Full Description
Just Schools examines the challenges and possibilities for building more equitable forms of collaboration among non-dominant families, communities, and schools. The text explores how equitable collaboration entails ongoing processes that begin with families and communities, transform power, build reciprocity and agency, and foster collective capacity through collective inquiry. These processes offer promising possibilities for improving student learning, transforming educational systems, and developing robust partnerships that build on the resources, expertise, and cultural practices of non-dominant families. Based on empirical research and inquiry-driven practice, this book describes core concepts and provides multiple examples of effective practices.Book Features:
Broadens the dominant conception of leadership to include traditionally marginalized parents and communities as potential educational leaders.
Explores partnerships from both a system-wide and in-school basis, with detailed portraits of what is possible.
Translates theoretical principles at multiple scales: systemic, school, and individual practice.
Shares studies focused on a broad range of contexts, strategies, and practices for enacting equitable collaboration with families.
Contents
Contents (Tentative)
Series Foreword James A. Banks
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Situating "What Counts" for Families in Education
Beyond Critique to Fostering Equitable Collaborations
Showing Up in the Work
A Few Notes on Language
Organization of the Book
Equitable Collaborations in Reaching for Transformation
1. Fuzzy Families, Prickly Racism: Framing the Problem Space
Start with Warm Fuzzies: Families Matter
Enter the Cold Pricklies: Racial Inequities from Parent Involvement to Family Engagement
Conclusions: From Involvement and Engagement Toward Equitable Collaboration
2. New Rules of Engagement: From Conventional Partnerships to Equitable Collaborations
Why Equitable Collaborations? Critical Race Theory, Community Organizing, and Sociocultural Learning
Toward Equitable Collaborations: Case Study of a "New Relationship"
A Changing Community: Traditional Approaches, Deficit Conceptions
"We Had to Take Action": New Roles for Parents in the Formation of the Coalition
A Collaboration Emerges: Shared Responsibility for Systemic Change GOALS
Capacity- and Relationship-Building STRATEGIES for Systems Change
"Navigating Insecure Ground": Change Processes at the End of the Honeymoon
Case Discussion: A "New Relationship"
Conclusions
3. Nondominant Families on Their Own Terms: Lived Theories of Educational Injustice
Introduction
Nondominant Family Insights as Lived Theories of Injustice
"They Just Want to Pass the Kids": Systemic Dynamics of Accountability Policy and Equitable Learning
"Are You Speaking for Yourself or for All the Parents?": Power and Engagement at the School Level
Listening to Respond: Inequities in the Moment at the Individual Level
Conclusions
4. Systemic Collaborations: Multiorganizational Educational Equity Initiatives
Cross-Sector Collaborations: New Policy Contexts for Engagement
New Context, Familiar Territory: Contextualizing Education Beyond the School Walls
Cross-Sector "Collabetition": Reinforcing Interorganizational Inequities
Cultural Brokering as Bridging
Emerging Approaches to Equitable Cutural Brokering
Conclusions
5. Collaborating in Organizational Improvement: Data Inquiry with Families, Communities, and Educators
Conceptualizing Relationships Between Families and Data
A Model of Data Inquiry for Equitable Collaboration
Questioning Phase
Engaging Phase
Making Sense Phase
Tensions and Opportunities in Strategizing and Moving to Action
Conclusions
6. Rewriting Moment-to-Moment Interactions: Families as Co-designers
Racialized Institutional Scripts in Family-Teacher Relations
Changing Racialized Institutional Scripts
Putting Principles into Practice in Participatory Design-based Research
Co-design Practices as Rewriting Racialized Institutional Scripts
Repositioning Racial and Cultural Differences
Conclusions
7. Co-designing Justice and Well-Being with/in Systems and Conclusions
A Call to Reimagine Family and Community Engagement
District Leaders and Co-design
My Teaching Challenge: Proleptic Politic as Pedagogy
Dilemmas as Systemic Tensions
Co-design as "Solidarity-Dreaming"
On Solidarities
Conclusions (and New Openings)
Appendix A: Initial Partnership Assessment Tool
Appendix B: Final Lesson Topics and Design Principles
Notes
References
Index
About the Author
