Abstract
Researchers and educational leaders have long debated the appropriate roles and forms of family engagement in education. Although, in recent years, scholars have sought to understand how racially and linguistically diverse communities should participate in their children’s education, the field has struggled to recognize and engage families’ expertise and disrupt the dynamics of inequity that shape disengagement. In this article, we highlight recent understandings regarding the development of disciplinary identities and cultural practices in learning to offer new approaches to the field of family engagement for conceptualizing the untapped potential of nondominant family knowledge and cultural practices in learning settings. By highlighting examples from mathematics learning that center families as legitimate sources of knowledge, we suggest avenues for engaging diverse family leadership in co-designing equitable learning environments that foster students’ empowering disciplinary identities and learning.
Highlights
Scholars and practitioners have long recognized that parents and families play a critical role in shaping and supporting student learning (Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Easton, & Luppescu, 2010; Epstein, 2001; Henderson & Mapp, 2002; Jeynes, 2012), yet there is little consensus in the field as to the roles and forms of family engagement that matter most for academic success, in light of increasingly diverse students and families and persistent disparities in student outcomes
We provide a vignette as a suggestive example of how family knowledge and disciplinary understandings of mathematics might be reconceptualized and centered in learning interactions between students, teachers, and parents
We argue for the need to build on the concept of families’ “funds of knowledge”—or individual and household knowledge and skills related to the social, political, cultural, and labor histories of families—and the work that has been done to use that knowledge in school settings to improve instruction and increase opportunities to learn (Moll et al, 1992)
Summary
Scholars and practitioners have long recognized that parents and families play a critical role in shaping and supporting student learning (Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Easton, & Luppescu, 2010; Epstein, 2001; Henderson & Mapp, 2002; Jeynes, 2012), yet there is little consensus in the field as to the roles and forms of family engagement that matter most for academic success, in light of increasingly diverse students and families and persistent disparities in student outcomes. Such scholarship holds much promise in suggesting alternatives to deficit-based approaches and highlighting parent and family leadership in educational change efforts, much of this work has focused on broad engagement in schools outside of particular disciplinary contexts and the moment-to-moment interactions of teaching and learning (in and out of schools).
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