School-University-Family Partnership as Third Space: Exploring the Roles of Parents and Teachers as Co-Developers (Poster 7)

• In Event: What Is the Value-Add of Research-Practice Partnerships?

Abstract

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) offer an especially promising model for advancing computer science education in PreK-12 education (McGill et al., 2021). Successful partnerships value the diverse, complementary knowledge and experiences of all partners, establish routines for sensemaking and collaboration, and use evidence to guide decisions (Penuel et al., 2020). Such endeavors, however, rarely engage teachers in the conduct of research activities (Anderson, 2005) and program development, and positioning parents as joint decision-makers is even rarer. There is a critical need for both teachers and BIPOC and linguistically diverse families to be partners in culturally responsive school initiatives where their voices are not only considered, but are central to the initiatives (Kayser et al., 2021). The objective of this study is to explore how a family-teacher-university RPP not only centered teacher and parent voice in the co-development and piloting phase of a culturally relevant preschool robotics program, but also established a third space where parents and teachers emerged as leaders.

We followed Furman and Calabrese Bartonâs (2006) model for examining voice over time as a way to understand how teachers and parents negotiated evolving identities as curricular co-developers and co-researchers of preschoolers’ computational thinking development in culturally relevant ways. Accordingly, voice was operationalized as both perspectives (i.e., what participants talked about, including opinions, possible solutions to problems, etc.) and participation (i.e., the choices participants made to actually take part in partnership efforts to develop a culturally relevant robotics program). We also conceptualized voice to include positionality, (i.e., how the teacher and parent partners positioned themselves as both learners and leaders in the partnership; Booker & Goldman, 2016). Qualitative codes were generated for a subset of data sources and refined (e.g., new codes added, codes collapsed, codes reorganized by theme) until a final set of exhaustive codes was established and applied to all data sources at the talk-turn level for transcripts and the topic level for field notes. Codes focused on the roles and positions of the parents, teachers, and university partners as well as perceptions, choices, and actions related to partnership involvement. We created data displays from code co-occurrence tables by roles/perspectives and by roles/participation (Miles et al., 1994) and reviewed excerpts to identify similarities and differences across teacher and parent voice. Through comparison, we identified how the roles and involvement of parents and teachers changed across time.

Overall, we found that parents brought intimate knowledge of cultural practices and values as well as community experiences that foster computational thinking and a sense of belonging in computer science. Early childhood teachers brought extensive experiential knowledge about children’s development and academic strengths and interests. Facilitation efforts among university partners, both informally and formally, removed the typical unidirectional form of communication between teachers and parents to validate the voice and expertise of parents from BIPOC and linguistically diverse groups, and build a culturally responsive school–university-family partnership. The interaction of voices created an opportunity for parents and teachers to emerge as co-leaders in early childhood computer science program development.

Authors

• Lori Caudle, University of Tennessee
  Presenting Author

• Hannah Thompson, University of Tennessee
  Presenting Author

• Charles E. Flowers, University of Tennessee
  Presenting Author

• Tabatha Rainwater, University of Tennessee
  Non-Presenting Author

• Margaret F. Quinn, Texas A&M University
  Presenting Author

• Frances K. Harper, University of Tennessee
  Presenting Author

• Amie Kahovec, The University of Tennessee - Knoxville
  Non-Presenting Author