Transformation or Adaptation? Lessons From the Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) We Are a Village Grant

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Principles for Transformative Latino Parent Leadership: Lessons From Three Investing in Innovation (i3) Grants

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study is to explore the opportunities and obstacles presented in a school implementing two models of parent engagement, one primarily focused on student level results and the other on family/community transformation. Our questions include: What happens when parents’ elevated critical consciousness collides with a school-wide definition of parent engagement that favors deference? What opportunities for transformation are available when conflicts between definitions of parent engagement occur?

Study Perspective: These questions emerged from the evaluation of an Investing in Innovation (i3) grant, entitled We Are a Village, issued by the U.S. Department of Education to the Central Falls, Rhode Island School District. The intervention staffed each of the five participating schools with a full-time bilingual cultural broker, termed “Collaborator,” who oversees a team of parent leaders. Hope, as defined by Duncan-Andrade (2015), is the sense of control of destiny and it includes pathways (access to necessary information to navigate challenges) and move towards goals, and more importantly, agency (the self-efficacy to respond to challenges and move towards goals). We seek to understand the role of hope, as defined above, in moments of tension between competing definitions of parent engagement.

Methods and data sources: Our case study of one elementary school draws on qualitative data collected during the 2013/14 and 2014/15 school year. We conducted focus groups with parents and parent leaders, interviews with teachers, staff, the principal, and implementation team members, and observations of i3 activities. Focus groups and interviews included many of the same respondents over various points in time. Our research team systematically coded the transcripts using qualitative data analysis software. We supplement these data with quantitative data tracking parent participation in i3 activities.

Results: Stakeholders in this elementary school operated from two different models of parent engagement. The first model saw parent engagement as a tool to increase student success, offering parents pathways for engagement but failing to recognize their agency. In this model parents were expected to adapt to the school structure as was and not to question or challenge it. Parents were offered skills that would only serve them inside the school/classroom/academic sphere and were not transferable to other areas of their lives. The second model also included pathways but instead of asking parents to adapt to the school structure, parents were tasked with transforming it to make it more parent friendly, increase critical consciousness, and build empathy between parents and teachers. Teachers, the principal, and the home school liaison saw the model of deference as one that maintained harmony and the model of resistance being embraced by parents and the Collaborator as creating conflict within the school. We saw a nexus of possibility and hope for transformative parent engagement.

Significance: Our findings reinforce the significance of the Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Home-School Partnerships, released by the Department of Education in 2014 and enhance the framework by highlighting the capacities needed for school stakeholders to embrace transformative parent leadership.

Authors

• Vianna Alcantara, Annenberg Institute for School Reform

• Joanna D. Geller, Annenberg Institute for School Reform

• Ruth Maria López, Brown University

• Keith C. Catone, Brown University

• Rosann Tung, Annenberg Institute for School Reform