Reimagining Family Engagement: Building Equitable Relationships With Multilingual Families Under Faculty Mentorship

Abstract

Employing a qualitative case study approach, the researchers examined three preservice teachers' (PSTs) perceptions of building relationships with diverse families while tutoring their children in their homes in a semester-long after-school program that is designed to support migrant education students academically, socially, and linguistically. Multiple data sources, such as PSTs' weekly journals, action research projects, philosophy of diversity papers, and individual semi-structured interviews were collected. The findings revealed that as PSTs had more interactions with families, they viewed them as co-partners in students' learning processes, planned lessons with family background in mind, utilized the home language, and valued home visits. These in-home experiences coupled with critical self-reflection, encouraged PSTs to critique their practices, enabling them to enact more equitable approaches for interacting with families. These intentional processes helped PSTs envision family engagement as a two-way partnership, a benefit for both parties.

Key Terms in this Chapter

Migrant Families: Families that have moved in search of agricultural or meat-packing factory work in the past three years.

Funds of Knowledge: The knowledge that diverse students and their families possess because of their cultural, linguistic, and experiential background.

Preservice Teachers (PSTs): Teacher candidates who are in the process of becoming an educator in the P-12 educational context.

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: An instructional framework for amplifying all students’ voices in the curriculum by placing them in the center of it.

Parents: Defined in the broader term to include actual parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and any other guardians who are in charge of raising and/or providing for a child.

Multilingual Learners (MLs): The learners whose home language is other than English.