations and the organizations that serve them. We also highlight methods that forward the voices of low-income, immigrant families in a cross-sector, collaborative research project involving multiple stakeholders (e.g. school districts, community-based organizations) serving children and their families.

Framework

Defined broadly, family engagement often refers to meaningful connections between schools and their students’ families (Epstein, 1995; Mapp, 2012; Shumow, 2010). While family engagement has become an important strategy for effecting student achievement, especially among vulnerable populations, efforts to engage families are often fragmented, with little alignment to learning outcomes (Weiss, Lopez, & Rosenberg, 2010). Especially in non-dominant communities (e.g. low-income, high-immigrant), persistent stereotypes, classifying families as uninvolved and teachers as uninterested, persist (Westrich & Strobel, 2013).

The opportunities for involvement schools offer to parents may not always match families’ life situations, expectations, or desired role (Best & Dunlop, 2011; Hoover-Dempsey, 2005; Mapp & Hong, 2010; Zarate, 2007). Conversely, many providers feel they themselves lack the skill, resources, or supports (e.g. language ability, knowledge of their students’ home context) to effectively engage families. The result is often a disjuncture between the ways families wish to be engaged in their children’s education and the supports offered by their children’s school and other learning organizations.

The Present Study

We closely analyze a collaborative research process between the Gardner Center and six different community-based organizations seeking to expand programming for the families of young children (ages 0-8) in a privately-funded initiative, The Family Engagement impact Project (FEIP). FEIP aims to create systemic, integrated, and sustainable approaches to family engagement that foster cross-sector collaboration and dual-capacity professional development. The Gardner Center was commissioned to conduct a needs assessment study to inform the planning of these efforts.

Conducting collaborative, community-driven research is a complex process. The Gardner Center worked to engage families and service providers in each community in an iterative process. Surveys were designed with input from each of the six communities and data was collected by each of the six partner organizations in collaboration with their local working groups. The survey was translated into three languages and, in some cases, community workers were trained, in Spanish, to administer the survey.

Throughout, a concern for the input and experience of family participants was foregrounded. This paper will analyzes this case by applying the equity framework forwarded by Gutiérrez and Penuel (2014) to illuminate how the research partnership process may have fostered the voices of traditionally underserved populations.
Significance

Through this in-depth case analysis, we seek to illuminate particular mechanisms through which community-based research can forward marginal voices into important program and policy venues. We also aim to identify key methods, factors, and conditions that encourage collaborative research that is both rigorous and culturally grounded (Gutiérrez & Penuel 2014).

Author

• Kendra Fehrer, John W. Gardner Center