The Politics of Organizations in Parent Engagement: Intentions of Care, Circumscribed Empowerment

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Developing and Improving Partnerships With Community Organizations in Order to Support Schools

Abstract

Few studies elaborate or complicate generally positive accounts of resource brokerage by non-profit organizations (NPOs) which work with parents despite the wealth of empirical evidence attesting to the difficulty of engaging low-income parents of color in ways that empower and respect rather than further marginalize. In this paper, I demonstrate how parent engagement practices of NPOs construct notions of parents’ care that draw boundaries around how and for what purpose parents can be empowered. I advance an argument to understand these NPOs not simply as pipelines of resources but as socially productive actors, shaping parent self-determination and agency in ways consequential to the politics of parent engagement.

Author

• Seenae Chong, University of San Francisco