A Culturally Sustaining Model for Family Engagement: New Hope and Promising Practices

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Toward a Culturally Sustaining Model of Family and Community Engagement in Schools

Abstract

This paper provides insight into a common interaction in schools—the teacher-family relationship. Sociologists have often explored this relationship, primarily through its naturally conflict-ridden and problematic orientation (Waller, 1932) and the social and cultural forces that shape it (Lareau, 1987; Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1978). These studies, however, have not explored the dynamic process of the relationship over time or its dimensions of successful partnership. This paper explores the dimensions of a teacher’s engagement with families—the motivations, challenges, and contextual factors that shape interactions between parents and teachers. Based on a three-year ethnographic study of five urban teachers and their relationships with students’ families, this paper explores--not just about what family engagement looks like in schools--but how teachers build and cultivate relationships with families in ways that are culturally sustaining.

This presentation brings together studies on parent/family engagement and the field of culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP). CSP highlights the need for educators to develop classroom teaching practices that promote and sustain the cultural and linguistic identities and experiences of students (Paris, 2012). Recent work in this area as well as the understanding of culturally relevant pedagogies, or resource pedagogies, more broadly, have highlighted the ways that teachers infuse the life experiences and narratives of students, their families, and their communities in classroom learning. Researchers and practitioners engaged in this work have made invaluable contributions to promoting equity and justice in classrooms that serve linguistically, culturally, and socioeconomically diverse (LCSD) learners (Paris & Alim, 2017).

While the focus on CSP in classroom teaching and learning is pivotal, my study shows that teachers who engage in culturally sustaining practices can also prioritize the relationships they build with students’ families. While the family/community engagement field has made great strides in demanding that models and practices of family engagement be responsive to issues of bias, prejudice, and privilege while also being adaptive to the cultural experiences of students, the field has primarily focused on understanding strategy and capacity-building (Mapp & Kuttner, 2013). There is an opportunity to develop some cohesion around the strategies and practices that are effective with LCSD families in ways that align with the theoretical framework of CSP.

This paper seeks to shed light on what it may mean to promote culturally sustaining family engagement in schools. Through in-depth interviews with five urban teachers as well as school- and community-based observations of teacher-parent interactions, participation in family-oriented events in school, and in-depth interviews with parents in each teacher’s classroom, this presentation will use data from the larger study to illuminate the ways that teachers view their interactions with families as culturally sustaining.

Findings from the study show that teachers’ motivations for engaging families as well as their own personal experiences with teachers and schools in their past and educators’ understanding of the past trauma that parents and caregivers may carry into the relationships they have with teachers influence the development of family engagement practices that are rooted in cultural appreciation, recognition of family narratives and history, and the sustenance of cultural identity.

Author

• Soo Hong, Wellesley College