Abstract
Complex depictions of home-school relationships examine the often-present gap between teacher perceptions and the lived experiences of families. One way to address this gap in understanding is by constructing narratives that detail the nuances of families’ involvement, countering potential misperceptions and narrow views. In addition to using tools such as counter-narrative to speak-back to deficit-laden stories told about marginalized families, researchers must also attempt to deeply understand all stories in order to think through what teachers’ stories mean for how they understand their work. Thus, this paper presents a case study of a Head Start prekindergarten teacher, showing how her stories about families are related to her identity as a Head Start teacher. The stories show how power, stereotypes, and perceptions of families relate to her ideas about home-school relationships. Further, her particular stories ask educators to consider who is responsible for creating chaotic images of families’ lives and what impact do stories characterized by chaos have when they are the ones told about families who live in poverty.
Highlights
Complex depictions of home-school relationships examine the often-present gap between teacher perceptions and the lived experiences of families
I explore how she contributes to her own figured world (Holland, Skinner, Lachicotte, & Cain, 1998) of home-school relationships and how this relates to the idea of a single storyline about families
In doing so I address the questions: How does a teacher understand the families she works with? How do a teacher’s stories contribute to her identity development and her figured world of home-school relationships? How do the stories a teacher tells about families relate to her understandings of home-school relationships?
Summary
Research Design This is a single, instrumental case study exploring the particulars of one teacher’s understandings of home-school relationships (Dyson & Genishi, 2005; Stake, 1995). I think of Princess as a data-rich participant (Patton, 2002) The data are in the form of participant observations of her preK classroom, semi-structurediv interviews (Seidman, 2006; Spradley, 1979), group discussions and written documents from the professional development courses, and written documents from the Head Start center. 3 home visits on June 4, 2013 1 conference on May 31, 2013 April, 9 2013: 3.5 hours
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