The journey from traditional parent involvement to an alliance for empowerment: A paradigm shift

ABSTRACT

University education partners have great potential to facilitate schools’ moving from a school led traditional approach for family involvement to an asset based, empowerment approach to partnerships. On this journey, educators grapple with the cognitive dissonance of change as they engage their emerging multilingual families in the lives of their children at school and learn about their funds of knowledge. This journey can be understood as a continuum of development that starts with compliance with grant-focused family engagement requirements and ideally ends with an empowered family-school-community alliance that supports the learning community for all members. This continuum is illustrated with 3 school districts at different stages of development. While all made progress, good intentions did not always result in great success, and work remains to be done in self-reflection, shifting from deficit thinking to an asset approach, and developing shared participation and leadership. The article concludes with insights gained from education partners’ translation of transformative ideas into concrete change, along with suggestions for improving the process taken from lessons learned on this journey.

Acknowledgments

Laura S. Alverson

Family Engagement Specialist

The New Neighbors Education Center

Indiana University Southeast

4201 Grant Line Road

New Albany, IN 47150

(812) 941-210

[email protected]

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional resources

1. Mapp, K.L. & Kuttner, P. J. (2013). Partners in education: A dual capacity-building framework for family–school partnership. Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. http://www.sedl.org/pubs/framework/FE-Cap-Building.pdf.

This resource provides a framework that guides the process of designing systems that will be sustainable for creating effective family and school partnerships. The resource includes a description of the challenges and opportunities as well as guidelines to develop policy and program goals, and family and educator capacity building. Three case studies are also outlined to provide real life scenarios of the framework in action.

2. Weiss, H.B., Lopez, M. E. & Caspe, M. (2018). Joining together to create a bold vision for next generation family engagement: Engaging families to transform education. Global Family Research Project. https://globalfrp.org/content/download/419/3823/file/GFRP_Family%20Engagement%20Carnegie%20Report.pdf.

This report outlines strategies to shift the mind-set of educators and the community from a disjointed, school-driven family engagement strategy that does activities for families to a co-created, well-articulated engagement plan that is devised with families and builds capacity with family strengths as a central focus. The paper describes high-leverage actions that promote learning pathways and student success that include the importance of student attendance, data sharing with families, academic and social development in and outside of school, use of digital media for learning and communication, and intentional inclusion of underserved families at key transition points in students’ development.

3. Office of English Language Acquisition. (2018). English learner family toolkit. US Department of Education. https://ncela.ed.gov/files/family_toolkit/EL-Family-Tool-Kit-All.pdf.

This toolkit is designed for families as a resource for them to understand the American school system and their rights. It is currently in development with 2 chapters completed on enrolling in school and attendance. The remaining chapters being developed focus on obtaining services for English learners, additional services and support, safety and health, and assisting with schoolwork at home. Each chapter provides sections with general information, family and student rights, questions to ask the school, tips and resources. The first 2 chapters are available in several languages at this website: https://ncela.ed.gov/family-toolkit.