Poster #67 - A Research Synthesis on K-3 Family and Parent-based Initiatives that Aim to be Culturally Responsive

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

As U.S. children become increasingly diverse, educators have used family engagement programs (FEP) to understand how racially/ethnically minoritized children’s home learning contexts of can bolster classroom learning (Grant & Ray, 2016). Although some evidence suggests that culturally responsive (CR) classroom practices consistent with theory can lead to positive outcomes for students (e.g., Aronson & Laughter, 2016), how initiatives aiming to attend to families’ cultural background are aligned with CR frameworks and support children’s academic development remains unclear. Such alignment could guide practitioners in tailoring existing programs to be more inclusive of and effective for families, particularly those who are often missed through traditional means of family engagement (e.g., racially/ethnically minoritized; Mapp & Hong, 2010).
This research synthesis builds on existing reviews of CR family/parenting programs (e.g., Butler & Titus, 2015) by including programs that aim to support children’s academic development. Three questions guided this review:
1) Are FEP that aim to be CR guided by theory?
2) In what ways do programs in language/literacy, math and science, and social and behavioral learning address the six tenets of culturally responsive teaching (CResT; Gay, 2010) in their design and implementation?
3) How effective are FEP that aim to be CR?

Method
Inclusion Criteria: Included articles described or evaluated family behavioral or educational program in the US or Canada; included K-3 children; included at least 50% of participants from racially/ethnically minoritized backgrounds; and demonstrated, in at least one way, how program utilized a CR approach. Search Procedures: I searched (1) electronic databases (January 1995 - November 2017), (2) reviews of research on culturally-adapted family/parent programs, (3) articles written by prominent scholars in family research, and (4) the reference sections of included articles. The review included 21 articles (15 unique programs). Coding of CResT: I used thematic synthesis for systematic reviews (Thomas & Harden, 2008) that included line-by-line coding (e.g., highlight program features), developing descriptive themes (i.e., associate features CResT tenet(s)), and generating analytic themes. I maintained 89% adjacent agreement (agreement within one point) with trained student across CResT tenets.

Results
RQ1: Some programs (N = 7) were guided by theory, many of which related explicitly to culturally responsiveness. RQ2: Although most initiatives affirmed families’ cultural heritages as valid and bridged children’s home/school experiences, programs across domains varied in the breadth of and depth in which families’ cultures were represented across program features (e.g., program content; see Tables 1 and 2). RQ3: A subset of articles (N = 11) describing program effectiveness revealed that programs were effective when compared to business-as-usual control groups and in single group pretest-posttest designs, but not when compared to traditional/non-adapted programs.

Conclusions
As evidenced by the varying approaches to cultural responsiveness, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to family programming. Perhaps the function of CR programs is not to improve children’s academic and prosocial skills in ways that extend beyond traditional engagement efforts, but to get families in the door and build families’ self-efficacy, even if these programs do not appear to be more effective than their non-adapted counterparts.

Author

• Shana Rochester, Boston University
  Presenting Author