Review of Race, Community, and Urban Schools: Partnering with African American Families (original) (raw)

Portraits of low-income African-American mothers' involvement in suburban schools

2017

Advisors: Mary Beth Henning.Committee members: Joseph E. Flynn; Laura R. Johnson.Includes bibliographical references.This study advances the premise that African-American parents are deliberately involved in their children's education; however, many educators may not recognize their involvement because it may not always align with dominant cultural expectations. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore beneficial social capital and cultural capital that low-income African-American parents use to involve themselves in their children's suburban school education. Data was collected for this study, in a suburb outside of a large metropolitan city, through the use of a World Cafe (a type of community discussion group) and semi-structured interviews. Using portraiture research design, the findings of the study are highlighted through six participant portraits, which narrate their involvement in their children's education. In summary, all of the participants utilized ...

“Close and desirable for whom?”: Parents traversing racialised spaces and places in gentrifying U.S. schools

Educational Studies, 2023

Within public schools in gentrifying U.S. neighbourhoods, affluent, White families’ priorities collide with those of families from economically disadvantaged and racially minoritized groups. Grounded in raced-classed theories of space and place, we examine how various indicators of gentrification intersect with parents’ experiences in schools and how parents negotiate competing claims to space amid neighbourhood change. We foreground interviews with parents from gentrifying schools in Greater Boston and Washington D.C. Findings reveal how neighbourhood racial and socioeconomic changes informed parents’ connections to schools. Residential proximity to schools and commercial centres shaped parents’ sense of belonging in schools. Parents’ negotiation of racial, spatial, and classed hierarchies in schools and neighbourhoods reveals a need to situate their experiences and perspectives as foundations for school reforms and urban planning initiatives that address and contest social and educational inequities.

Coloring Outside The Lines: An Intersectionality Approach To Understanding The Homeschooling Experiences of Black Families

2013

Current data suggest that homeschooling is a diverse and growing social movement. Unfortunately, the homeschooling narrative reflected in research is often skewed by the socioeconomic status, political power, and cultural interests of White, two-parent, middle-class, homeschooling households, marginalizing the experiences of a growing population of Black homeschoolers. Considering that the plausibility of homeschooling is dependent upon access to social, economic, and temporal resources, this study examines the resources that Black families identified as substantive to sustain their homeschooling efforts. Relying on 20 in-depth interviews, I utilized the theoretical frames of symbolic interactionism, cognitive sociology, and intersectionality and the coding procedures of grounded theory methods to analyze the narratives of Black homeschooling parents. Ultimately, I found the metaphor of coloring outside the lines to be a fitting representation for Black families resourcefulness in h...