Indonesian Parent Involvement and the Mobilization of Social Capital to Support Their Children's Education

• In Event: Immigrant Families and Literacies: Collaborative Research and Advocacy in a Diverse Faith Community

Abstract

1. Objectives:
This research project addressed issues faced by Indonesian families new to the U.S. educational system and sought to learn from and strengthen their advocacy efforts. Our research questions were:
· How do immigrant parents support their children’s education?
· How do we work together to build further supports?
Co-constructed with Indonesian families, this participatory research centered on understanding the bureaucracy of a large urban school district and navigating its complicated process for high school admissions. This collaborative research culminated in a community workshop on the high school application process.

2. Theoretical framework:
Our analytic lenses incorporated notions of habitus and social and cultural capital and intersectionality (Bourdieu, 1990; Crenshaw, 1991). Using Bourdieu's definitions of habitus and capital (cultural, social, and economic) as well as sociological definitions of social capital, advanced by researchers such as Coleman (2002), Zhou (Bankston & Zhou, 2002), and Bankston (2004), we sought to understand the many ways that our Indonesian parent co-participants, as agentive social actors, have engaged in their children's education. Additionally, we employed the concept of intergenerational closure (Coleman, 2002) to explain the effectiveness of the transmission of parental educational values to their children.

3. Methods/Data sources:
We draw on practitioner research (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) and participatory action research (Cahill, 2007) methodologies that foreground shared decision-making and the perspectives, experiences, and goals of community members themselves. Our data were from audiofiles of meetings and interviews with parents; workshop evaluation forms; field notes; and archival information.
4. Findings:
Co-constructing parent engagement from the bottom up, in contrast to the typical top down associations mandated by school districts, afforded democratic participation that honored parents’ voices, interests, and concerns.
· Contrary to the deficit perspective often held about immigrant parent involvement, the Indonesian parents were extremely attentive to the trajectory of their children and supported them at home academically as much as possible.
· Through a scaffolded approach where we co-constructed knowledge about how to deal with the high school application process, the parent leaders gained confidence with materials in English and dealing with the educational bureaucracy.
· Although much of the cultural and social capital from home was devalued in the U.S., the Indonesian parents skillfully mobilized aspects of their cultural capital (their beliefs about education and ways of monitoring progress) and newly developed social capital (parish and university networks and relationships outside of the community) to support their children's education.
· Intergenerational closure, a facet of social capital where bounded social networks of parents and children with similar values exist, reinforced community norms of high academic achievement and personal discipline.

5. Significance:
This local example of collaborative research contributes to the literature on immigrant parents’ participation in K-12 education and disrupts the dominant discourse of deficit and non-engagement. Our strategies and methods add to the repertoire for community researchers seeking to minimize distance between researcher and community; build parent engagement; develop group self-reliance; and nurture a university-community partnership based on the principles of mutual respect, mutual benefit, and egalitarianism.

Authors

• Mary Yee, University of Pennsylvania

• Karim A. Mostafa, University of Pennsylvania