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Title
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Equity Issues in Parental and Community Involvement in Schools: What Teacher Educators Need to Know
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Abstract/Description
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In this chapter, we examine the literature on parental involvement highlighting the equity issues that it raises in educational practice. Like so many educators and researchers, we are concerned with approaches to parental involvement that construct restricted roles for parents in the education of their children. These approaches often miss the multiple ways nondominant parents participate in their children’s education because they do not correspond to normative understandings of parental involvement in schools (Barton, Drake, Perez, St. Louis, & George, 2004). Moreover, these framings restrict the ways in which parents from nondominant backgrounds can be productive social actors who can shape and influence schools and other social institutions. A great deal of general educational policy on parent involvement draws on Epstein’s (1992, 1995) theory and typologies where a set of overlapping spheres of influence locate the student among three major contexts—the family, the school, and the community—which operate optimally when their goals, missions, and responsibilities overlap. Epstein’s (1992)Six Types of Involvement framework provides a variety of practices of partnership, including the following strategies for involvement: assisting with parenting, communicating with parents, organizing volunteering activities for parents, involving parents in learning at home activities (such as homework), including parents in decision making, and collaborating with community. This perspective, however, can foster individualistic and school-centric approaches (see Warren, Hong, Rubin, & Uy, 2009). We argue that this is even more problematic when school goals are largely based on White and middle-class values and expectations. Others question the model’s inattention to power relations between educational stakeholders, which often position parents as passive or complacent, and call for an expansion of the notion of involvement (S. Auerbach, 2007; Barton et al., 2004; Fine, 1993; Galindo & Medina, 2009). We argue that although conceptually useful, these typologies still reflect a restricted vision of partnership centered on the school’s agenda. We note that these typologies do not engage the intersections of race, class, and immigration, which are relevant to the experiences of many parents from nondominant backgrounds. Our view of parent involvement considers parents as agents who can intervene and advocate on behalf of their children, and who can make adaptations and resist barriers to education (see also Hidalgo, 1998). Our review of the literature indicates that parental participation in schools is strongly shaped by perceptions of parents’ background and of the roles expected of them by school administrators and teachers and by the organizations (whether local or federal) that fund family literacy and parent involvement programs (S. Auerbach, 2002; Barton et al., 2004; Vincent, 2001). To be sure, these perceptions affect all parents, but the negative equity outcomes of these beliefs and practices particularly affect parents from nondominant backgrounds. Moreover, deficit approaches about students and families who are not from the dominant majority have constructed them as lacking and in need of support (see Valencia, 1991, 2011), reinforcing a view of dependency on school goals. We hope that the literature we review in this chapter helps expand notions of parent involvement and of parents from nondominant groups as productive and engaged participants in communities and schools.
We begin our chapter with a brief historical overview of approaches to parent involvement and the ways in which neodeficit discourses on parents permeate current education reform efforts. Next, we address how inequities related to race, class, and immigration shape and are shaped by parent involvement programs, practices, and ideologies. Finally, we discuss empowerment approaches to parental involvement and how these are situated in a broader decolonial struggle for transformative praxis that reframes deficit approaches to parents from nondominant backgrounds.
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Date
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2013
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In publication
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Review of Research in Education
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Volume
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37
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Issue
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1
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Pages
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149-182
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Language
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en
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Open access/full-text available
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en
Yes
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Peer reviewed
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en
Yes
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ISSN
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0091-732X
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Citation
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Baquedano-López, P., Alexander, R. A., & Hernandez, S. J. (2013). Equity Issues in Parental and Community Involvement in Schools: What Teacher Educators Need to Know. Review of Research in Education, 37(1), 149–182. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X12459718
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Abbreviation
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Review of Research in Education
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