“What Can We Do at Home?" (De)Constructing the Role of the Home in Parental Engagement Discourse

• In Event: 20864 - Feminist and Critical Complicities, Injustices, and Culture (Co-sponsored by Section on Sociology of Culture)

Abstract

Given the continuing centrality of the home in parental engagement research, it remains
imperative to critically deconstruct the meaning of the home. Using the white racial frame as a
theoretical framework, this thematic analysis explores how white and BIPOC female teachers in
New York City interpret the role of the home within parental engagement by focusing on their
descriptions of their interactions with BIPOC parents and families through 16 semi-structured
virtual interviews. This study concludes that teachers largely understand the home as an
extension of the school within the following four dimensions: 1) as a site of complicity and
deference; 2) as a site of observation and surveillance; 3) through deficit and cultural pathology;
and 4) counter-framing of the home through resistive acts and use of the home-culture frame.
This paper concludes that there is an urgent need to (re)construct the home within parental
engagement discourse.

Author

• Alyssa Lyons, CUNY-Lehman College