“Any Other Thoughts?”: Establishing Third Space in a Family-School-University STEM Partnership to Center Voices of Parents and Teachers

ABSTRACT

Research practice partnerships (RPPs) that include parents and teachers as cocreators of educational programs provide opportunities to build equitable partnerships yet require university partners to intentionally develop spaces for coconstruction and synergistic interactions. RPPs built within a third space can foster engagement of all partners in the coconstruction of knowledge and practices while assuming roles and navigating partnership work through informal and formal communication. We define a third space as a hybrid, intangible space where inter- and intracultural pedagogies are constructed and shared identity is created from historical and cultural contexts of all partners. This study explored how university partners centered teacher and parent voices in the codesign and piloting phase of a culturally relevant preschool robotics program and facilitated codevelopment within a third space. Through in-depth qualitative coding, we analyzed 6 months of early partnership exchanges to identify how we, as university partners, facilitated discourse and what roles parents and teachers assumed within our third space. Results found that university partners frequently invited participation among partners and used revoicing strategies, and parents and teachers adopted roles as educators and advisors to the program design and implementation. Implications for RPPs include considering how both facilitator-discourse moves and collaborative spaces in which parents and teachers are central to partnership conversations and decisions contribute to successful outcomes.

Acknowledgments

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF. We would like to thank our community partners and the school district for supporting this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) CSforAll program (Award #2031394).

Notes on contributors

Lori A. Caudle

Lori A. Caudle, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Early Childhood at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her scholarship is grounded in relationship-based approaches that prioritize the well-being and learning of the early care and education workforce. Through research-practice partnerships and ongoing professional learning experiences, Dr. Caudle works alongside educators to identify ways to increase the quality of early childhood education, particularly for preschoolers. She prioritizes partnerships in marginalized communities where she conducts research in STEM and social-emotional learning through trauma-informed, culturally relevant studies.

Margaret F. Quinn

Margaret F. Quinn, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Teaching, Learning, and Culture department at Texas A&M University. A former preschool educator, Dr. Quinn’s research broadly explores issues related to (1) children’s academic development including effective instruction and assessment approaches and (2) teachers’ professional learning and the factors that can inhibit or encourage engagement and implementation. She has received funding internally and from external sources such as the National Science Foundation, the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund, and the Foundation for Child Development. Her work can be found in journals such as Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Reading Research Quarterly, Reading and Writing, Early Education and Development, and Early Childhood Education Journal.

Frances K. Harper

Frances K. Harper, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of STEM (mathematics) education at the University of Tennessee in the Department of Theory and Practice in Teacher Education. Her research broadly focuses on issues of equity and social justice in mathematics education, early childhood computing education, teacher education, and family engagement, particularly, within urban contexts. She currently leads several community-engaged research projects aimed at transforming early childhood computing education and elementary mathematics education. She strives to understand parents’, teachers’, and students’ experiences with these collaborative efforts toward social and racial justice in and through computing and mathematics.

Hannah R. Thompson

Hannah R. Thompson, M.A.Ed., is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Child and Family Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her research interests include community-engaged studies that focus on the well-being and care of the early childhood workforce. Her main scholarship activities are centered in trauma-informed care, understanding educators’ lived experiences, STEM, and building social emotional capacity in young children and adults through the use of Infant Early Childhood Mental Health and multitiered systems of support and practices.

Tabatha R. Rainwater

Tabatha R. Rainwater is a third-year Doctoral Student in mathematics education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Broadly, her research interests include trauma-informed practices, high school mathematics, and geometry. She is interested in service roles that develop support systems at the university level for students who are parents and has started a student organization at the University of Tennessee for student parents. It is the first in the state. She holds the ontological belief that her research should be embedded with a community of people in and out of the research.

Charles E. Flowers

Charles E. Flowers Jr., M.Ed., is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in the Department of Child and Family Studies. His research interests are in investigating cognitive development in early childhood, with particular attention to the social and cultural contributions to developing thinking and reasoning in culturally relevant early STEM learning experiences. As a former public school early childhood teacher in urban contexts, his main scholarship centers on fostering equitable learning environments that address Black children’s learning and developmental competencies.