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Reinforcing Deficit, Journeying Toward Equity: Cultural Brokering in Family Engagement Initiatives

Item

Title
Reinforcing Deficit, Journeying Toward Equity: Cultural Brokering in Family Engagement Initiatives
Abstract/Description
Families are key actors in efforts to improve student learning and outcomes, but conventional engagement efforts often disregard the cultural and social resources of nondominant families. Individuals who serve as cultural brokers play critical, though complex, roles bridging between schools and families. Using an equitable collaboration lens with boundary-spanning theory, this comparative case study examined how individuals enacted cultural brokering within three organizational contexts. Our findings suggest a predominance of cultural brokering consistent with programmatic goals to socialize nondominant families into school-centric norms and agendas. However, formal leadership and boundary-spanning ambiguity enabled more collective, relational, or reciprocal cultural brokering. These dynamics suggest potential stepping stones and organizational conditions for moving toward more equitable forms of family-school collaboration and systemic transformation.
Author/creator
Ishimaru, Ann M.
Torres, Kathryn E.
Salvador, Jessica E.
Lott, Joe
Williams, Dawn M. Cameron
Tran, Christine
Date
2016
In publication
American Educational Research Journal
Volume
53
Issue
4
Pages
850-882
Resource type
en Research/Scholarly Media
Resource status/form
en Published Text
Scholarship genre
en Empirical
Keywords
boundary-crossing
cultural brokering
educational equity
family engagement
school-community relations
IRE Approach/Concept
Equity
Equitable Collaboration
Family Engagement
School Community Partnership
Cultural Brokerage
Featured case/project
Pathways Project
DOI
10.3102/0002831216657178
URL
Publisher Webpage
ERIC Link (#EJ1111120)
Citation
Ishimaru, A. M., Torres, K. E., Salvador, J. E., Lott, J., Williams, D. M. C., & Tran, C. (2016). Reinforcing Deficit, Journeying Toward Equity: Cultural Brokering in Family Engagement Initiatives. American Educational Research Journal, 53(4), 850–882. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831216657178

Linked resources

Items with "Alternate version: Reinforcing Deficit, Journeying Toward Equity: Cultural Brokering in Family Engagement Initiatives"
Title Class
Just Schools: Building Equitable Collaborations with Families and Communities Book

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