“I Want to Support My Public School but It's Not Supporting Me”: Mothers’ Segregatory Literacies Navigating Kindergarten Entry

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 1:45 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Reimagining Early Childhood Educational Research (Table 5)

Abstract

School segregation is upheld, in part, by parents navigating school choice beginning at kindergarten entry. Drawn from a larger multi-year collaborative ethnography (Campbell & Lassiter, 2010), this paper uses discourse analysis tools (Gee, 2010) to delineate one focal mother’s Discourses over time as Equity Advocate, Mother, and Environmentalist. Although this mother was an advocate for her neighborhood’s low-income public school prior to her child’s schooling, she could not reconcile her Discourses while navigating kindergarten entry for her son at the school. Instead, she ultimately rationalized enrolling him in a Project-Based Charter. This paper positions power dynamics inherent in parents’ literacy practices and related Discourses as they grapple with kindergarten enrollment and implications for school and community equity and integration.

Authors

• Christy Wessel-Powell, Purdue University

• Casey M. Pennington, SUNY Cortland

• Alexandra Panos, University of South Florida

• Regina M. Weir, Mount Airy City Schools