On the Border of a Precipice for a Paradigm Shift: Navigating Tensions to Cultivate Equitable Collaboration in Family-School Partnerships

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 1:30 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Navigating the Possibilities and Paradoxes of Parent and Family Engagement and Partnerships (Table 2)

Abstract

This study examined the complexities of tensions and how the enacted response strategies undermined or fostered more equitable approaches for collaboration within a family-school partnership to improve students’ early learning outcomes. This study used a qualitative case study design to explore the interactions within a family-school partnership. Findings suggest how the strategies to repair tensions can be well-intentioned and equity-driven while also unintentionally reinforcing deficit-oriented and dominant school-centric logics that maintain unilateral power dynamics between schools and families (Ishimaru, 2020). By understanding how tensions emerge, and how our responses to these tensions may covertly conform to traditional, dominant, deficit-oriented, school-centric paradigms, researchers and practitioners can learn and shift response strategies in ways that can foster more equitable approaches for collaboration.

Author

• Adam M. Lara, University of California - Irvine