Developing Home Visiting Skills to Support Equity-Oriented Collaboration With Linguistically Diverse Families

• In Event: Foregrounding Voices: Understanding and Supporting Schools' and Teachers' Engagement With Linguistically Marginalized Families and Communities

Abstract

Objective
Deep knowledge of children’s families, communities, and cultures is essential for effective, culturally responsive/sustaining teaching (e.g., Ladson-Billings, 2014; Paris & Alim, 2014). Unfortunately, preservice and inservice teacher training tends not to adequately address issues of power, privilege, culture, or engaging effectively with families (Epstein, 2018; Zeichner, Bowman, Guillen, & Napolitan, 2016). Without support to develop cultural competence - particularly when teachers’ and students’ backgrounds and experiences are misaligned - implicit biases are likely to affect teaching in ways that negatively affect already marginalized groups (Dee, 2005). Our objective was to explore how teachers engaged with families after receiving training to support this cultural competence.

Theoretical Framework, Method, and Data Sources
Our work is guided by Mapp & Bergman’s Dual Capacity-Building Framework (2019) and by research on trust (Adams & Christianson, 2000; Hoy & Tschannon-Moran, 1999). Our model for home visits was at the intersection of ethnographic home visits (Moll et al., 1992) and relationship-building home visits (pthvp.org). We supplemented that model with implicit bias and assets-framing training and with reflection. Visits by eight experienced teachers (4 pairs within a dual immersion bilingual program) at one public elementary school in the southeastern U.S. were arranged in advance. Visits were voluntary, teachers were trained and compensated for visits, and visits with each child in the class were conducted in pairs. We observed and took field notes on teacher-family interactions in 16 of those visits (half with Spanish-speaking families; half English-speaking). We coded the home visit field notes via a hybrid deductive/inductive process of first and second-round coding (Saldaña, 2014), focusing on interactional processes between teachers and families. We also coded teachers’ logs before and after the visits and transcripts from focus groups held two months after the visits.

Results
We found evidence that conversations often centered on disclosures by the family, providing opportunities for teachers to build trust. Teachers worked to build that trust in a variety of ways, positioning themselves as fellow humans and as professionals and navigating the challenge of engaging with sometimes-difficult topics while keeping the visit positive. We also found that conversations centered around artifacts in families’ homes, providing a window into families’ values and experiences. Finally, we found that teachers in this study struggled to incorporate families’ rich and varied assets into their own teaching. Rather, they stayed at the surface in that translation and acknowledged a need for support.

Scholarly Significance
Home visiting has the potential to shift traditional roles by positioning teachers as learners and families as experts, but teachers must be trained on how to engage productively with marginalized families. While anti-bias and assets-framing training are necessary, they are not sufficient. Teachers need techniques for engagement and they need support with how to translate what they learn into culturally responsive/sustaining teaching.

Authors

• Judy Paulick, University of Virginia

• Natalia Palacios, University of Virginia

• Amanda Kibler, Oregon State University

• Melissa Lucas, University of Virginia