Chronicles of diversity, identity and change in home -school relations
Author(s):
Kroeger, Janice E.
Format:
Thesis
Degree granted:
Ph.D.
Publisher:
Ann Arbor : The University of Wisconsin - Madison, 2003.
Pages:
400
Language:
English
Abstract:
This qualitative study documented the experiences and perspectives of a small group of parents and school people within one urban diverse elementary school. Theories of Cultural Models and the Bakhtinian concept of Heteroglossia were used to analyze the social and academic processes in parent-school partnerships. Parent informants in this account were multi-positioned in social groups and juxtaposed to one another. Focal informants were a mother of European Jewish background, a father who is a professional and a gay activist, and a father who is first generation Hmong refugee. Students were positioned as Talented and Gifted, Special Needs, and English Language Learner. In this study, individuals used interpretive frames of identity to construct their activities with the school. Focal informants shared a common teacher in a multi age, multi ability first-second grade classroom in a reformed elementary school. Findings reveal checks and balances operating among individuals and groups. In this study, relationships were complex. Individuals used interpretive frames to construct their activities with the school. Instantiations of power among administrators, small groups of parents, and individuals altered the social terrain of the school. Conferences, event attendance, volunteering, home tutoring, advocacy, and communications served multiple purposed for parents, children, and teacher. Parents and teachers framed experiences alongside their past encounters in school. Parent agency was socially situated and relative to local, institutional, political, and historical power. That is, aspects of parent's identities operated in different ways within particular contexts to different ends. Identity was generative to social change but power worked for individuals to alter both home and school contexts. The cultural models of practice from which parents and school people altered parent's perceptions, their engagement, reasoning, and motivation to participate in their child's schooling. In turn cultural models altered what school people did on behalf of individual children and groups.