Family as Faculty: A Family-Centered Approach to Preparing Educators for Family Engagement

• In Event: Preparing Educators for Family and Community Engagement: A Spotlight on Co-Constructed Research Approaches

Abstract

Objectives/Purpose:
This paper highlights Family as Faculty (FAF) as an approach to engaging families as co-educators to prepare special education teachers for family and community engagement. Specifically, this case study ‘snapshot’ highlights the expertise of Lety (pseudonym), a Latina immigrant parent of a child with disabilities, and her experience in this work. The study asks: (a) How is collaboration used in FAF to prepare pre-service special education teachers to center families’ cultural and linguistic strengths? and (b) As university/college instructors how do we confront uneven power relations that may inadvertently marginalize families?

Theoretical Framework:
Family as Faculty (FAF) is an approach derived from family-centered healthcare models and adapted for special education teacher education programs. Its goal is to position family members of children with disabilities as co-educators in special education university/college courses (e.g., teacher preparation courses), and to positively change preservice special education teachers’ (PSET) deficit-based understandings of students with disabilities and their families to more culturally responsive, asset-based ones. FAF is used to (re)position Lety as a leader who makes important decisions about curriculum content and instruction on behalf of the Latinx family member participants who participate in workshops aimed to co-generate mini-action plans focused on their self-identified challenges pertaining to their children’s schooling.

Methods:
Using participatory methods to co-construct and co-implement a FAF project embedded within a 16-week special education course on families, Lety and I (biracial Mexicana professor) designed 4 workshops through which 18 PSETs (undergraduates) and 30 Latinx family members worked together to co-create actionable plans aimed to establish and sustain positive change for children/students with disabilities. These workshops were organized so that each PSET worked with at least one family throughout the semester and had enough time to implement a part of the action plan. PSETs and families were paired with a bilingual interpreter who assisted with communication.

Data Sources:
Data were collected through audio and video recordings of individual and focus group interviews and small-group discussions led by family members who interacted with PSETs during specific classes. These data were transcribed and analyzed looking at specific interactions where Lety was present.

Results:
Lety experienced and articulated both positive and challenging aspects of FAF. She observed that, despite our efforts at co-creating an authentic space for families and PSETs to collaborate, some families felt frustrated rather than supported (i.e., PSETs texting on phone). Conversely, she experienced feeling valued as her decisions about how to improve PSET-family communication were heard and implemented. Importantly, Lety recommended focusing on “find[ing] common ground” between PSETs and families as a way to demonstrate the many “fuerzas” [strengths] Latinx families contributed to their children’s education.

Implications/Significance:
Researchers who are willing to integrate families’ expertise and strengths while actively examining uneven power relations in both research and teaching can take active steps toward transforming deficit-oriented systems and mindsets that have historically marginalized minoritized families and their children. Centering families’ assets intentionally is a family-generated ‘strategy’ for improving collaboration, communication, and relationships.  

Author

• Cristina C. Santamaria Graff, Indiana University - Purdue University at Indianapolis
  Presenting Author