Activating Parent Wisdom to Promote Liberation in Education

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Moving Research Implications Toward Action for Liberation: How Scholars Use Research to Build Justice (Table 11)

Abstract

BLIND is a non-profit organization that partners with Black parent leaders across North Carolina to build their collective capacity to promote culturally affirming learning environments in schools. In research co-conducted with Black parents, BLIND has found that when students report that educators promote elements of culturally affirming environments in their classrooms, students have higher grades, test scores, and attendance, and lower suspension rates (BLIND, 2022). Research evidence in education is powerful in informing the standards for practice in schools. These teaching standards, however, often lack a race-conscious and culturally-sensitive incentive for educators, focusing mostly on the transfer of content that promote college and career-readiness, disregarding that learning is a culturally-embedded process (Hammond, 2014; Tanksley & Estrada, 2022). In this discussion, the researcher discusses their approach of challenging racial injustice in the education system through centering Black parents’ knowledge and lived experiences in the design, execution, and use of research evidence.
This commentary will position the traditional ways in which research is designed, conducted, and shared as one of the barriers to moving toward social change in the education system. The speaker highlights their positionality as an applied researcher in the non-profit sector that leverages community and university partnerships to drive impact in schools. This presentation will employ Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth model as a conceptual framework to discuss how parents are trained in using research methods with a critical lens to co-create knowledge and resources about the conditions that promote culturally affirming learning environments in schools. With emphasis on parents’ cultural, navigational, and resistant capital, the researcher will discuss how facilitating learning experiences in research with Black parents supports their collective pursuit in shifting the narrative of what practices work for cultural affirmation in education. The researcher highlights processes where parents reflect on their own experiences growing up as Black children in the U.S. education system, their exposure to cultural traditions within their households and neighborhoods, and their experiences as advocates and educators of their own children and other Black children. The researcher discusses how working in the non-profit sector provides benefits that enable the relationship-building, flexibility, and commitment required to successfully execute the methods described, and how partnerships with researchers at academic institutions are beneficial to this body of work.
The researcher demonstrates how these methods show promise for being effective in moving research implications beyond article discussion sections and into communities and classrooms. Black parents have used their knowledge and capital in partnerships with educators to increase educators’ capacity to create culturally affirming lesson plans across subject areas. The methods described create sustainable shifts in the cultural environments of schools and districts through shifting decision-making processes in education that are more inclusive of community knowledge and creating partnerships that strengthen schools’ capacity to be culturally responsive. This commentary has implications for community-oriented scholars who want to use intentional approaches to conducting research that has tangible impact in their communities.

Author

• Amber Majors Ladipo, Village of Wisdom