Advancing Equity-Based Leadership: The Importance of Family-School Partnership

• In Event: 45.069 - Acknowledging the Emotional Work of Social Justice Leadership

Abstract

This narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) study aims to present the stories of five public school principals who continually enact and engage in praxis around school/ family engagement (Auerbach, 2009, 2010; Epstein, 1987, 2010) that centers on supporting students and parents and/or families to realize social justice in education. The narratives of these selected participants reveal timely and needed dialogue about how educators need to examine parent engagement in their schools. Our findings focus on three main emergent categories that characterized how these school leaders conceived and engaged in parent communication/interaction: (1) the power of relationships, (2) resistance toward deficit thinking of parents and/or families, and (3) connecting their work with families to equity.

Authors

• Osly J. Flores, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Eric Kyere, Indiana University