Engagement Reframed: Examining Black Families' Engagement With Schooling Through Disability Critical Race Theory

• In Event: Understanding Intersectional Lines of Inequities and Diverse Pathways of Resistance

Abstract

Family engagement in schools has a long history of deficit-based school centered approaches to the positioning of and engaging with multiply-marginalized Black families. These approaches situate student and family race, culture, and ability as deviant and in need of fixing. In this presentation, we will use a Disability Critical Race Theory lens (DisCrit; Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2013) to map the literature on family engagement. Inclusion criteria included literature on family engagement and the use of DisCrit or a related theoretical stance, such as Critical Race Theory (CRT). Through this review, we argue that these critical examinations of family engagement can be strengthened by excavating the ways racism and ableism work interdependently to further marginalize Black families.

Authors

• Courtney Lane Wilt, University of Wisconsin - Whitewater

• Sylvia N Nyegenye, University of Kansas