Centering family knowledge: Teacher-developed home-school connections pedagogies in the elementary science classroom

• In Event: Reconfiguring teacher learning as joy and connection: Longitudinal pathways for collaboration in justice-centered science instruction

Abstract

Objectives
This paper examines the experiences and practice of home-school connection pedagogies in dual-language elementary science classrooms, positioning family knowledge at the center of the science curriculum and destabilizing narratives of science as an elite practice (Authors et al., 2024). It documents the process through which one teacher’s home-connections practice was collectively analyzed and theorized through a studio day, generating a home-school connection model (Morrison, 2017) that was then taken up and enacted by other teachers who participated in the same professional development project.

Theoretical Framework
Traditional models of parent involvement have prioritized surface-level engagement and positioned parents as helpful only insofar as they learn school knowledge, conforming to white middle-class educational practices and conveying that knowledge to their children (Baquedano-López et al. 2013; Torres and Hurtado-Vivas 2011). Such models of parent involvement contrast with visions of nondominant families as holders of essential knowledge and partners in reshaping schools towards justice (Barajas-López & Ishimaru, 2020). This paper aligns with frameworks of humanizing family engagement (Gallo, 2017) that position families as knowledge holders, and assert that their wisdom should be incorporated and valued in classroom curriculum (Morrison, 2017).

Methods
This paper draws from the data set for a 6-year-long mixed methods research project (PASTEL). This paper analyzes a subset of data through a qualitative case-study lens, focusing on the home connection practice of a focal teacher and how this was discussed and taken up by other participating teachers. Data was analyzed through multiple cycles of qualitative coding (Saldaña, 2015).

Data Sources
Data analyzed for this paper includes teacher interviews, recordings of professional development sessions or studio days, classroom observation logs and videos, and home-connections artifacts.

Results
Preliminary findings indicate that teachers leveraged home-connections activities in ways that placed family knowledge at the center of the curriculum, promoting synthesis of home and school-based science knowledge. For example, when teaching a 5th grade unit on astronomy, the focal teacher solicited star stories from parents and guardians, then designed an evidence wall where evidence from in-class activities and experiments was connected with yarn to related family stories. Families participated in extending each others’ stories, and the unit concluded with students writing letters to family members that wove together multiple star stories. This unit was planned through modifying and developing a four-step process through which students gathered home knowledge about science phenomena, synthesized it with school knowledge, and analyzed it in class, took this work home for additional family feedback, and ultimately used the synthesis to extend classroom science learning (Morrison, 2017). Importantly, other teachers in the network began to take up this four-step process throughout the year.

Scholarly Significance
Our findings suggest that teachers can develop and leverage home connections pedagogies in ways that counter common practices of using home connections simply as a hook to engage students in canonical science as an elite, academic enterprise. Instead, by incorporating family knowledge into the curriculum, the teachers repositioned intergenerational wisdom as valid and scientific knowledge as co-constructed in community and accessible to all.

Authors

• Grace Cornell Gonzales, University of Washington

• Jessica J. Thompson, University of Washington

• Sarah Jaewon Lee, University of Washington