An Innovative Home-School Collaboration Approach for Engaging Low-income, Immigrant Families in Curriculum Co-Construction

• In Event: 1-024 - Promoting Cultural Responsiveness of Early Childhood Curriculum and Professional Development: Funds of Knowledge Approaches

Integrative Statement

In this paper, we will present a model of family engagement and curriculum co-construction highlighting a unique approach for home-school collaboration (HSC) within Head Start programs, as well as preliminary evidence of its success based on formative and summative evaluation data across design and implementation phases, including independent classroom observation, teacher and parent surveys, and focus group/interview data. Essential to this HSC approach is a reconceptualization of family engagement, emphasizing a home-to-school flow of information, with a particular focus on science, technology, and engineering (STE) learning as the family-school bridge. Our approach to HSC is congruent with a relational approach to family engagement (Sheridan & Kim, 2015). Positive teacher-family relationships support teacher-child relationships (a key predictor of later school outcomes), because communication helps teachers learn about families, which guides them in creating a more comfortable learning environment for individual children (Hauser-Cram et al., 2003; Smolkin & Suina, 1999), particularly dual language learning (DLL) children for whom mainstream educational practices might not be as familiar (Moore & Smith, 2015). By effectively connecting children’s home-based experiential knowledge and classroom curriculum teachers facilitate powerful learning for children from non-dominant groups (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & González, 2005; Stephens, 2000; Thompson, 2010).
The HSC approach involved three types of activities: (1) cultivating a small group of Parent Leaders (PLs) who served as guides for understanding family and community life; (2) joint parent-teacher activities (Rogoff, 2003; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988) focused on STE concepts, family culture, and classroom curriculum; and, (3) Parent-Teacher Discussion (PTD) groups (Adair & Tobin, 2008) focused on co-determined topics of interest. Documentation of the approach came from analyses of videotaped meetings (and meeting notes) to operationalize dimensions of co-construction and provide empirical evidence for its manifestation across STE and HSC components of the program. Using grounded theory, core constructs were first identified through open coding, and then conditions, strategies, processes, and consequences of the approach were delineated. Three core constructs of the co-construction model are presented in Table 1, in which the processes that constituted each core construct are provided with illustrations.

The HSC approach to curriculum co-construction was developed and initially implemented in seven Head Start classrooms in a large northeastern city, across two programs serving Latino- and Chinese-heritage families and their DLL children. A mixed methods approach was employed to gather formative and summative information based on a quasi-experimental design with these seven RISE classrooms and seven comparison classrooms. Preliminary findings showed promise for the program’s positive influence on teacher attitudes toward STE teaching and family engagement, as well as on classroom quality. Currently, outcome data are being analyzed based on a randomized controlled trial study with a new set of 50 Head Start classrooms, in which children from a range of ethnic and linguistic backgrounds are represented (e.g., Moroccan, Haitian, Cape Verdean, South and Central American, Chinese, Vietnamese). In this presentation, we will present our HSC approach to curriculum co-construction, as well as preliminary evidence of its success, and links to early childhood policy and practice will be discussed.

Authors

• Christine M McWayne, Tufts University
  Presenting Author

• Jayanthi Mistry, Tufts University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Betty Zan, University of Northern Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kimberly Brenneman, Heising-Simons Foundation
  Non-Presenting Author

• Daryl Greenfield, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sunah Hyun, Tufts University
  Non-Presenting Author