Racing Relationships: New Directions for Research on the Relationship Between Parents of Color and Schools

• In Event: 44.055 - Measuring and Reconceptualizing Parental Involvement

Abstract

Relationships between parents of color and schools tend to favor the interests of educators and schools (Fine, 1993; Noguera, 2001). However, empirical studies tend to focus on the relationship's programmatic aspects (Barton, Drake, Perez, Louis, & George, 2004; Graue, 1998). I argue that current research may be contributing to the continued marginalization of parents of color with an over-reliance on race as a descriptor and variable, obscuring the dynamics of race, and subsequently, racism. This conceptual paper provides a review of the ways we currently understand race in this literature base and advances a conceptual framework and tools to explicitly examine the constitutive role of race in parent engagement efforts.

Author

• Seenae Chong, University of California - Berkeley