Immigrant Parent Involvement in U.S. Schools: 
Current Practices and Future Possibilities 
 
 
 
 
A DISSERTATION 
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL 
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA 
BY 
 
 
 
 
Marina Bandeira Aleixo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 
FOR THE DEGREE OF 
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY  
 
 
 
Martha Bigelow, Adviser 
 
 
 
 
December 2012 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
© Marina Bandeira Aleixo, December 2012 
 i 
Acknowledgements 
First, I would like to thank all the staff, parents and students at Community High 
who welcomed me into their community. I learned so much from each of you. Thank you 
to Debra Landvik for believing in my project and assisting me in finding a research site.  
I want to thank my dissertation committee for all their support. Martha Bigelow, 
my advisor, for her helpful feedback and words of encouragement throughout this 
process. Kendall King, being in your research seminar class was vital to my success in 
this program. I truly appreciate your honesty about academia. Constance Walker, for 
always greeting me in a language other than English, you always reminded me of my 
language identity. This small gesture meant so much to me. Bic Ngo, your class on 
immigrant families sparked my interest in my dissertation topic. I want to thank Dr. 
Michael Stebleton for believing in my scholarship and providing me with so many 
opportunities. Your mentorship and support created the sense of belonging I needed in 
academia. Thank you Dr. Christopher Johnstone, the Global Teacher Education Program 
has been the highlight of my University of Minnesota experience.  
I am grateful to all the friends and colleagues that provided the support I needed 
to complete this work. Thank you Sachiko Horii for walking beside me throughout this 
treacherous journey, your commitment has been inspirational. You are my hero!  
To my parents who were my first teachers and who taught me to value education: 
Dad, you inspired me to pursue this PhD even before I knew what it meant. Mom, I 
appreciate you putting your life on hold to come help my family and allow me the time to 
 ii 
work on this dissertation. To Cristiane Holanda: Without you this dissertation would not 
have been possible.  
Finally, thanks to my wonderful husband Umar for always believing in me. Thank 
you for all the editing services throughout the years. Thank you for being my friend and 
support system during this process. Thank you for being an amazing father to our son. 
This work is our work. Elan, meu filho, amor da minha vida! Being your mother will 
always be my greatest accomplishment.  
 iii 
Agradecimentos 
Inicialmente, eu gostaria de agradecer a todos os funcionários, pais e alunos da 
escola Community High por terem me recebido tão bem em sua comunidade. Eu aprendi 
muito com cada um de vocês. Obrigado à Debra Landvik por acreditar no meu projeto e 
me ajudar a encontrar um local de pesquisa. 
Quero agradecer também à minha comissão de dissertação por todo o apoio. À 
Martha Bigelow, minha orientadora, pelo seu feedback útil e palavras de encorajamento 
ao longo deste trabalho. À Kendall King, a sua disciplina Seminário de Pesquisa foi 
fundamental para o meu sucesso neste programa. Eu realmente aprecio sua honestidade 
em relação à academia. À Constance Walker, por sempre me cumprimentar em uma 
língua diferente do inglês, você sempre me fez lembrar de minha identidade linguística. 
Este pequeno gesto significou muito para mim. À Bic Ngo, cuja disciplina sobre famílias 
de imigrantes despertou meu interesse pelo tema da minha dissertação. Quero agradecer 
ao Dr. Michael Stebleton por acreditar em meu trabalho acadêmico e me oferecer tantas 
oportunidades. Sua orientação e apoio criou o sentimento de integração ao meio 
acadêmico que eu precisava. Obrigado Dr. Christopher Johnstone, o Programa Global de 
Educação de Professores tem sido o destaque da minha experiência na Universidade de 
Minnesota. 
Sou grato a todos os amigos e colegas que deram o apoio que eu precisava para 
completar este trabalho. Obrigado Sachiko Horii por ter me acompanhado nesta insidiosa 
jornada, o seu empenho foi inspirador. Você é minha heroína! 
 iv 
Aos meus pais que foram meus primeiros professores e que me ensinaram a 
valorizar a educação. Pai, você me inspirou a perseguir este PhD antes mesmo que eu 
soubesse o que isto significava. Mãe, eu apreciei muito o fato de você ter dedicado uma 
parte de sua vida para vir ajudar minha família e permitir que eu trabalhasse na 
dissertação. Para Cristiane Holanda, sem a qual esta dissertação não teria sido possível. 
Finalmente, agradeço ao meu maravilhoso marido Umar por sempre acreditar em 
mim. Obrigado pelo auxílio nos trabalhos de edição ao longo destes anos. Obrigado por 
ser meu amigo e ter me apoiado durante todo o curso. Obrigado por ser um pai incrível 
para o nosso filho. Este trabalho é o nosso trabalho. Elan, meu filho, amor da minha vida! 
Ser sua mãe será sempre minha maior realização. 
 v 
Dedication 
Para meu filho Elan. 
 vi 
Abstract 
This dissertation examines how parent involvement expectations are 
communicated and enacted in interactions at one small urban high school. Through 
detailed descriptions of school interactions between supporting staff and immigrant 
parents, this study examines how parent involvement expectations are understood and 
perceived. Although scholarly interest in parent involvement has existed for quite some 
time, few studies consider the role of supporting staff (e.g., family liaisons, testing 
coordinators, guidance counselors, social workers). In what ways do interactions with 
support staff impact constructs of parent involvement within a school? This approach 
provides a unique contribution to the current parent involvement literature. Through a 
year of ethnographic field research, I examine the experiences of school staff and parents 
as they interact in various spaces and engage in the process of parent involvement. 
Through participant observations in various parent group meetings, school events and 
activities, and shadowing of school staff, I explore parent involvement expectations at 
one small urban high school. 
Although most of the current literature focuses on teacher–parent relationships, 
findings suggest that parent contact with teachers is extremely limited, and that it is 
actually supporting staff that engages most in interactions with parents. These staff play a 
key role in shaping parents’ perceptions of involvement and become the main source for 
understanding the school’s parent involvement expectations. Findings also present a new 
problem in the parent involvement paradigm, where new forms of involvement are being 
introduced without regard to parents’ reality. As the data reveal, online access is now 
 vii 
expected as a form of involvement and for many families this is potentially an unrealistic 
expectation. 
 viii 
Resumo 
Esta dissertação examina como o envolvimento dos pais são comunicados e 
negociados nas interações rotineiras em uma pequena escola urbana de ensino médio. 
Através de descrições detalhadas das interações entre o pessoal de apoio da escola e pais 
imigrantes, o estudo analisa as expectativas de envolvimento dos pais são negociados e 
percebidos. Embora o interesse acadêmico no envolvimento dos pais já exista há algum 
tempo, poucos estudos consideram o papel da equipe de apoio (por exemplo, contatos 
familiares, coordenadores de testes, orientadores, assistentes sociais) neste envolvimento. 
De que forma as interações com o pessoal de apoio impactam a construção do 
envolvimento dos pais em uma escola? Esta abordagem fornece uma contribuição única 
para a literatura atual sobre o envolvimento escolar dos pais. Durante um ano de pesquisa 
etnográfica de campo foram examinadas as experiências da equipe escolar e dos pais, à 
medida que eles interagiam em vários espaços e se engajavam no processo de 
envolvimento dos pais. Através de observações e participações em diversas reuniões de 
grupos de pais e em eventos e atividades escolares, e também do acompanhamento do 
trabalho dos funcionários da escola, eu fui capaz de descobrir as expectativas de 
envolvimento dos pais em uma pequena escola urbana de ensino médio. 
Embora a literatura atual concentre-se nas relações pais e professores, os 
resultados deste trabalho sugerem que o contato dos pais com os professores é 
extremamente limitado, e que, na verdade, é o pessoal de apoio (por exemplo, os 
conselheiros de orientação, contatos familiares, assistentes sociais) quem mais se envolve 
em interações com os pais. Estes funcionários tornam-se a fonte de entendimento das 
 ix 
expectativas de envolvimento dos pais e desempenham um papel fundamental na 
formação das percepções dos pais quanto a sua participação nas escolas. O acesso aos 
professores, consequentemente, tem um impacto significativo sobre as construções da 
ideologia de envolvimento dos pais. As descobertas deste trabalho também apresentam 
um problema novo no paradigma de envolvimento escolar dos pais, onde novas 
expectativas para o envolvimento estão sendo introduzidos sem levar em conta a 
realidade dos pais. Como os dados revelam, acesso on-line é agora esperado como uma 
forma de envolvimento dos pais, mas para muitas famílias esta é uma expectativa 
potencialmente irrealista. 
 x 
Table of Contents 
Acknowledgements i	
  
Agradecimentos iii	
  
Dedication v	
  
Abstract vi	
  
Resumo viii	
  
List of Tables xii	
  
Chapter 1. Introduction 1	
  
Chapter 2. Looking Back: The Roots of Parent Involvement 8	
  
Theoretical Frame 8	
  
Social and Cultural Capital in Parental Involvement Research 12	
  
Current Definitions of Parental Involvement 21	
  
Challenges and Barriers to Parental Involvement 22	
  
Connecting Parental Involvement and Student Achievement 26	
  
Evaluation of Parental Involvement Programs 28	
  
Developing Meaningful Parental Involvement with Diverse Families 30	
  
Chapter 3. Navigating Fieldwork: Ethnography in the Urban Context 36	
  
Research Setting 37	
  
Community High School 41	
  
Methodology 47	
  
Data Collection 48	
  
Data Analysis 54	
  
 xi 
Researcher Role: Insider–Outsider Negotiations 58	
  
Chapter 4. Parent Involvement Expectations: Space and Teacher Access 64	
  
Parent Involvement at Community High 65	
  
School Spaces as Symbolic Representation of Involvement 71	
  
Cultural and Family Nights 74	
  
Knowledgeable Parent Program (KP) 79	
  
Parent–Teacher Conferences 84	
  
School Presence as Parent Involvement Expectation 87	
  
Understanding the Role of Space in Parental Involvement 
Constructs 91	
  
Where Have All the Teachers Gone? 102	
  
Impact of Teacher Access 107	
  
Chapter 5. Parent Involvement Expectations: Online Access as the New Form 
of School Presence 110	
  
Synthesizing the Findings 118	
  
Chapter 6 Making Sense of Parent Involvement Expectations 121	
  
Limitations 125	
  
Final Words 127	
  
References 133	
  
Appendix A: Parent Generated Questions for KP Principal Night 144	
  
Appendix B: Sample School Staff Formal Interview Protocol 146	
  
 xii 
List of Tables 
Table 1. Participants 51	
  
Table 2. Data Sources 53	
  
Table 3. Sample of Open Coding to Final Themes 57	
  
 
 1 
Chapter 1 
Introduction 
In recent years, the United States educational system has received increased 
attention in the media and public discourse. Films like “Waiting for Superman” and 
“Wouldn’t Back Down” have openly challenged the current practices of schools, 
particularly the role of teachers and district policies. These films highlight the complex 
nature of the current educational system and the importance of parent involvement to 
mediate change. In both films parents were positioned as the only ones caring for the 
academic achievement of their children, and in “Wouldn’t Back Down” the parents took 
action against the school. In the film a group of parents fought through the bureaucracy of 
the educational board and were able to take over a school, firing union teachers and 
redesigning the school curriculum and teaching approach to fit the needs of the student 
population. The film’s message is clear; parent involvement can be transformative. Long 
thought of as a key factor in successful student outcomes, parental involvement has 
received considerable attention in educational research in the last decade (Gonzalez-
DeHass, Willems, & Holbein, 2005; Hill & Tyson, 2009; Ingram, Wolfe, & Lieberman, 
2007). The focus of scholarly discussions on parent involvement is primarily on its 
relationship to student achievement. This focus has a significant influence on what 
researchers have chosen to investigate. By and large, studies on parental involvement 
have focused on three main topics:  
1. Teacher and parent perceptions of what “counts” as involvement. Studies 
in this area have uncovered an apparent mismatch between teacher and 
 2 
parent perceptions of their roles in schools. Many studies (e.g., Dyson, 
2001; Lareau, 2000; Valdés, 1996; Whitehouse & Colvin, 2001) highlight 
how the mismatch of teacher and parent expectations results in lower 
parental involvement among particular minoritized groups (i.e., Latinos, 
African Americans, immigrants, working-class families);  
2. Impact of parental involvement on student achievement. These studies 
have focused on descriptions of particular types of parent behavior that 
have the greatest impact on student achievement (e.g., Aronson, 1996; 
Christenson, Rounds, & Gorney, 1992; Gonzalez-DeHass et al., 2005; Hill 
& Tyson, 2009; Ibanez, Kuperminc, Jurkovic, & Perilla, 2004; Tracy, 
1995).  
3. Challenges and barriers to parental involvement. Studies in this area have 
presented a significant amount of descriptive information on particular 
barriers and have provided a variety of recommendations for future 
engagement (e.g., Carreón, Drake, & Barton, 2005; Kim, 2009; Perreira, 
Chapman, & Stein, 2006; Peterson & Ladky, 2007; Turney & Kao, 2009).  
Although studies on these topics report valued discoveries on the role of parent 
involvement, they limit investigations to the parent–teacher dyad. This potentially results 
on the oversight of other factors that impact parent involvement, such as interactions with 
other school staff (e.g., social workers, family liaisons, and guidance counselors). 
Furthermore, current studies rely heavily on social and cultural capital as instruments of 
analysis (Compton-Lilly, 2007; Garcia-Reid, 2007; Lareau, 2000; Martinez-Cosio & 
 3 
Iannacone, 2007; Monkman, Ronald, & Theramene, 2005; Ngo, 2006; Olneck, 2000; 
Valdés, 1996; Zhou & Bankston III, 1994). Social capital relates to the social networks 
and relationships gained, created, or possessed by an individual; whereas, cultural capital 
relates to embodied knowledge such as a set of characteristics and behaviors (i.e., 
educational qualifications, family name, and access to high culture). Both forms of 
capital can be used as beneficial resources in schools. Studies that utilize Bourdieu’s 
(1986) framework to analyze parental involvement focus on capital as a “commodity” 
that is used to negotiate a valued space within the U.S. school system (Lareau, 2000; 
Valdés, 1996). In other words, students who possess capital gain greater access to school 
resources and thus are guaranteed an increased chance for academic success. Therefore, 
parents are at a disadvantage when they lack the recognized “school capital” to pass on to 
their children. This includes having the necessary skills to decode the variety of 
information and expectations in the school setting (i.e., attending parent–teacher 
conferences). However, few studies investigate the specific experiences of immigrant 
families as they attempt to engage in the process of interacting with school. The Child 
Trends Data Bank reports that “one in five school-aged children is foreign born or the 
child of a foreign-born parent, and between 1990 and 2010, children of immigrants are 
expected to account for more than half of the growth in the school-aged population.” 
With this changing demographic among K–12 students, comes the need for new 
priorities, as well as new skills for educators, and school administrators. Schools may 
need to reflect on their current practices and assess how these are suited to meet the needs 
of their new student population. 
 4 
In addition, most investigations of parent involvement are based on the 
elementary school context, where scholars report that parents are more likely to visit 
classrooms and interact with teachers. These teacher interactions potentially provide 
parents the opportunity to access the school capital and enhance the visibility of their 
involvement. However, Hill and Taylor (2004) report that in the middle school and high 
school context parent involvement still plays a key role in student achievement. In fact, 
some studies report that the middle and high school model that includes more teachers 
and a complex bureaucratic system can be more challenging for parents to navigate (Hill 
& Tyson, 2009). Some immigrant parents entering the school system at middle and high 
school stages may potentially lack the experience with parent involvement typically 
acquired during the elementary school years. In this dissertation, I examine how parent 
involvement codes are constructed and negotiated during interactions in a small urban 
high school. Understanding parent involvement in the high school context becomes 
important when we consider the forms of engagement expected of parents, typically 
reported as attending school activities and events (Seginer, 2006). Attendance at school 
events potentially does not provide the same access to school capital as in the elementary 
school model, which includes more classroom presence and interactions with teachers. In 
high school, parents may have less contact with teachers, and rely solely on school events 
to build their understanding of parent involvement. School events, which typically 
include parents such as college information night, may lack opportunity for parents to 
gain meaningful one-on-one interactions with teachers. Furthermore, studies that focus on 
the elementary school context fail to consider the increased role of other school staff 
 5 
during the high school experience. Social workers, guidance counselors, and family 
liaisons, for example, may have more contact with parents at high school events and 
potentially can have important roles in shaping constructs of parent involvement. 
Therefore, through detailed descriptions of school interactions between supporting staff 
and immigrant parents, I consider how parent involvement expectations are negotiated 
and perceived. Although scholarly interest in parent involvement has existed for quite 
some time, few studies consider the role of supporting staff (e.g., family liaisons, testing 
coordinators, guidance counselors, and social workers). In what ways do interactions with 
support staff impact constructs of parent involvement within a school? To address the 
need described here, I selected a small urban school to focus on how parent involvement 
is understood by immigrant families. This approach provides a unique contribution to the 
current understanding of the impact of parent involvement in student academic success.  
My dissertation investigates the ways in which parents and supporting staff 
interact in school spaces. Past scholars have made significant contributions to the field by 
reporting on parent involvement barriers and challenges. They have identified and 
detailed beliefs, expectations, perceptions and misunderstandings by both parents and 
schools when they engage in home–school partnerships. My work builds on this past 
scholarship by exploring the processes immigrant parents undergo as they engage with 
the U.S. school system. To explore this process, this study will consider the following 
research questions: 
 6 
1. How do schools provide spaces for parent engagement? How do 
interactions in these key spaces impact staff and parent perceptions of 
parent involvement? 
2. How do beliefs, expectations, and perceptions of parent involvement play 
out in interactions at a small urban high school? 
To answer these questions, I draw on a year of fieldwork at Community High. I 
examine the experiences of school staff and parents as they interact in various spaces and 
engage in the process of parent involvement. Through participant observations in various 
parent group meetings, school events and activities, and shadowing of school staff, I 
explore parent involvement at Community High.  
This dissertation fills a significant gap in the literature that traditionally has 
ignored how staff beliefs about parent involvement impact parent perceptions and 
engagement with schools. In Chapter 2, I detail the current issues in parent involvement 
discussions. I identify prominent findings, and existing gaps in the research. I also present 
the theoretical frame for this study. I use Bourdieu’s (1986) social and cultural capital 
theory to build the foundation for this current work. In Chapter 3, I present the 
ethnographic research method for this dissertation. I explain how ethnographic tools were 
used as part of the research design and data collection process. I describe the context of 
the school and community where this study took place, and the data collection and 
analysis procedures. I also explore my identity as a researcher and participant observer at 
the school. In Chapter 4, I share the main findings from the study. I begin with a detailed 
description of school spaces that welcomed parent participation and the types of 
 7 
interactions present in these spaces. I illustrate the interactions that shaped constructs of 
parent involvement in this urban school. I then discuss how the findings illuminate our 
understanding of home–school engagement as a complex process, and particularly how 
school interactions impact perceptions of parent involvement. I also discuss how parent 
involvement efforts become problematic when they are implemented through parent 
education programs rather than meaningful engagement. In Chapter 5, I explicate new 
ways in which schools expect parents to be involved and present, and how these may 
further marginalize immigrant families. Finally, in Chapter 6, I discuss the implications 
of this dissertation. I present the limitations of the study and provide final thoughts on 
ways in which schools can become spaces for more meaningful home–school 
partnerships.  
 8 
Chapter 2 
Looking Back: The Roots of Parent Involvement 
This chapter will provide a theoretical frame to understand parent involvement at 
Community High, the focal school for this dissertation. The cornerstone of the theoretical 
frame for this study is Bourdieu’s (1986) constructs of social and cultural capital used to 
frame and understand parental involvement. Social and cultural capital provides a 
foundation for understanding current issues of immigrant parent involvement. The 
theoretical constructs of social and cultural capital have been used to explicate immigrant 
parent experiences in U.S. schools, and will also highlight a space where the current 
study contributes to the growing and important field of immigrant education.  
Additionally, this chapter will synthesize the major trends in research on parental 
involvement research and how its focus has evolved over time. It will review and critique 
major studies in the area of parental involvement and illustrate how they shape dominant 
perceptions of parent–teacher interactions as well as home–school relationships.  
Theoretical Frame 
It has been 50 years since the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu introduced 
social and cultural capital as instruments of analysis in the field of sociology. Through his 
extensive work in French schools, Bourdieu (1986) gave evidence that schools reproduce 
existing social inequalities. Departing from the concept of capital as the “accumulated 
labor (in its materialized form or its “incorporated,” embodied form) which, when 
appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables 
them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labor” (p. 46). Bourdieu 
 9 
(1986) introduced social and cultural capital as instruments of analysis for explaining the 
experiences of French students. According to this approach, schools possess their own set 
of social and cultural capital that are legitimized and reproduced and which in turn 
require students to “activate” in order to achieve school success. Bourdieu and Passeron 
(1977) explain that schools do not necessarily create this capital, but in fact reproduce 
this capital thereby mirroring existing inequalities in society. In essence, this means 
students’ success or failure is dependent on their individual (or family) ability to 
accumulate, embody, and transmit the forms of capital recognized in both society and 
schools. Bourdieu (1993) also suggests that certain individuals possess the skills to 
properly decipher codes that are encoded within the producers cultural works. Although 
Bourdieu presents the idea of code in his analysis of the understanding of art, explaining 
how some individuals are unconsciously capable of deciphering the cultural codes to 
experience art, this approach can also be applied to the understanding of parent 
involvement expectations. For example, parents’ ability to decipher the school’s parent 
involvement codes, such as the expectation that parents attend parent–teacher 
conferences, rests on parent’s ability to both recognize and decipher these school codes.  
In the context of French society, Bourdieu elaborated a descriptive analysis of 
what counts as social and cultural capital. Cultural capital is a set of characteristics and 
behaviors (i.e., educational qualifications, family name, access to high culture), and 
social capital being connections to networks and groups that make accumulation, 
embodiment and transmission possible. Recognizing and describing this capital was a 
significant theoretical contribution and has served as a foundation for numerous studies in 
 10 
education and in other fields (i.e., politics, economics). Bourdieu questioned the notion 
that schools are neutral spaces where everyone has an equal chance of success.  
Since the emergence of Bourdieu’s theory of capital, countless studies in the field 
of educational research have utilized his ideas to explore how schooling reproduces 
societal power structures. These studies have uncovered important institutional practices 
that contribute to the inequalities of the school experience for diverse students (Lareau, 
2000; Ogbu, 2003; Valdés, 1996; Zhou & Bankston III, 1994). Studies have also 
highlighted teacher practices (Hoover-Dempsey, Bassler, & Brissie, 1987), institutional 
practices (Blackledge, 2001), and parents’ beliefs (Dyson, 2001) that according to 
Bourdieu (1986) legitimize the authority of schools and in many cases result in, what he 
terms, the redouble of existing social inequalities (p. 109).  
Several definitions of social and cultural capital have emerged in educational 
research; most notable have been the contributions of Jean-Claude Passeron (1986), Paul 
DiMaggio (1982), James Coleman (1988), and Alejandro Portes (1998). These 
researchers have essentially set the dominant interpretation of social and cultural capital 
in the field of educational research. Passeron, closely allied with Bourdieu’s (1986) 
original concept (and in many cases working directly with him), focused on the “model 
of reproduction” in schools, stating that such a model is nothing more than a “conceptual 
framework in which a whole series of reproductive processes can be observed with great 
regularity in the operation of school system” (p. 621). Passeron suggests student success 
is not based solely on individual ability or effort, but in fact on a series of acquired 
capital. This framework essentially presents an analysis of schooling as an institution 
 11 
where student outcome is predetermined on one’s ability to acquire and embody the 
“right” social and cultural capital. 
Expanding on this idea of having the “right” capital, DiMaggio (1982) presents a 
descriptive model of cultural capital as a prerequisite for school success. Through his 
work DiMaggio describes cultural capital as a set of specific characteristics and behaviors 
students can, or should, acquire in order to have positive outcomes in school. DiMaggio 
moves beyond Bourdieu’s (1986) initial approach of cultural capital as primarily 
transmitted within families and presents an active process of attaining cultural capital. In 
essence his model implies that students without the cultural capital recognized by schools 
can attain it by strategically participating and seeking out participation in high status 
culture activities to achieve desired goals of upward mobility (p. 190). This approach 
suggests that cultural capital can be a sort of checklist students can acquire via 
participation. However, what is missing from DiMaggio’s model is a discussion on 
access. How will students gain access to opportunities to participate in activities that will 
afford them the “right” cultural capital? This discussion is what Coleman (1988) explores 
in his concept of social capital and its interaction with the acquisition of cultural capital. 
Coleman writes: 
social capital is defined by its function. It is not a single entity but a 
variety of different entities, with two elements in common: they all consist 
of some aspect of social structures, and they facilitate certain actions of 
actors—whether persons or corporate actors—within the structure. Like 
other forms of capital, social capital is productive, making possible the 
achievement of certain ends that in its absence would not be possible. (p. 
98) 
 12 
By approaching social capital as a resource, utilized by certain individuals to 
obtain specific outcomes, Coleman (1988) positions social capital as an instrument. 
Therefore, individuals, families, and communities can effectively tap into different social 
relations to gain what is needed for success.  
Taking a critical view to Coleman (1988), Portes (2000) advised caution in an 
approach that predicts school success primarily by individual acquisition of social capital. 
He argued “what really counts, in the end, is the social and economic status (SES) of the 
family, [and for immigrant families] the children’s ability in English, and their length of 
residence in the country” (p. 9). Portes highlighted that SES impacts how individuals and 
families gain access to the necessary school capital. What is significant from Portes’s 
discussion of social capital is the need to contextualize these instruments of analysis in 
research rather than using generalized descriptions. In particular, he pointed to a greater 
need to explicate the historical and contextual situations of families, particularly 
immigrant families. As he explained, the reception of different immigrant groups in the 
United States, if they were persecuted or not, shapes how such groups are perceived and 
treated in both social and school settings (Portes, 2000, p. 10). Consequently, the benefits 
of strong social capital may be limited due to their dependence on these broader structural 
forces.  
Social and Cultural Capital in Parental Involvement Research 
Numerous studies have utilized social and cultural capital as the framework to 
investigate the experiences and outcomes of diverse students in the U.S. educational 
system (Compton-Lilly, 2007; Dyson, 2001; Garcia-Reid, 2007; Lareau, 2000; Martinez-
 13 
Cosio & Iannacone, 2007; Monkman et al., 2005; Ngo, 2006; Olneck, 2000; Valdés, 
1996). Most notable has been the work of Annette Lareau (2000) on social class and 
parental involvement in elementary education. In her work, she redefined cultural capital 
in the context of U.S. schools by taking a comparative approach to parent involvement in 
schools among upper-middle class and working-class communities. Essentially, Lareau’s 
work problematized the idea that social and cultural capital is a passive undertaking and 
highlights how families strategically activate resources for the benefit of their children. 
Moving away from Hoover-Demsey et al.’s (1987) assumption that families in upper 
middle classes realize the importance of education and working-class families do not, 
Lareau (2000) introduced evidence of a more complex explanation. Her findings 
indicated that both groups of parents recognize the importance of education; the 
difference lies in their access to resources that transform acquired social capital into 
beneficial outcomes for their children. Access is directly connected with SES. Given the 
funding structure of U.S. schools, which by and large are funded by local property taxes, 
SES significantly contributes to students’ access to high quality schools and teachers (Lee 
& Burkam, 2002). Research shows that low-SES children start school with lower 
achievement rates. For example, data suggest that high-SES children entering 
kindergarten have scores 60% higher than low-SES children, and will continue to achieve 
at higher rates throughout their schooling (Lee & Burkam, 2002). Lareau’s (2000) 
detailed study of 2 schools—1 in an upper middle class neighborhood and 1 in a working 
class neighborhood—revealed ways in which SES impacts families’ access to school and 
relationships with school staff.  
 14 
Using an ethnographic research approach, Lareau (2000) observed and 
documented the daily lives of parents and their interactions with schools in two different 
communities. The Colton School serves a working class community where most of the 
parents work in semiskilled or unskilled occupations. In contrast, the Prescott School 
serves an upper-middle class community where most of the parents work in professional 
occupations (i.e., doctors, lawyers, engineers). Lareau found that Colton School parents 
perceived the home and school as two separate environments. They expressed their value 
of education by, among other things, trusting teachers, having their children at school on 
time and making sure homework was complete. Parents made few demands on teachers, 
and viewed teachers as experts. In contrast, Prescott School parents perceived an 
“interconnectedness between family life and educational institutions” (p. 169), which 
resulted in active intervention as the primary form of expression of the value of 
education. These parents often made demands on teachers, and viewed teachers and 
schools as employees. They supervised teachers and intervened by demanding 
customized curriculum changes when their children were struggling. Ironically, as Lareau 
points out, teachers perceived the Colton School parents’ behavior as unsupportive. 
Although these parents showed more respect and trust in the expertise of teachers, they 
did not fulfill teacher expectations of legitimized parental involvement practices in 
school. In contrast, Prescott School parents perceived teachers as “employees” or equals, 
and by in large, failed to recognize them as experts. However, their behavior was in line 
with teacher expectations of parental involvement practices and thus was perceived as 
supportive of their children’s success in school. The pattern that Lareau was able to 
 15 
identify is that parents’ SES is a key factor in their ability to access resources (e.g., 
information), and activate these resources for the benefit of their children (i.e., hire tutors, 
make demands on teachers). Her study suggests “that the key elements of class cultures 
become forms of cultural capital because they give parents a pool of resources which they 
can activate” (p. 177), and therefore “these findings support the importance of rethinking 
the concept of cultural capital and, in particular, of clarifying the stages by and through 
which resources are activated” (p. 179). For Lareau, parents’ ability to activate either 
cultural or social capital was dependent on their socioeconomic status. Her study 
provides insight in our understanding of how social and cultural capital mediates 
educational experiences and ways in which schools rather than students control 
outcomes. However, her lack of attention to student ethnicity is a significant gap. 
Students participating in the study were mostly white, and even though one third of 
students at Colton were Hispanic, Lareau1 failed to explore how SES and ethnicity 
interact in their relationship with schools. SES is strongly associated with race and 
ethnicity. “For example, 34% of black children and 29% of Hispanic are in the lowest 
quintile of SES compared with only 9% of white children” (Lee & Burkam, 2002, p. 2). 
Some scholars have suggested that low SES and ethnicity both impact school 
relationships.  
In her study, Valdés (1996) explored how newly arrived Mexican immigrant 
families learn about and experience school. In her study, 10 Mexican-origin immigrant 
                                                
1 Lareau first published Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary Education 
(1989) in 1989. It was later republished in 2000 with updates. Therefore, the 1st edition was published in 
1989 before Valdés, and the 2nd edition after in 2000. Most scholars today reference Lareau 2nd edition. 
 16 
families were observed over a 3-year period. Findings revealed that the struggles these 
families faced were centered on two factors: their low socioeconomic status and their 
cultural identity as Mexican immigrants. These two factors had an enormous impact on 
the parents’ understanding of U.S. schools and how to meet school expectations of 
supporting their children. Parents in the study had difficulty making sense of everyday 
school operations and rules, such as, rules for bathroom break during class, staying after 
school, communicating with teachers (i.e., written notes or messages), and reading report 
cards. This lack of understanding caused resentment from both the teachers and the 
parents and had several consequences on the academic achievement of the families’ 
children. For example, Valdés reported that in a few cases, teachers held students back 
without a clear explanation. Although parents wanted to intervene to advocate for their 
children, they did not know how or even that they could intervene. This showed that the 
socioeconomic and educational background of families (most parents had little to no 
formal education background), and also cultural background (belief that teachers know 
best), had a significant impact on parents’ ability to support their children as expected by 
U.S. schools.  
What is significant about this study is that Valdés also highlighted the unique 
challenges of Mexican families that were rooted in their cultural traditions and practices. 
The families’ misunderstanding of school operations, belief in the purpose of education 
and the role of schools and teachers within their community were not only connected to 
their SES, but in fact their ethnic identity and background. For example, the term 
educación in Spanish “has a much broader meaning [than education in English] and 
 17 
includes both manners and moral values” (p. 125); therefore, education for these Mexican 
families “included teaching children how to behave, how to act around others, and also 
what was good and what was moral” (p. 125). Families expected schools and teachers to 
be part of this educational process (see Reese, Balzano, Gallimore, & Goldenberg [1995] 
for more on the concept of educación in Latino families). The argument here is that the 
lack of social and cultural capital is not only rooted in SES, but also in ethnic and cultural 
background that shape families’ perceptions of their role as parents and the role of 
teachers and schools. Expanding on Lareau’s research (1989/2000), Valdés presents a 
unique approach to social and cultural capital as a framework for analysis, by adding the 
lens of ethnicity and how that mediates the educational experiences and outcomes of 
immigrant students. Valdés (1996) emphasizes the role of SES and how it impacts 
families’ everyday lives; she also provides a new direction for future studies, which 
includes culture.  
Few studies have attempted to present a clear distinction between SES and 
ethnicity in research utilizing a social and cultural capital framework to explore parental 
involvement and student outcomes in schools (Compton-Lilly, 2007; Dyson, 2001; Ogbu, 
2003; Zhou & Lin, 2005). Noteworthy is Dyson’s (2001) extensive study of Chinese 
immigrant parents in Canada. By controlling the SES (selecting participants with middle 
to upper socioeconomic status and considerable educational background), Dyson 
highlighted how ethnicity (including cultural identity) still presents barriers to meaningful 
parental involvement in schools. Results showed that “immigrant parents communicated 
less frequently [with schools], had more difficulty comprehending the communication, 
 18 
and were less satisfied with the communication” (p. 4). For example, parents in the study 
expected teachers to identify “academic” problems students were having in schools, and 
focus communication on curriculum discussion. However, the school and teacher focused 
communication on what parents perceived as superficial issues. Dyson’s study showed 
that even though parents were middle class and had strong educational background, they 
did not share the cultural capital recognized by schools. Therefore, they were mostly 
unsuccessful with their attempts to activate existing social and cultural capital for the 
benefit of their children. Chinese parents expressed a different understanding of the 
purpose of school and the roles of teachers and parents in the education of children. 
Although Dyson’s study did not include a descriptive focus on the academic performance 
of these Chinese students, there is evidence from other studies (Lagana, 2004; Perreira et 
al., 2006) that they would have benefited from more parent involvement and greater 
understanding of the school system. What is clear from these findings is that the 
mismatch between the legitimized capital of schools and immigrant families’ capital 
impedes immigrant students to reach their full potential as students and take advantage of 
the diverse opportunities available in schools. The Chinese parents in essence were 
powerless within the school setting even though they had much of the capital schools 
recognized (i.e., years of formal education). 
It is also important to consider that these findings do not necessarily suggest that 
immigrant families need to “assimilate” to the capital of schools to be successful, but 
rather learn to utilize their existing capital as resources within the context of schools. As 
Zhou and Bankston III’s (1994) study on Vietnamese youth in New Orleans indicates, 
 19 
“strong positive immigrant cultural orientations can serve as a form of social capital that 
promotes value conformity and constructive forms of behavior, which provide otherwise 
disadvantaged children with an adaptive advantage” (p. 821). What Zhou and Bankston 
III have suggested is that the use of social capital as instruments of analysis for school 
outcomes should focus more on community connections and how these empower 
individuals to advocate for themselves. This approach is more in line with the use of 
social capital in the field of political science (see Putman, 1993), which highlights the 
power of communities to shift recognized forms of capital. Rather than predicting student 
failure by way of analyzing existing inequalities in schools, Zhou and Bankston III 
(1994) identified the strength of community standards that promote strong social capital 
and have the ability to position ethnicity as a resource. Therefore, social integration 
within an ethnic community can be conceptualized as providing social capital (p. 843). 
Zhou and Bankston III’s contribution to the debate of how social and cultural capital 
mediate educational experiences and outcomes focused on ways in which ethnic 
communities can be empowered to recognize existing community capital and “activate” it 
to benefit members. This process may be undertaken differently depending on context 
(i.e., middle-class suburbs [or ethnic enclaves] and urban centers).  
These studies reveal that social and cultural capital is an important instrument of 
analysis that serves to unveil the reality of school inequalities. Through definitions of 
social capital as the connections or networks within families, and more broadly within 
communities, researchers have documented the vast resources members can access and 
activate for the benefit of students. In addition, acquired cultural capital provides students 
 20 
with an important “commodity” that can be “traded” in school settings for greater 
opportunities. As a consequence, some students are disadvantaged compared to others. 
There is evidence that SES and ethnicity play a role in the ability to access, transmit and 
embody the required capital of schools. Furthermore, these studies fail to detail the role 
of particular school agents in transmitting the capital of schools—for example, how 
different staff members like teachers, family liaisons or guidance counselors 
communicate expectations and consequently how they construct or reinforce inequalities 
within the school. In what ways do interactions with particular staff members have an 
increased impact in parents’ access to the school capital? Does the context or amount of 
interaction with different staff members impact perceived constructs of involvement or 
schooling? 
Careful review of this body of work suggests that, by in large, studies focus on the 
parent–teacher dyad to report on the access to social and cultural capital. At Community 
High, however, the school supporting staff played a significant role in constructs of 
parent involvement and opportunities for access to the school capital. What remains to be 
discovered is how interactions with supporting staff impact parent involvement and 
consequently access to the school capital. As presented earlier, teacher interactions 
decrease at the high school level given the context of multiple teachers, so we are left 
wondering how the potentially limited access to teachers impacts the recognition of 
involvement? This study fills this gap by focusing on interactions between supporting 
staff and parents, and exploring how these interactions impact the understanding of 
parent involvement and access to school capital.  
 21 
In summary, by drawing on social and cultural capital as theoretical frame, this 
study will explore how parental involvement is both recognized and constructed in school 
interactions. Social and cultural capital will provide a lens in which parental involvement 
expectations can be recognized. This frame will allow me to approach parental 
involvement critically and as a fluid concept, where particular values exist, are 
transmitted, and constantly evolve.  
Current Definitions of Parental Involvement 
Teachers tend to view parental involvement as: attending parent–teacher 
conferences, being present during school sponsored events, helping with homework, and 
reading with their children at home (Carreón et al., 2005; Lareau, 2000; Pomerantz, 
Moorman, & Litwack, 2007; Valdés, 1996); being available to teachers (Ferrara & 
Ferrara, 2005); reading and understanding materials schools send home, such as notes 
and grade reports (Ramirez, 2003); assistance with class selection (Kuperminc, Darnell, 
& Alvarez-Jimenez, 2008); participating in fundraisers (Dyson, 2001), and proficiency in 
English (Blackledge, 2001). According to Lareau (2000), these expectations not only 
shaped teachers’ definitions of parental involvement, they also served to label parents 
lacking these characteristics as deficient or unsupportive of their child’s school success. 
Furthermore, teachers’ perceptions of parental involvement are focused and limited to 
behaviors, such as what parents should be doing rather than what they believe or express 
to their children about education. In contrast, studies have shown that parents define 
parental involvement more broadly and focus more on expressing their beliefs and values 
on education as supportive of their children (Dyson, 2001; López, Scribner, & 
 22 
Mahitivanichcha, 2001; Valdés, 1996). For example, Mexican parents in Valdés’s (1996) 
study viewed getting their children to school on time and respect for teacher expertise as 
supportive of their children’s education. Valdés (1996) also found that parents expected 
that teachers participate in the development of children’s moral values. Similarly, 
Dyson’s (2001) study of Chinese immigrant families in Canada also found that parents 
expected teachers to also teach their children social skills and discipline when necessary. 
In both of these studies, parents believed that school partnership involved fostering and 
advancing home values and morals. Thus, supportive behavior and parental involvement 
for these parents was defined as fostering good values and morals at home. 
Furthermore, present research seems to reproduce existing definitions of parental 
involvement rather than upset its construct. Rather than questioning definitions or roles, 
researchers have focused on how teachers and parents perceive their roles within the 
existing framework of teacher–parent relationships. In addition, studies have also 
identified what causes some parents to be more involved compared to others (Lareau, 
2000), and consequently how students are affected. However, few studies have asked 
how current parental involvement expectations are constructed, communicated, and 
enacted within schools.  
Challenges and Barriers to Parental Involvement 
Although some articles in peer reviewed journals have addressed challenges and 
barriers to parent involvement (Carreón et al., 2005; Kim, 2009; Perreira et al., 2006; 
Peterson & Ladky, 2007; Turney & Kao, 2009), the majority of information on this issue 
comes from, what academics call “grey literature” (i.e., unpublished reports and policy 
 23 
briefings). These documents offer a variety of information to assist policy makers and 
school districts in implementing parental involvement programs, particularly with 
marginalized communities. Arias and Morillo-Campbell (2008) from the Great Lakes 
Center for Educational Research and Practice provide a policy brief that details the major 
factors that impact effective parental involvement with English learners. Based on 
literature review in the area, Arias and Morillo-Campbell (2008) recognize five barriers 
to successful parental involvement:  
1. school-based barriers—schools’ reproduction of the deficit model when 
dealing with diverse populations, viewing them as lacking resources and 
interest in education;  
2. lack of English language proficiency—the English-only system used by 
many schools can feel unwelcoming to parents with low English language 
proficiency; 
3. parental educational level—many ELL parents lack experience with U.S. 
schools and have limited schooling;  
4. differences between school culture and home culture—differences in 
school personnel’s and parents’ perceptions and expectations of roles they 
should play in the education of children; and 
5. logistical issues—parents’ limited resources for transportation and time off 
work.  
These barriers are supported by other reports (Barauski et al., 2003) and studies 
(Kim, 2009; Peterson & Ladky, 2007), and highlight important considerations when 
 24 
developing and implementing parental involvement programs with diverse populations 
(pp. 8–10). Some studies have also considered additional barriers that impact parental 
involvement, such as Fine’s (1993) analysis of power (i.e., ideological power, material 
power), Lareau’s (2000) comparative analysis of SES factors in home–school 
relationships, between working-class and upper-middle class communities, and Turney 
and Kao’s (2009) analysis of race and immigration status. Furthermore, most of the 
literature in this category aims to provide recommendations or models for parent 
involvement programs within the existing framework of school–family partnership, 
which some would claim reproduce social inequalities (Lareau, 2000). Although these 
studies provide a significant contribution to educators, they do little to question or upset 
existing beliefs and ideologies that establish barriers in the first place. 
Furthermore, studies on this topic rely heavily on elaborate models of effective 
parental involvement programs to both identify barriers and provide recommendations. 
Perhaps the most widely used model of parent involvement programs is based on 
Epstein’s framework of six types of involvement: 
1. Parenting: help families establish home environments to support children 
as students; 
2. Communicating: design effective forms of school-to-home and home-to-
school communications about school programs and children’s progress; 
3. Volunteering: recruit and organize parents’ help and support; 
 25 
4. Learning at home: provide information and ideas to families about how to 
help students at home with homework and other curriculum-related 
activities, decisions, and planning; 
5. Decision making: include parents in school decisions, and develop parent 
leaders and representatives; and 
6. Collaborating with community: identify and integrate resources and 
services from the community to strengthen school programs, family 
practices, and student learning and development. 
Epstein’s framework was based on the results of her study on parental 
involvement in the Maryland school districts. Through a series of surveys with teachers, 
principals, and parents, and in-depth interviews with some teachers, Epstein created a 
working model schools should follow to implement and practice successful partnerships 
between parents and teachers, and between the home, community, and schools. Although 
her work advanced the importance of parental involvement as a key factor in student 
achievement, it also positioned schools to be in control of interactions. As evident in her 
framework, schools control the forms and means of interactions, and dictate expectations, 
because they are placed in control of the relationship. Although quantitative studies such 
as this provide rich data, they do not account for the context or lived experience of 
families, particularly of diverse populations. Nonetheless, most of the research in the area 
of parental involvement has replicated this approach, with few exceptions (e.g., 
Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005), and consequently limited the types of parental 
involvement programs and research.  
 26 
Connecting Parental Involvement and Student Achievement 
Overall, research suggests that parental involvement has positive effects on 
student achievement (Aronson, 1996; Christenson et al., 1992; Hill & Tyson, 2009; 
Tracy, 1995). Some studies in this area have focused on measuring what types of parental 
involvement have the greatest impact on student achievement (Hill & Tyson, 2009; 
Ingram et al., 2007); and on associations between parental involvement and higher 
student motivation (Gonzalez-DeHass at al., 2005; Ibanez et al., 2004). Hill and Tyson’s 
(2009) meta-analysis of 50 studies on parental involvement in middle school confirmed a 
positive impact between parental involvement and student achievement. In addition, this 
study reported that the strength of the association was based on the type of parental 
involvement. Academic socialization defined as “parents’ communication of their 
expectations for achievement and value for education, fostering educational and 
occupational aspirations in their adolescents, discussing learning strategies with children 
and making preparations and plans for the future” (p. 758) had the strongest positive 
relationship with middle school student achievement. In contrast, “involvement that 
entailed assisting with homework was not consistently associated with achievement” (p. 
758). Findings related to parents helping with homework as inconsequential to higher 
student achievement is also supported by other studies. For example, Cooper (2007) 
found parent homework help, in some contexts, to even potentially interfere with student 
achievement. Furthermore, Henderson and Mapp (2002) also found that communicating 
with schools, volunteering, and attending school events, long thought of as improving 
student achievement, in fact have virtually no impact. Ironically, as presented earlier in 
 27 
this paper, teachers perceive all these (e.g., homework help, volunteering, attending 
school events) as evidence of parental support and interest in student achievement, even 
though empirical research shows their effect is questionable at best. In contrast, academic 
socialization, which is “dependent on parents’ knowledge about how to navigate the 
middle school context” (Hill & Tyson, 2009, p. 759), is left out of teachers’ 
interpretations of their roles in parent–teacher interactions. The “how to” aspect of the 
schooling process is a tool teachers assume parents already have by virtue of having been 
students themselves. This assumed knowledge of the schooling process leaves a large 
group of families at a great disadvantage, particularly immigrant families schooled in 
different systems and families with no formal educational background.  
Another area of focus in parental involvement and its impact on student 
achievement is related to student motivation. Gonzalez-DeHass et al. (2005) did a 
thorough review of studies related to parental involvement and motivation. The 13 
studies selected for review showed evidence that parental involvement is associated with 
increasing students’ motivation. According to the findings, “when parents are involved, 
students report more effort, concentration, and attention. Students are more inherently 
interested in learning, and their experience higher perceived competence…Students 
whose parents are involved are more likely to take personal responsibility for their 
learning” (p. 117). Another point worth noting is the quantitative approach used in all the 
studies in this area (Crosnoe, 2009; Gonzalez-DeHass et al., 2005; Hao & Bonstead-
Bruns, 1998; Hill & Tyson, 2009; Ibanez et al., 2004; Ingram et al., 2007), which 
indicates an epistemological limitation. Although quantitative studies provide a link 
 28 
between parental involvement and higher student scores, they fails to give educators a 
more holistic, personalized, or nuanced picture of how parental involvement benefits 
students in other areas of the school experience (i.e., desire to learn, respect for teachers). 
Evidence of the impact of parent involvement can also be seen in program evaluation 
research. These studies typically examine school programs targeting parents within the 
school context and how successful they are in increasing parent engagement in schools. 
Evaluation of Parental Involvement Programs 
Mattingly, Prislin, McKenzie, Rodriguez, & Kayzar (2002) provides a 
synthesized review of studies that evaluated the effectiveness of K–12 parent 
involvement programs. Their study reviewed the results of different programs by looking 
at the theoretical foundations, target populations and types of interventions provided, and 
the reported program outcomes. In essence, their work is an evaluation of evaluation 
studies. This article gathered information from a total of 39 articles that evaluated 41 
programs and argues that there is “little empirical support for the widespread claim that 
parent involvement programs are an effective means of improving student achievement 
or changing parent, teacher, and student behavior” (p. 549). However, this quantitative 
methods study does not necessarily disprove the effectiveness of a relationship between 
parental involvement and student achievement, but in fact highlights a shocking amount 
of flaws in evaluation research in this area, which rely mainly on covariance structural 
models to measure student achievement. For example, Mattingly et al. (2002) report that 
from the articles reviewed, 51% did not report the race and ethnicity of participants, 86% 
failed to report education level of parents (p. 553–554), and only two articles account for 
 29 
the socioeconomic status of families (p. 564). In addition, the researchers found that the 
majority of programs (73%) failed to identify a theoretical framework in their design (p. 
564). Another troubling finding was that the majority of studies focused on “changing 
parent behavior—especially in the areas of parenting and supporting home learning—
rather than on changing teacher practices or school structures” (p. 565). Although the 
authors argue that the numerous flaws in parental involvement program designs and 
evaluations, should negate its benefits to student achievement; the fact remains that 
parental involvement does impact student outcomes (Hill & Tyson, 2009). Therefore, 
what this article actually accomplishes is to recognize the need for a more diverse and 
creative approach to implement and evaluate programs, particularly in minoritized 
communities. As Mattingly et al. (2002) exemplify, 
Despite the persuasive evidence showing that socioeconomic status, race, 
immigration status, and family structure are strong correlates of parent 
involvement, few studies have analyzed interactions among program 
interventions and these family characteristics. The failure to take family 
characteristics into account is troublesome, given that the rationale for 
many programs is the improvement of conditions for “at-risk” students. (p. 
571) 
As Mattingly et al. (2002) suggests parent involvement programs will continue to 
have negative outcomes if they fail to consider the background of families they serve 
during the planning and implementation process. Schools cannot deny the impact of 
families’ socioeconomic status, race, immigration status and structure when initiating 
parent involvement program because these are the mediating factors that determine the 
success or failure of such programs. Furthermore, a major purpose of parental 
involvement programs is to increase parent–teacher collaboration and mutual 
 30 
understanding on how they can best assist students in their learning (Gonzalez et al., 
1995). As detailed earlier, most studies show that parental involvement programs tend to 
focus on changing parent behavior rather than on school and teacher change (Mattingly et 
al., 2002). Nevertheless, schools continue to focus on families as the target for change, 
rather than educating their staff on ways in which the community can become resources 
for positive change within the school. In fact, Edwards and Warin’s (1999) study on 
primary schools suggests “schools felt that differences between home and school could 
be overcome if parents could be taught to assume the values of the school” (p. 337). This 
approach to parent involvement is problematic for two reasons: First, it views parents as 
deficient and therefore reinforces the deficit model (Orozco, 2008; Whitehouse & Colvin, 
2001), and second, it legitimizes the school as having the preferred set of values and in 
turn allows them to reinforce social inequalities (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977).  
Developing Meaningful Parental Involvement with Diverse Families 
Recognizing what families already do to promote learning and developing school 
transferable skills is usually left out of the analysis of school–family partnerships. 
Schools’ failure to recognize immigrant parents’ funds of knowledge results in their 
inability to value and incorporate these resources in a meaningful way in the school 
curriculum. Compton-Lilly (2007), for example, explains that when it comes to reading 
ability and skills students are measured by teacher perceptions of what counts as reading, 
these measurements are often times based on recognized and legitimized practices, 
[i]n the reading classroom, students whose words, mannerisms, and 
gestures fulfill school ideals possess embodied reading capital. Students 
who exhibit embodied reading capital display an allegiance to school-
sanctioned reading norms through their display of embodied reading 
 31 
capital. Examples include children who read the right books, participate in 
reading in ways that are acceptable at school (e.g., reading as a solitary 
activity accompanied by workbook exercises and skill practice), follow 
school norms for reading behavior (e.g., sitting in a desk, reading silently, 
decoding words), and say the right things about reading (e.g., “I love to 
read.”; p. 77) 
Unfortunately, some of the rich reading practices of minoritized groups go 
unnoticed in U.S. schools. For example, in Muslim cultures young children may learn the 
value of reading at an early age through reading the Koran. However, this reading 
practice looks very different: children read in groups, seated on the floor, rocking back 
and forth for concentration. They also read, in many cases, in a second language since the 
Koran is written and read in Arabic. In these communities, children learn to read the 
words, and are encouraged to memorize the text. So children can recite the Koran, but 
will likely not be able to answer workbook questions on content meaning. As Moore 
(2006) explains, in many cultures and religions, “the memorization and recitation of 
sacred texts are valued as acts of piety, discipline, and cultural preservation, whether or 
not the individual grasps their literal meaning” (p. 110). Reading the Koran is viewed as a 
prized skill in Muslim communities; however, unlike in the U.S. curriculum, the action 
and practice of reading is valued over the understanding of the text. These communities 
maintain a tradition of rote learning, where repetition and memorization are used as 
learning strategies in education (Moore, 2006). Unlike the Western educational system, 
which has now largely rejected rote learning and embraced progressive approaches to 
learning that involve independent thinking and doing (Moore, 2006), some cultures still 
favor and even praise rote learning. Families with a Hafiz (the title given to individuals 
that have memorized the entire Koran) member hold special status in some communities. 
 32 
In addition, families that encourage children to become Hafiz show a significant value to 
education and learning, thus should be recognized as supportive of their children’s 
educational achievements. However, because memorization is not a legitimized form of 
reading strategy (in fact, is mostly discouraged) educators usually miss the opportunity to 
utilize this unique and significant skill in schools. Rather than utilizing this reading style 
tradition to scaffold classroom learning, educators attempt to retrain children. Most 
western educators essentially dismiss the home and community as learning environments. 
Some scholars have recognized the need to focus on the home as a learning 
environment and important resource for schools, and have begun the process of exploring 
home learning practices. Most notable is Gonzalez et al. (1995), with their Funds of 
Knowledge work in Latino communities. The Funds of Knowledge project aimed to 
reposition teachers as teacher–researchers in the context of home visits with Latino 
families. The goal of the project was to “draw upon the knowledge and other resources 
found in local households for the development of classroom practices” (p. 446). Teachers 
participating in the project were trained to use qualitative research methods (i.e., 
participant observer) in order to enter homes to document existing resources that could be 
used in classroom settings. Positioning teachers as learners allowed for the “formation of 
new relationships with families” (p. 445), where teachers aimed to recognize households 
as “containing important social and intellectual resources” (p. 445). This project design 
had a significant impact on the field of educational research because it “demystif[ied] the 
traditional authority of university-based researchers” (p. 444) and welcomed the creative 
approach of teachers as data collectors and reflective practitioners in the research process. 
 33 
Results showed that teachers were able to recognize household resources that could be 
used in the classroom and have a greater understanding of households as spaces of 
learning. Furthermore, these studies suggest that home-visit experiences by teachers are 
potentially transformative for them, whereby deficit models can be replaced by better 
understanding of how families sacrifice and value education (p. 458). In addition, 
teachers expressed a process of unlearning, where traditional parent–teacher interactions 
were redefined to meet the needs of families in the context of Latino communities. This 
experience of unlearning highlights the need for greater attention to teacher preparation 
so as to engage in meaningful parent–teacher partnerships with ethnic minority 
populations. 
In short, there is strong evidence to suggest that schools sanction specific 
practices that facilitate or impede parental involvement in K–12 settings. For example, 
attending parent–teacher conferences and school sponsored events, sharing (or accepting) 
the existing school culture, and implementing “appropriate” teaching strategies at home 
(Carreón et al., 2005; Paratore et al., 1994; Pomerantz et al., 2007). In essence school 
presence is defined as parental involvement and indicative of family support of 
education. However, school presence may be the one thing that impedes parental 
involvement for some families, particularly immigrant families. In a report released by 
the Adult Learner Resource Center (Arias & Morillo-Campbell, 2008), created for the 
Illinois State Board of Education, barriers and challenges faced by immigrant and refugee 
parents when attempting to become active participants in their children’s education in the 
United States include: Language proficiency, cultural expectations, isolation, busy 
 34 
personal lives, family trauma, and lack of welcoming atmosphere in some schools (p. 1–
3). In addition, some immigrant families also deal with problems related to social needs, 
such as having food and shelter, which are essential to their survival (López, Scribner, & 
Mahitivanichcha, 2001). These challenges have been shown to have a significant 
influence on the level of presence possible for immigrant parents in U.S. schools. The 
reality is that for immigrant parents the current sanctioned forms of parental involvement 
are too narrow, and need to be redefined and expanded. Consequently, these sanctioned 
forms of “appropriate” parental involvement become impediments for many immigrant 
families.  
Adding to this issue of narrowed perceptions of parent involvement is also how 
schools and teachers perceive immigrant families’ abilities to support student learning. 
Schools fail to recognize the existing resources immigrant families have to support their 
children’s education, and for the most part try to impose their ideology of school success. 
Whitehouse and Colvin (2001) report that  
[w]hen communities become increasingly diverse, instruction in schools 
often continue to emphasize the language, culture, and values of the 
mainstream population as a way to resist the shifting demographics. 
Moreover, there is often the unstated belief that transforming culturally 
diverse families to mirror mainstream families will produce educational 
and economic success for their children. Not surprisingly, these colliding 
differences between pedagogy and population result in tension and 
confusion on the part of students, parents, teachers, and school officials. 
(p. 212)  
In other words, the expectation of schools continues to be that immigrant or 
minority families will assimilate and embody the school culture. This approach creates a 
one-way relationship between home and school, where parents must change behaviors 
 35 
and beliefs whereas schools are free to remain unchanged. As Edwards and Warin (1999) 
put it, “collaboration between school and home seems to have been superseded by the 
colonization of the home by the school” (p. 337). It is no wonder that parents increasingly 
feel pressured to adopt sanctioned forms of school cultures while sacrificing their own 
(Inman, Howard, Beaumont, & Walker, 2007). 
This dissertation study provides a unique contribution by exploring the ways in 
which parents and school staff construct, define, and perceive parent involvement in 
particular school spaces. Therefore, this work focuses on parent involvement beyond the 
traditional parent–teacher paradigm. The review of Bourdieu’s theoretical frame and 
current issues surrounding parent involvement in this chapter provides the foundation 
needed to understand the findings reported in this work. 
 36 
Chapter 3 
Navigating Fieldwork: Ethnography in the Urban Context 
This dissertation investigates the experiences of immigrant parents and school 
staff as they navigate the process of building relationships. This task required 
considerable time in the field observing and interacting with both parents and school 
personnel as they construct relationships. Investigating human relationships is no easy 
task, and calls for a large amount of data gathering for analysis. The only way to 
document ways in which parent involvement expectations are communicated and enacted 
is through an ethnographic research approach, including the collection of a variety of data 
through the use of ethnographic tools. For example, in this study I relied on observations, 
formal and informal interviews with staff, and participant observations at different school 
events and meetings. Given the type of data I needed to collect to build deeper 
understanding of parent involvement expectations, ethnography was the only reliable 
choice as a research methodology. Ethnography, broadly speaking, is a research approach 
that aims to offer a holistic account of people; its “about telling a credible, rigorous, and 
authentic story” and “giv[ing] voice to people in their own local context, typically relying 
on verbatim quotations and a “thick” description of events” (Fetterman, 2010, p. 1). 
Ethnographic research tools such as fieldwork, participant observations, and interviewing 
allow greater opportunity for insight into the process immigrant parents undergo as they 
engage with U.S. schools. Because this dissertation aimed to investigate the interactions 
of parents and school staff, fieldwork was vital and, as Charmaz (2006) explains, this 
type of investigation can only be accomplished by fieldwork: 
 37 
Ethnography means recording the life of a particular group and thus 
entails sustained participation and observation in their milieu, community, 
or social world. It means more than participant observation alone because 
an ethnographic study covers the round of life occurring within the given 
milieu(x) and often includes supplementary data from documents, 
diagrams, maps, photographs, and, occasionally, formal interviews and 
questionnaires. Participant observers may limit their focus to one aspect of 
daily life. In contrast, ethnographers seek detailed knowledge of the 
multiple dimensions of life within the studied milieu and aim to 
understand members’ taken-for-granted assumptions and rules (Ashworth, 
1995; Charmaz & Olesen, 1997, p. 21). 
With this approach in mind, I embarked in a year-long study at Community High 
where I immersed myself in the daily routines at the school and community. Unlike most 
of the current studies of parental involvement that rely heavily on surveys and 
quantitative methodologies, this study aimed to document human experiences. Therefore, 
an ethnographic design that would allow me to document firsthand the experiences of 
school staff and parents was essential.  
Research Setting 
Common Grounds City2 is a small urban community at the edge of a large 
Midwestern metropolitan area. The city is the most diverse in the state with over half of 
its total population of 30,104 being comprised of people of color. The 2010 U.S. Census 
data for Common Grounds reports people of color as belonging to Black or African 
American (25.9%)3, Asian (14.3%), Latino (9.6%), American Indian (0.8%), Other race 
(5.4%), two or more races (4.4%) and Native Hawaiian (0.1%). This small community is 
more diverse than the adjacent large metropolitan area. Residents speak a variety of 
                                                
2 All names (city, school, staff, partnerships) included in this dissertation are pseudonyms. 
3 This includes both U.S. born and non-U.S. born. A significant number of the population is of African 
descent (e.g., Somali). 
 38 
different language with a total of 24.9% speaking a language other than English, Spanish 
at 9.1% being the most common language. Evidence of diversity can be identified 
throughout the community with several community resources specific to its different 
ethnic groups (e.g., grocery stores, restaurants, resource centers, community outreach 
organizations). Foreign-born persons comprise 21.4% of the population compared to 7% 
reported at the state.  
Like many communities nationwide, Common Grounds City suffered the 
consequences of the recent economic recession. The median household income is 
reported at $49, 226 compared to $57,243 reported in the state. At the time of the study, 
unemployment rate was at 8.8%, compared to the national average of 7.8%, and 
foreclosure was the third highest in the state. Signs of a struggling community were 
evident. I saw businesses with closed notices, for sale and foreclosure signs, and most 
significantly a large shopping center that remained abandoned for the duration of the 
study. The community, particularly the schools, also held several events for homeless 
families. One particular event I attended in partnership with the local YMCA, provided 
students with haircuts, dental and vision screenings, food and personal hygiene kits (e.g., 
toothpaste, toothbrush, deodorant).  
Common Grounds City has four different school districts within its borders. Local 
and state open enrollment policies allow residents to enroll in any of the school districts. 
Additionally, several students from surrounding cities, including the adjacent large 
metropolitan area, also open enroll into the various district schools. This study took place 
in the Common Grounds Public School district, the smallest of the 4 districts with only 1 
 39 
elementary school, high school and alternative school. Open enrollment accounts for 33% 
of the 1,700 students in the district.4 Although small, the district has one of the most 
diverse student populations in the state. The most unique aspect of the Common Grounds 
District is its community philosophy approach to learning. According to Mr. Marvin, the 
district superintendent for the past 7 years, the community school idea was a way to 
organize current school–community partnerships and help address the barriers to learning 
identified in the district. When I asked Mr. Marvin how the community school concept 
began he explained: 
It kind of got started with my sitting down, I think it was my second year 
here, I forget, second or third year and I was looking at all the partnerships 
we had and how we kind of leaned on those partnerships, and I think they 
benefited from us too. And I’ve been for maybe 8 or 9 years following the 
UCLA partner psychology stuff on various learning… I mean, we had 
these partners doing things that help eliminate barriers. We had these 
barriers, how do we coordinate it, you know? … So just about that time, I 
was familiar with the concept of community schools but about that time 
was when Obama was elected and he appointed Arnie Duncan who had 50 
or more community schools in the Chicago schools where he came from. 
And I got to thinking we really are a community school district. 
Technically by definition we weren’t because the things weren’t 
connected to the school. The partners weren’t talking to each other but we 
had all the pieces so how do we pull it together and make it work? And 
here we are. (December 15, 2011 interview) 
As Mr. Marvin explains in this interview excerpt, the district already had several 
components of what is considered a community school model. When he took over as 
superintendent, Mr. Marvin recognized the need and benefit of officially identifying the 
school as a community school and solidifying the already existing community partners. 
At its core the term community school is used to identify schools that focus on creating 
                                                
4 Data are taken from district and school website. 
 40 
school–community–family partnerships to support the learning of children. According to 
the Community School Coalition, “a community school is both a place and a set of 
partnerships between the school and other community resources. Its integrated focus on 
academics, health and social services, youth and community development and 
community engagement leads to improved student learning, stronger families and 
healthier communities.”5 A common theme in school documents, advertising and 
administrative discourses was the idea of whole child development rather than academic 
performance alone. The school website proudly reports over 100 community partnerships 
that work collaboratively to support the learning of students. In their words: 
At Common Grounds schools we see our students grow in so many ways. 
We also see that all students need to be healthy and happy before they are 
ready to learn in the classroom…we will work with families and the 
community to help ensure all of our children are socially, mentally, and 
physically ready to participate in positive ways in and out of school. 
Schools alone cannot provide all the services needed, which is why we are 
becoming a Community Schools District. As a Community School 
District, we have a growing set of partnerships between our schools and 
community organizations to provide educational, enrichment and support 
services to students and families so that our children can be safe and stable 
in school, at home, and in the community. Partnerships help us to serve the 
whole child, including before and afterschool programs; mental, medical 
and dental services; academic supports; and family resource centers…join 
us as we unite to eliminate barriers to learning and raise healthy and happy 
children together. 
Perhaps the most significant partnership is the onsite health center at the high 
school that provides a full range of free health care to students. The health center has 
doctors, dentists, and counselors that work in partnership with local hospitals and clinics. 
The school also works with a variety of community partners to provide students and 
                                                
5 Definition taken from the Coalition for Community School website. 
 41 
families with various resources from financial support to pay a heating bill to tenant 
training. During my year at the school I observed and participated in several events that 
involved these partners. For example, a legal clinic where families could receive free 
legal advice, tax preparation workshops, free adult ESL classes, computer workshops, 
early childhood services, emergency food shelf, prenatal classes, to name a few. The 
school prides itself in being a resource and referral service to students and families in the 
area. Although district administrators framed these partnerships as beneficial resources, I 
will later discuss how they were also a source of confusion and disengagement for some 
families. 
Community High School6 
Community High is a small, urban high school with a highly diverse student 
population. According to the state department of education data, the school student 
demographic is 46.5% Black, 22.7% white, 15.9% Asian, 14.1% Hispanic, and 0.8% 
American Indian. At the time of the study enrollment was around 750 students, with 50 
students at the alternative school. During my time at Community High, it was evident that 
students came from a variety of cultures, immigrant status and socioeconomic 
backgrounds. Several students were defined as homeless youth, and as previously 
mentioned, obtained additional social services from the school. There was also a 
significant undocumented student population, which I will discuss in more detail in later 
chapters. Additionally, students came from homes were English was not the primary 
                                                
6 I selected the name Community High School to highlight the school’s strong commitment to community 
partnerships and whole student development. The term community was also used in several discourses 
throughout the school and thus reflects a unique characteristic of the school vision and mission. 
 42 
language, about 36% of students in the school use English language services. I saw 
school materials translated into at least 3 languages (Spanish, Hmong and Somali), and 
during parent–teacher conferences interpreters were provided. However, on at least one 
occasion I also observed a student interpreting for his Russian-speaking parents during 
parent–teacher conferences. Finally, about 68% of students in the district and 80% of 
students at Community High are eligible for free and reduced lunch.7 The school also 
provides free meals for all students throughout the summer months. Although the school 
was eligible for Title I funds, it did not receive them. During one of my conversations 
with the principal, she indicated that Title I funding was given to the district for 
allocation and thus it was only used for the elementary school. 
Community High is an Art Magnet and International Baccalaureate8 world school 
offering a rich and comprehensive performing arts curriculum. Currently, the school 
offers a combination program, an IB Middle Years Program (IB MYP) curriculum is 
offered in grades 7–10 and the Art Magnet program is offered grades 7–12. Community 
High has received a Magnet School of Excellence award for the past 3 years, and its IB 
program has recently been authorized to add grades 10–12. The school website proudly 
states that the Art Magnet program is recognized internationally and visitors from United 
Kingdom and India come to learn about its success. The school curriculum offers a wide 
range of courses, from traditional IB college prep courses to specially designed Art 
                                                
7 Free and reduced lunch eligibility is based on household income, at the time of the study a family of four 
with income less than $28,665 qualified for free lunch and with income between $28,665-$40,793 qualified 
for reduced-price lunch. 
8 Art Magnet is a term given to public schools that have a specialized curriculum focused in the arts. These 
schools attract and welcome students outside their district boundaries. International Baccalaureate is a 
specialized academic curriculum focused on international education. 
 43 
Magnet courses such as music technology lab and T.V. production. The school also has a 
strong Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program, an onsite program 
that helps students prepare for college and requires enrollment in honors and advance 
placement courses. AVID student profiles are prominently displayed throughout the 
school next to their college acceptance letters. Community High has an English Language 
program that provides students with language development courses and some content 
courses that earn graduation credits. The school has an extensive special education 
program. Although the school has a rich curriculum and wide range of programs to 
support students, it continues to perform poorly in standardized testing and struggles with 
low academic achievement records.  
The school is categorized as a low performing school by the state department of 
education. In response, Community High has created numerous programs to address 
student performance including an Advisory program, which helps support students 
throughout their secondary years. The main feature of the program is to provide 
homework help and test preparation in a small class environment. The idea is that one 
teacher will follow and be responsible for a small group of students throughout their high 
school years. Fostering this personal relationship is intended to help identify student 
needs and provide appropriate resources and interventions. During the time of my study 
school programs, the IB curriculum and diploma requirements were discussed in detail 
during school staff–parent interactions.  
Community High was housed in a beautiful and well-kept building. As you walk 
through the building you can recognize student artwork on the walls. There are clean and 
 44 
bright hallways, orderly administrative offices (including an office for the Police School 
liaison) and an overall sense of a safe school environment. Students and staff clearly 
respect school property and help maintain a school environment conducive for learning. 
Community High has a state of the art library and media center with several computers, 
and a conference room with multimedia viewing equipment. Beautiful murals are 
displayed in the cafeteria, which served a variety of nutritious menu items. The school 
also has a bright commons area with tables and artwork displays utilized by both students 
and visitors. A large gym with basketball courts, a beautiful and large auditorium used for 
graduation ceremonies and special events, well equipped science labs, outdoor football 
and soccer fields are visible signs of a wealthy learning school environment. The school 
has an extensive and state of the art monitoring system, with cameras throughout the 
building.  
In contrast to this description of order and abundance, during my time at the 
school, serious issues related to funding, teenage pregnancy, gangs and drugs were 
frequent topics of conversations among staff and parents. Although the school building 
was well maintained, budget cuts were a visible reality with frequent staff layoffs. 
Teenage pregnancy was also a high priority issue. It was not uncommon to see girls 
pregnant walking the halls of the high school. The school had the highest teenage 
pregnancy rate in the state at 60.4 births per 1,000, and received grant money to 
implement sex education and support programs. This funding paid for additional school 
staff to provide sex education services to students on site, and funded a partnership with 
 45 
the Annex Teen Clinic.9 The alternative school building provided students with a child 
care center service and was in the process of building its own onsite center. Discussions 
related to student gang involvement were frequent among both parents and school staff. 
Finally, the presence of drugs in the school was no secret because it was widely known 
that students were suspended for selling drugs or using drugs in the restroom. In addition, 
Community High has been identified as a persistently low achieving school and is at the 
bottom 5% of secondary schools10 in the state.  
Community High receives funding from a variety of sources, including a 21st 
Century Grant to provide after school programs and a School Improvement Grant (SIG)11 
to help implement a comprehensive plan to address issues of student achievement. The 
21st Century Grant provides Community High with additional staff, who run a variety of 
programs including tutoring and summer enrichment programs. SIG funding provides 
support to a comprehensive school improvement plan that includes redesigning 
assessment tools and an evaluation of student outcomes, teacher workshops to improve 
quality of instruction, increase understanding of differentiated instruction strategies, and 
parental involvement efforts. Currently the school does not have a Parent Teacher 
Association (PTA) or any other active parent group. Additionally, based on the 
                                                
9 The Annex Teen Clinic provides low cost, confidential, nonjudgmental sexuality-related health care for 
adolescents and young adults through age 25. 
10 Information taken from the state department of education school profile page. 
11 SIG “grants funds are for the purpose of turning around the identified persistently lowest achieving Tier I 
and Tier II schools in the state by substantially raising the achievement of students attending those 
schools.”  
 46 
Minnesota Department of Education Quality Review Report 2010, Community High’s 
record with parent involvement is “fair.”12 The report states: 
The school values parental input and welcomes parents’ support for their 
children’s education. Despite attempts to increase parental involvement, 
the numbers who actively support their children’s education are not as 
high as the school would like. Attendance at parent teacher conferences is 
improving but still not high. Even when students put on public 
performances, such as concerts, the number of parents attending is 
sometimes disappointing. The school sends out information to parents in a 
number of ways through report cards, newsletters and by electronic means, 
but parents still feel that communication could be improved. The school 
translates communications into the main home languages but does not 
have access to translation services for all languages. Workshops to 
improve parents’ knowledge of student learning and to help them support 
students are not well established. This limits the support that parents can 
give the school.13  
In an effort to address issues of parent involvement, the school purchased and 
implemented a parent education program named Knowledgeable Parents (KP).14 The 
program brochure states that KP “parents meet 1 night per week for 7 weeks to learn how 
to navigate the school system to ensure student success… KP parents are committed 
parents who are excited to have new knowledge and confidence in navigating our 
confusing K–12 and higher education systems. Through KP, parents will also be 
introduced to an array of financial aid and scholarship opportunities.” At the time of the 
study, the program was offered in English and Spanish, and although a Hmong class 
began, low attendance resulted in closure after 3 weeks. The program is based on the 
Parent Institute for Quality Education (PIQE) curriculum, and during my study, I 
                                                
12 A score of fair means ‘present, though limited and/or inconsistent’  
13 Taken from Quality Review Report on the Minnesota Department of Education website for Community 
High. This report is open to the public and is required as part of receiving SIG funding. 
14 As a reminder, all names of participants, school, and programs are pseudonyms.  
 47 
participated in 1 PIQE facilitator workshop15 held at the school and 4 KP programs. The 
KP program experience became the foundation of my research and will be described in 
more detail later in the study. 
Methodology 
Early in my doctoral program I was interested in issues of immigrant parent 
involvement and I conducted several small studies on related topics. One such study 
involved the analysis of discourse in parent–teacher conferences between immigrant 
parents and ESL teachers (Aleixo, 2008). I presented the results of this study at a state 
conference where I met the Department of Education parent liaison. I maintained contact 
with her throughout my program and when it came time to find a research site we met to 
discuss school options. She suggested Community High because of their newly 
implemented parent involvement initiatives. I then contacted Sandra, the KP coordinator 
at Community High by email and set up a meeting. After explaining my study and goals, 
Sandra suggested I meet with the school principal to propose my study. I met with 
Principal Jones a few weeks later, and once again presented my project and goals. 
Principal Jones was welcoming and excited about the idea of expanding her relationship 
with the university. She explained that my next step would be to present my research 
proposal to a small group of staff and teachers. If they were on board, I would then 
present the proposal at the next school board meeting for formal approval. The entire 
process took about 4 to 5 weeks, and once access was granted I was given a school badge 
with my name and introduced to the front desk staff. I began coming to the school 3 to 4 
                                                
15 PIQE facilitator workshop was the training provided to school staff for eligibility to facilitate the local 
KP program that was adapted from the National PIQE program. 
 48 
times a week, walking the hallways, meeting people, attending KP sessions, and 
volunteering in the family resource room. I became a familiar face at Community High. 
The small size of the school and district was extremely beneficial to my access to school 
staff and administrators. I had access to custodial staff, administrators and everyone in 
between. I frequently met and spoke to parents, the principal, superintendent and other 
staff members in the hallways or offices. As my presence at the school became common, 
I was frequently invited to attend planning meetings, parent–staff meetings, and after 
school programs and activities.  
Data Collection 
I collected data from February 2011 through December 2011, although I 
continued to visit the school and meet with staff until the summer of 2012. I collected 
data primarily at the school and in the community. Initially, I spent about 3 to 4 days a 
week at the high school observing and participating in school activities and daily 
schedules, during the summer months this was reduced to 2 to 3 days a week. During the 
summer I participated in 1 KP training workshop, and 1 KP session. There was also a 
parent group that met during the summer to reflect on their KP experience and plan 
parent activities for the upcoming school year. In addition, the less hectic summer school 
environment allowed me more opportunities to shadow school staff and conduct formal 
interviews. On average I spent 10 hours a week at Community High. Most of my 
observation time was spent at the family resource room, health center, and KP evening 
meetings. I attended several school-sponsored events. Because of the overwhelming 
number of events offered at the school, I focused on attending activities that intentionally 
 49 
included parents such as Multicultural Night events, parent discussion groups, 5K 
fundraising walk, college tours, parent–teacher conferences, and college and financial 
informational nights. However, I also attended several events designed for students, 
particularly minoritized students for example a “college options discussion” for Latina 
students, Hmong students against substance abuse night, and a Youth Connection Night. 
In many cases, I was invited to attend school administrative planning meetings (e.g., 
planning meeting for Multicultural Nights; Health Center end-of-year report). One 
particular example is when I was invited to the police station for a meeting between the 
police community liaison and the school family liaison. When I was not in a meeting or 
particular activity I would usually hang out at the media center, commons area or family 
resource center. When I greeted parents or school staff I would say I was a doctoral 
student from the University of Minnesota doing research on parent involvement at 
Community High. I would also signal my researcher status during conversations, for 
example I would say “as a researcher” or “as a doctoral student.” By doing this I hoped 
the school staff, teachers and students would be aware of my role. On numerous 
occasions I engaged in informal conversations with parents and staff related to a variety 
of topics that were used as data for this study. These conversations took place at various 
school spaces, like the media center, hallways, family resource center, health center, and 
even the parking lot. As a participant observer I usually was the note keeper and took 
minutes during KP classes and planning meetings. As Sandra would point out on 
occasion, I was already taking notes anyway.16  
                                                
16 Although I agreed to take minutes and detailed notes of meeting discussion, I did not share my research 
 50 
Although Community High was my primary data collection site, I also made 
efforts to immerse myself in the surrounding community. I had lunch at local restaurants, 
filled my car with gas at the corner station, and visited the police station and local 
community resource centers on various occasions. I sometimes saw school staff and 
parents outside of school in the community and recorded field notes on these encounters. 
The Community Resource Center, considered a hub for school parents and local residents 
to access resources was another significant data collection site. I met parents at the center 
and also interviewed staff members about their experiences interacting with immigrant 
families. 
I gathered a variety of data during my study; see Table 2 for a detailed list. My 
primary source of data included detailed field notes of my observations. My focus was on 
interactions between school staff and parents, specifically topics of conversations, ways 
in which each group expressed their perceptions of each other, the school, and education 
in general. I was interested in learning how families’ social environment impacted their 
interactions with school agents. Being a participant–observer in these various sites and 
activities allowed me to create a holistic picture of how interactions occurred at 
Community High and how parent involvement was enacted within the school. I took 
notes during my time at the school, and also audiorecorded field notes on my 30-minute 
drive home after each observation at the school. I audiorecorded all meetings, parent 
discussion groups, administrative planning meetings, and other semiformal interactions 
between parents and school staff members. I shadowed some staff members, particularly 
                                                                                                                                            
field notes with school staff. I would provide them with a formal outline/summary of minutes taken for 
each meeting. This document looked and read differently than my research notes. 
 51 
the bilingual family liaison, during the study. This shadowing method was mainly 
following in the day-to-day work activities of school staff. During my shadowing, I took 
notes, audio recorded interactions, asked questions, and assisted with minor duties (e.g., 
holding materials). Shadowing allowed me to gather naturally occurring data, because 
individuals would just perform routine work activities (e.g., attend meetings, write 
reports, interact with parents and students, and respond to email and voicemail). Please 
review Table 1 to identify the name and role of study participants reported in this 
dissertation.  
Table 1 
Participants 
Name School Role 
Marvin District Superintendent 
Jones Community High Principal 
Sandra Family Liaison 
Lourdes Family Liaison (first 3 months of study) 
Sofia Bilingual Family Liaison 
Jorge Guidance Counselor 
Heather Guidance Counselor 
Beth Testing Coordinator 
Elizabeth Social Worker 
Mr. Joe Social Studies Teacher 
Ms. Bao Social Studies Teacher 
Mr. Gonzales ELL Teacher and Coordinator 
Mr. Edwards Behavior Dean 
 52 
Other sources of data included collecting numerous communication materials 
between school and home, such as flyers, brochures, school announcements, official 
calendars, legal documents related to truancy, newspapers, meeting agendas, and program 
information materials. Please review Table 2 for a detailed list of data sources. These 
materials helped inform my understanding of the school’s parent involvement 
expectation. Additionally, in order to follow up on my observations and provide sources 
for triangulation I periodically conducted formal interviews with staff members (see 
Appendix B for a sample interview protocol) and met with parents to explore in more 
detail their perceptions and understanding of parental involvement.  
 53 
Table 2 
Data Sources 
Data Samples 
School documents and materials Annual Calendar (1) 
Brochures (6) 
Flyers (7) 
School website information 
KP curriculum (51 pages in English, 101 pages in 
Spanish) 
KP training materials (2) 
KP handouts (5) 
Bilingual KP handout (1) 
Handouts (2) 
Job Descriptions (1) 
Meeting Agendas (2) 
Bilingual information sheets (3) 
Information sheets (11) 
School directory (1) 
Multicultural Night materials (1) 
School map and class assignments (1) 
Bilingual Health Center information (1) 
Community Documents Brochures (11) 
Flyers (6) 
Booklets (3) 
Newspapers (3) 
Community Resource and Residents’ Guide (1) 
City demographic information packet (1) 
Bilingual invited presenter handout (1) 
Television news segment (2) 
Field Notes 
 
School events 
 
 
 
 
 
School meetings 
400 hours** 
(Transcription of recorded field notes 2.3 hours*) 
 
5K walk 
Youth Connection Night 
Hmong students against substance abuse 
Latino student college information session 
College information night 
Parent–teacher conference 
KP graduation ceremony 
Multicultural Nights 
College Visit field trip 
Health Center end-of-year meeting 
School Board Meeting 
Police Liaison and School Family Liaison meeting 
Dean of Discipline meeting with parents 
Guidance Counselor and Family Liaison meeting 
 54 
Data Samples 
Table 2, continued  
Transcription of recordings 
Knowledgeable Parents sessions  
Parent Meeting  
Formal Interviews 
Informal conversations with school staff 
Shadowing of school staff 
 
84 hours* 
4.1 hours* 
16.8 hours* 
3.8 hours* 
7.2 hours* 
* Only indicates recorded hour amount but does not represent actual time spent and written field notes that 
followed. 
** This is an approximate number of hours spent at the school throughout the study, hours based on 2–3 
weekly visits for an average of 10 hours a week over 11 months. 
Data Analysis 
The observations and field notes were reviewed, coded, and analyzed throughout 
the study. Analyzing data throughout the study allowed me to explore emerging themes, 
and focus subsequent data gathering. Initial observations and field notes helped inform 
and guide new areas to explore at the research site. I began data collection in the 2011 
spring semester; during this time I observed, wrote field notes, conducted formal 
interviews and most importantly collected a variety of school materials. As Charmaz 
(2006) explains, “texts draw on particular discourses and provide accounts that record, 
explore, explain, justify, or foretell actions, whether the specific tests are elicited or 
extant” (p. 35). The school materials collected for this particular study were considered 
extant texts17 and a significant source of initial data. A text analysis was conducted 4 
months into the study to gain a better understanding of the documented expectations the 
                                                
17 Documents and materials “the researcher had no hand in shaping” (Charmez, 2006). 
 55 
school had of parent involvement. Texts were reviewed to inform the school’s 
perceptions of parent involvement. For example, some documents were translated to 
multiple languages while others were not, analysis of the content of these documents can 
inform what the school perceived as important or necessary information for certain 
groups of parents. The text analysis helped guide new directions to explore within the 
school. 
Interviews and audiorecorded observations and field notes were reviewed and 
transcribed. Because I interviewed and gathered data from speakers of other languages, 
transcriptions were done in the original language used in recording interaction; thus for 
example both English and Spanish were used during transcription. Once all 
audiorecorded data were transcribed coding began, the first phase of coding involved an 
incident-by-incident open coding through the use of a computer software program18. 
During this process, close attention was given to emerging data. Open coding was done 
both manually and through the use of computer software. The second phase of coding can 
be described as identifying themes; this was an inductive analysis process. However, the 
use of deductive analysis was also present because I was focused on particular issues 
during data collection. For example, I purposefully engaged in conversations and asked 
questions about perceptions of parent involvement, thus “definitions of parent 
involvement” was a deductive code used during analysis. During the second phase of 
analysis themes were identified and the process of establishing all-encompassing themes 
                                                
18 Only recorded materials and written field notes were coded through the use of computer software. School 
documents and some field notes were coded and analyzed manually. 
 56 
began, see Table 3 for more details on the process of moving from open coding to 
themes.  
 57 
Table 3 
Sample of Open Coding to Final Themes 
General Theme: 
Parent Involvement Expectations 
Sub Theme I:  
Spaces and Teacher Access 
Sub Theme II:  
Presence and Internet Access 
Access to Teachers 
Formal and Informal Spaces 
Interactions with School Staff 
Internet Access and Use 
Ways of Being Present 
Conference Attendance 
Family Resource Center 
Community Resources 
Creating parent cross-cultural communities 
Defining community 
District financial situation 
District focus on community school environment 
Informal spaces for interactions 
Lack of continuity of programs and ideas 
Miscommunication between home and school 
New school programs 
Opportunities to interact more with teachers 
Parent authority vs. state law 
Police presence at CH 
Purpose of school 
Reaching out to families 
School resources vs. social services 
Teacher home visit 
School procedures 
School environment 
AVID 
KP background and roots 
KP discussion topics 
SIG 
Assumption of parent needs 
Awareness of immigrant family needs 
Barriers to getting parents involved 
Defining parent engagement success 
Discourse of school staff authority 
Family reading practices observed 
Lack of cultural awareness and training 
Limited access to online resources 
Low expectation of minority families 
Online resources for parents 
Parent perceptions of caring 
Parent perceptions of school 
Parent perceptions of involvement 
Parent responsibility 
Parent–student interactions at home 
Perceptions of diversity 
Personal experience with parent involvement 
Potential language barriers 
Redefining parent 
Resources offered by KP program 
School communication strategy 
School definition of parent involvement 
School staff advice to parents 
 58 
Researcher Role: Insider–Outsider Negotiations 
Conducting ethnographic studies is not without risk. As a novice researcher I was 
aware that engaging in ethnography would require considerable time and commitment. 
However, the experience came loaded with additional dilemmas regarding identity and 
managing emotional investment. It quickly became clear to me that regardless of how I 
introduced or positioned myself, participants’ perceptions of me would reposition me 
throughout the study. I entered the field committed to establishing the understanding that 
I was a university researcher and that interactions with me would likely become data in 
my study. I was aware that building rapport would require sharing my own immigrant 
story. I had hoped that my immigrant background would provide a shared background 
with parents, and my credentials as an educational researcher would help connect me to 
school staff. However, as I soon discovered, the insider–outsider identity in the field is 
much more complicated. 
First I acknowledge that I am deeply committed to advocating for immigrant 
rights both in and outside the school. I believe schools have a responsibility to educate all 
learners and support their individual needs. I firmly support the notion that linguistically 
and culturally diverse learners should be seen as added resources rather than problems in 
the education systems. Additionally, I feel it is the school’s obligation to initiate, 
encourage, and support parent engagement particularly for immigrant families that are 
learning to navigate a new school system. I am an immigrant, but unlike most of my 
participants, my narrative is one that reflects high social and cultural capital. I do not 
always identify as Latina because the discourses of inclusion for Brazilians in Latina 
 59 
identities can be complicated, and I am still learning to navigate them. I speak Spanish, 
but my confidence level limits my full participation during group discussions. I have a 
husband and son, and would say my family unit reflects a traditional middle class family. 
All these personal attributes served to position me in the field as both insider and 
outsider. I fully understand that my researcher identity was in many occasions out of my 
control, and participants’ decisions on identifying me as insider or outsider was in most 
cases contextually based. 
Discussions on insider–outsider researcher identities are not new; in fact several 
prominent scholars have explored the issue in their recent research (Brayboy & Deyhle, 
2000; DeAndrade, 2000; Ergun & Erdemir, 2010; Thomson & Gunter, 2011). In their 
work with Indigenous communities Brayboy and Deyhle (2000) share their experience 
building and maintaining relationships with their participants. Although Brayboy 
identified himself as an Indigenous person he struggled with an insider position within 
the community because of his researcher identity, he explains: 
By asking them [student participants] to allow me to spend time with them 
both in and out of classes, I was building knowledge base for rich data 
collection. Simultaneously, however, I acted in a manner unlike a “real 
Indian”. I asked to do things I was not invited to do, wrote about 
relationships being built, and made myself present in a variety of 
situations where I normally would not be present… To act in a more 
culturally appropriate manner, I would have nodded as I passed people and 
waited for them to invite me to do things. However, if I had done this, I 
may never have been invited (p. 164). 
Similar to Brayboy, I also recognized instances where my insiderness was 
challenged, when parents shared information on their immigrant experiences I often had a 
recorder or took notes. This, of course, is not common practice in routine conversations, 
 60 
and even though I contributed to the dialogue with my own immigrant experiences, 
participants would often ask, “Are you going to use this in your study?” There were 
several situations in which participants embraced me an insider, particularly in 
conversations related to culture and family. There was a clear sense that parents and 
especially Sofia, the Latina family liaison, viewed me as sharing their cultural values and 
behaviors. One instance was when Sofia spoke about her experiences interpreting; she 
explained that it was sometimes difficult to be an interpreter because it was hard to 
separate your emotions. She said “they [school staff] tell me I just have to translate and 
not get involved, but you know how we are in our culture, we can’t be cold”; here Sofia 
referred to a shared understanding that in Latino culture personal interactions are filled 
with emotional investments regardless of context (e.g., workplace). She positioned me as 
an insider; however, in several other interactions Sofia would also position me as an 
outsider. This experience aligns with Thomson and Gunter’s (2011) argument that 
insider–outsider research identities are “continuously shifting” and consequently may be 
of “limited utility” in “discussions of participatory research in schools” (p. 25). However, 
I contend that in my study the insider–outsider binary helps provide deeper insight to 
routine interactions between participants and the researcher. 
Considering my methods of gaining access to the research site through 
administrative channels, many of the parents perceived me as an insider to the school. My 
dual position, as both insider and outsider, created limitations on what realms I could 
access. For example, because parents perceived me as both university researcher and 
school representative, they resisted my attempts to collected data in their homes. On 
 61 
several occasions when I encountered parents in the community, they would ask me 
questions about the school (e.g., What time is the next KP meeting?). On other occasions, 
I would meet parents at the Community Resource Center and they would ask for 
assistance with interpreting, a request I felt wrong denying. The reality was that my daily 
presence in the school and visibility to parents unintentionally positioned me as an 
extension of the school staff, and therefore requests for home visits were uncomfortable 
for immigrant parents.  
This became problematic and consequently forced me to reconsider the decision 
of entering family homes. Although I can only infer, I assumed that parents’ resistance to 
the presence of a “school representative” in their homes indicated the fragile relationship 
between the school–home at Community High. I feared that pushing my request would 
jeopardize the work the school had been doing to build rapport among the community, 
and consequently impact the relationships I had built in the school with staff and parents. 
Second, as a researcher I was aware of the literature surrounding home visits, and how it 
can be perceived as “inspections.” Although projects like Funds of Knowledge (Gonzalez 
et al., 2005) have done incredible work in immigrant homes, as an immigrant myself, I 
am uniquely aware of the anxiety regarding home visits by school officials. For many 
immigrant families, the home space does not reflect traditional expectations of “home 
environment” in U.S. society. With giving access comes at a personal risk to families, 
and my time at the research site was not sufficient to overcome some of these anxieties. 
Although parents were willing and welcomed interactions in the school and community, 
their homes remained a guarded space.  
 62 
Issues on insider–outsider positioning were also present with school staff 
interactions although less problematic. School staff typically introduced me as researcher 
or volunteer during meetings and school events. During personal interactions, staff 
members clearly positioned me as outsider through references to my connections to the 
university and questions about my study. At planning meetings I was more of an insider 
and was an equal participant, staff members listened to my proposed ideas and I was 
included in negotiations and task allocations. Part of this fluid research identity included 
careful management of neutrality. Ergun and Erdemir (2010) explain: 
Concerns related to preserving neutrality stem from scholarly, pragmatic, 
and ethical motivations. There are two main reasons to maintain a certain 
level of distance from the informants. First, although researchers want to 
go native to some extent to grasp the emic perspective, it is important to 
keep a certain level of distance for the sake of not losing their etic insights. 
Second, preserving distance is one of the crucial dimensions of ensuring 
continuing access to conflicting power factions in the field and building a 
trusting relationship with the informants…Preserving neutrality facilitated 
is not an easy task, particularly in settings in which there are strong 
polarizations, dichotomies, and/or conflict. Maintaining a neutral position 
necessitates constant efforts on the researcher’s part to balance attempts to 
become an insider, on one hand, and to preserve the distance, on the other. 
(pp. 25–27) 
Because I was interacting with both school staff and parents it became critical that 
I constantly address issues of neutrality during data collection. I avoided criticism of the 
school during parent interactions, and criticism of parents during school staff interactions. 
Neutrality was essential to building relationships across these two groups.  
The in-between space of insider–outsider I had carved out at the research site also 
provided me with a considerable advantage. Although parents perceived me as indirectly 
part of the school, they were aware I was in fact a university researcher and thus granted 
 63 
me permission to ask questions they may have felt uncomfortable answering directly to 
school staff. Our time together had afforded them the space to be candid about their 
immigrant experiences and critical of the school when necessary. Additionally, the 
duality of insider–outsider identities was also beneficial with my interactions with school 
staff; my knowledge of education allowed for greater equality in discourses, on the one 
hand, and my university researcher status granted me access to their less filtered opinion 
of the school–home interaction, on the other. 
 64 
Chapter 4 
Parent Involvement Expectations: Space and Teacher Access  
In this chapter, I report ways in which parent involvement expectations were 
defined, constructed and communicated at Community High. I illustrate how interactions 
at school served to define parent involvement and consequently how they reinforced 
traditional constructs. At Community High, parent involvement was represented by 
interactions between parents and school staff rather than teachers. This suggests a 
significant oversight in the current literature that traditionally has focused on parent–
teacher relationships when investigating parent involvement.  
What counts as parent involvement has been widely reported in the literature (see 
Chapter 2); however, less is reported on how these expectations for involvement are 
communicated and enacted. At Community High, the staff relied on formal settings, such 
as parent information nights or parent program meetings, to communicate parent 
involvement expectations. In these settings, for example, the staff would directly make 
statements that suggested parent–teacher conference attendance was an important part of 
parent involvement. In some cases, school procedures indicated indirect instructions for 
parent involvement, such as the limited access to teachers and the required procedures for 
scheduling meetings with teachers. Evidence gathered at Community High suggests that 
parent involvement expectations are constructed and communicated during interactions 
with school staff, and potentially impact beliefs of what it means to be an involved parent 
within the U.S. school system.  
 65 
Parent Involvement at Community High 
School events and interactions need to be understood in the context of their 
contested spaces. As Blase (1991) rightfully describes, “schools are complex, 
unpredictable social organizations that are extremely vulnerable to a host of powerful 
external and internal forces. They exist in a vortex of government mandates, social and 
economic pressures, and conflicting ideologies associated with school administrators, 
teachers, students and parents” (p. 1). This was certainly the case at Community High 
where routine interactions among staff reflect miscommunication and tensions, fears of 
layoffs, and budget cuts. Perhaps the most visible issue at the school was concerns with 
budget cuts and layoffs. The school had failed to pass a levy (total amount of money 
collected from property owners of the school district to cover the school district 
requests/costs) for several years, and besides the allocated state expenditure per student, 
they essentially operated on funding received through various grants. The staff and 
Principal Jones often reminded me of the importance of grant funding during our 
conversations. School administrators understood the importance of grant funding sources 
and generally welcomed them into the school as needed supplements to the school’s 
yearly budget. Grants provided additional staff to the school and allowed for the creation, 
implementation, and operation for several special programs (e.g., after school programs 
through First Century grant, and sex education programs). Unfortunately, programs 
provided through grants were temporary because grants typically are provided for 
specific periods of time. Supporting staff salaries in some cases were paid from different 
grant sources; for example, the salary for the bilingual family liaison Sofia came from the 
 66 
school, a Health Center grant, KP funding, and Special Education resources. Sofia, the 
bilingual Spanish Family Liaison, would often joke that “they all pay a small part of my 
salary, but all think I work for them fulltime.”  
Additionally, Sofia felt limited in her ability to build connections with Latino 
parents. She often shared that any of her ideas to engage with Latino parents would have 
to be approved and supervised by Sandra, the other Family Liaison; consequently, if 
Sandra was not available to participate in a parent meeting, it would not take place. 
Because Sofia spoke Spanish and was Latina, most of the Latino parents felt a strong 
connection with her and shared their personal stories and concerns. The KP sessions 
Sofia facilitated would last much longer because parents would stay after to talk and ask 
for help; Sofia and I would often stay at the school until 9 p.m. talking to parents.19 She 
once shared that she thought Sandra was jealous of her time with parents. As more 
parents became aware of Sofia’s presence at the school, more sought her out for 
assistance. As Blase (1991) explains, “division of labor may promote the formation of 
interest groups competing against one another to achieve their common goals. Similarly, 
hierarchical task specialization may create differences among units in an organization on 
a number of salient dimensions, such as levels of power, goals, tasks, language, and 
training” (p. 3). Although Sofia and Sandra facilitated parent interactions with different 
groups of parents, Sandra’s close supervision and required participation in all activities 
organized by Sofia resulted in an additional barrier to Latino parent involvement at the 
school. Consider this scenario: Most of the staff was aware that the school had several 
                                                
19 KP sessions met every Tuesday (High School) and Thursday (Elementary School) from 5:45 p.m.–8 p.m. 
Dinner and childcare were always provided. 
 67 
undocumented students. During the Spanish KP session on financial aid, parents would 
often raise their hands and ask if a social security number was required to apply for 
financial aid. In one of our many private conversations, Sofia explained that the issue of 
undocumented families was particularly concerning during these financial aid nights. 
Sofia recognized the need to provide more relevant information for these families, for 
example, funding options for students without social security numbers. She even pointed 
out that the bilingual KP speaker was now learning about particular situations of parents 
at Community High, and how Latino parents and English speaking parents may have 
different needs regarding financial aid information. In her own words, Sofia explained 
that 
Focusing on them in our situation, because he [presenter] knows that we're 
not all legal, and that there's going to be those questions, those concerns. I 
think now he's scared—I don't know if you noticed, but he very briefly 
went over the Pell grants and stuff because he knows that's for citizens—
kids that have social security numbers; and then he just went down to the 
other portions. If we could keep it so that they know who they're talking to 
because what applies to Sandra's class is not going to be applying to our 
class because it's totally different. (November 10, 2011, private 
conversation) 
Awareness of undocumented families resulted in several discussions about 
bringing in community organizations that specialized in providing information on 
financial aid for undocumented students. Sandra and Sofia spoke about inviting this 
organization; they sought out information and procedures for having them at the school, 
but a year had passed and they still had not visited. I inquired about this issue several 
times and even looked up information for Sofia. But when I would follow up with Sofia 
about having the organization in the school she explained that Sandra had to arrange the 
 68 
visit, and when I asked Sandra she would say she was working on it. Bringing in a 
community organization to speak on pathways to college for undocumented students was 
not a particularly difficult task because there was no cost involved and KP already had an 
established financial aid session. It is hard to explain why this still had not happened. 
The complex structure of schools with hierarchical decision-making procedures 
can make even minor tasks and changes challenging. Data from Community High 
suggest that changes at different levels of the school (e.g., schedule changes, early release 
schedule, and school start/end times) contributed to an increased level of confusion in the 
everyday school experience for students, staff, and parents. Because my data collection 
occurred during a calendar year, rather than a regular academic school year, I had the 
advantage of experiencing firsthand some of these school changes. In my interview with 
Heather, the school guidance counselor, early in the fall semester, we discussed some of 
these changes: 
Heather: … One of the things that's hard here at the school is every year 
there is change in our schedule or how we have classes or the time school 
starts or the time school gets out which is not good for American students 
and it really makes it complicated for new families as they just learn how 
the system works and then every year we change something. 
MA: What changed this year? 
Heather: We're an eight period and our advisory last year was in the 
middle of the day and this year it's at the end of the day and it's not really, 
2 days are advisory, 2 days are intervention and what is intervention. So 
every year we're kind of reteaching everybody what we can offer students 
and how our system works.  
MA: There are different programs, right? Yesterday I was at a meeting 
and they were talking about TAP? So there are new things. 
Heather: And the TAP is a great idea, it's basically lunch detention in a 
creative way {inaudible 32:57} are more possible, so students get tapped 
 69 
by their teachers for not turning in work or doing assessments then they 
have to go up to the lunchroom, but again this has never been a program 
so students go through the lunch line and then we say “sorry, you were 
tapped”. “What a TAP, what's that?” so it seems to be a constant around 
here that we only try things for a year and when they don't work then we 
reshuffle the system, hoping to find that thing that is going to work but 
you need those systems in place for a while to kind of work out the kinks. 
Our population is so mobile, we have so many families coming in and out 
that we really need something that is stagnant for many years versus 
changing little bits. Even little bits causes teachers to go out of whack so 
you can't expect the students and new families to understand what is going 
on. (October 6, 2011, interview) 
The introduction, implementation, and termination of different school programs at 
Community High potentially contributed to parents’ confusion of school procedures. 
During parent meetings and casual interactions with staff in the hallways, I observed 
several times parents asking about new programs and how they impacted their child. It 
was common for parents to bring flyers (sent home from the school) to KP sessions to ask 
for additional explanations about different programs.  
Another example of an important school change was the 6th grade move from the 
elementary school building to the high school. The district was growing and space at the 
elementary school was limited; the district planned to move the 6th grade into Community 
High. I had heard whispers about this plan in the spring when I started the study. When 
the fall semester began, I was told a 6th grade migration committee was formed and the 
school had hired staff to help with the action plan. However, at this point the decision 
was already made. I participated in one of the committees’ planning meetings where they 
discussed the challenges of moving forward with the plan because parents were not 
involved in the decision process. It was clear that part of their role was to facilitate the 
expected resistance of parents. During my final interview with Principal Jones late in the 
 70 
fall semester, I followed up on the issue of the 6th grade migration and the steps the 
school was taking to facilitate the transition. She detailed some of the school procedures 
in initiating the move, and explained the benefits and challenges regarding the issue: 
Principal Jones: … The school district is currently undergoing a transition 
where next year we’ll be offering sixth-grade programming at the high 
school due to space overcrowding at the elementary school. And due to 
the fact that we think the high school has a lot of assets that would be very 
beneficial to sixth graders that the opportunities aren’t available at the 
elementary school that the sixth graders may be ready for. Such as the 
really intense dance program we have here, the theater program, the TV 
studio. A lot of the resources that we have that sixth graders are ready to 
start taking advantage of.  
MA: Mm-hm. 
Principal Jones: So when we—and by we, I mean the district, the school 
district, when the school district first sort of like announced that this was 
the plan, the sixth grade moving to the high school and blah, blah, blah, I 
mean parents were—huge outcry you know. And at first the data 
collection was pretty informal, you know. And we had parents that would 
call and just be like, “I’m not sending my daughter there. Ahh.” And some 
of the urban legends they’ve heard that I still say are untrue about you 
know packs of kids roaming the halls waiting to beat up other kids and 
stuff like that. And that’s been a constant battle in the 7 years I’ve been 
here is just really fighting like those rumors in the community. But what 
we’ve done now is we actually had an informational table at the parent 
conferences at [the elementary school], which you probably saw. 
(December 14, 2011, interview) 
In her remarks, Principal Jones acknowledged that some efforts were made to get 
parents’ input during the decision process through informal surveys. Although the 
response was negative, Principal Jones believed these responses were based on false 
rumors and misinformation about the school. The district decided to approve the move, 
and my understanding was that the 6th grade move was necessary because of space and 
the growing number of students entering the elementary school. In reality the move was 
not really up for discussion, because it had to happen. Principal Jones’s comments 
 71 
suggest that the district felt it would be easier to deal with the aftermath of the decision 
rather than include parents in the process. However as Payne (2008) suggests, “if people 
have some say in what goes on, they are likely to have higher morale, likely to be more 
invested in the business at hand” (p. 43), and in the case of Community High, more likely 
to understand the need for the 6th grade move. My observations suggest that neither the 
principal nor the committee seemed to recognize that parents had valid concerns.  
The school had a surveillance system with cameras throughout the school. During 
my time at the school, I heard several accounts of students being suspended for drug use 
in the school building. Sofia and I had several conversations about her fears of moving 
her son, who was at the elementary school, to Community High because of the presence 
of drugs and gangs. She explained that although her presence at the school would allow 
her to closely supervise her son, she feared the school environment would be a negative 
influence. These concerns were heightened by police at the school, which had a 
designated school police liaison with a reserved parking space at the school lot and also 
an assigned office among the administrative staff. Additionally, several media sources 
like local and state newspapers reported on the issues of teen pregnancy at Community 
High, which had the highest rate in the state. The fears parents perceived were not 
entirely based on false rumors and misinformation.  
School Spaces as Symbolic Representation of Involvement 
As reviewed earlier, school presence is perhaps the most significant indicator of 
parent involvement. School staff and teachers expect parents to attend, for example, 
parent–teacher conferences and school events, and studies have shown that parent 
 72 
involvement is many cases is defined by participation in events within the school 
building (Carreón et al., 2005). At Community High there were several school events that 
staff perceived as required for parents. The following section describes where these 
events took place and details ways in which staff framed participation as symbolic 
representations of involvement. These events were perceived by staff as opportunities for 
parents to learn necessary information about school procedures; the interactions and 
communication during these events contributed to the construction of the parent 
involvement expectations at Community High. 
As a community school, Community High provided some unique and permanent 
spaces for parents. One such space was the Family Resource Room, this room was 
located within the school and was where the Family Liaison’s desks where located. I 
spent a lot of time in the Family Resource Room but rarely saw parents in the room, 
mostly students utilized the space to drop in between classes to speak to Lourdes and 
later to Sandra and Sofia. There was a conference table that was used for small group 
parent meetings. The room also had several racks with information pamphlets and 
brochures; these ranged from information on support for paying your electric bill to 
college access materials. Another space was the Health Center that was also located 
within the school. The year of the study was the first year the clinic was in operation. Of 
all the spaces in the school, the Health Center was certainly one where parents were 
always visibly present. I shadowed Sofia at the center weekly during my time at 
Community High and had the opportunity to meet and interact with several parents there. 
Sofia worked as both the Latino Family Liaison and the Health Center coordinator, and 
 73 
these two positions consistently merged. For example, once a teacher walked into the 
clinic with several Latina students; the teacher was visibly angry and wanted Sofia to 
contact the students’ parents immediately. The students were being disruptive in her 
physical education class, and she wanted parents notified. Once the teacher explained her 
side of the story and left, Sofia listened to the students and took their names and home 
numbers to contact parents. Students also often came to the clinic to discuss school issues 
with Sofia. On one occasion a student came in with a document she needed help 
understanding; it was a truancy notice that required her parents to appear in court. It took 
a long time for Sofia to ease the student’s fear that her undocumented parents would not 
be at risk going to court because of her absence in school. Additionally, the school 
Spanish phone line was directed to Sofia, so she often spent her time resolving parent 
issues in between her duties at the clinic. It was hard for Sofia to separate her two 
positions, and she often mentioned the pressure from the school that she not work on 
school issues at the clinic, and vice versa, because of funding sources. This request was 
practically impossible because she was the only official Spanish bilingual staff member 
that parents could access freely. 
Another important space for school parents was the Community Resource Center, 
located in a different building a few blocks from the high school. The center provided a 
variety of services to the community, including a preschool, Adult Basic Education and 
English as a Second Language classes, computer access, clothing closet, and access to 
county government resources. I often met school parents when I was at the center 
speaking to the staff and observing. The center provided services to both school families 
 74 
and community families attending other schools within the city limits. The center had its 
own designated Family Advocate that provided community resources and service 
assistance to parents. 
The Family Resource Room, Health Center, and Community Resource Center 
were permanent spaces designed to provide needed resources for school parents, and to 
help support the school’s commitment of being a community model school. During the 
study, I had the opportunity to observe in all these spaces and interact with both staff and 
parents. It is certainly my understanding that these spaces provided beneficial resources 
to parents and were a symbolic representation of the school’s commitment to addressing 
the out-of-school needs of families. On one occasion I overhead a parent expressing his 
appreciation for these services, particularly the Health Center, which provided free care 
for students attending the district. In addition to the permanent physical space, 
Community High also provided a variety of school events for parents. Parent presence at 
these events was part of the school’s expectation of parent involvement. This was 
evidenced by the frequency with which staff members mentioned school sponsored 
events during my interviews and casual conversations. The following section will detail 
the main events that were framed by staff as indicators of parent involvement. 
Cultural and Family Nights  
I first heard about the cultural and family nights from Ms. Lourdes during the first 
2 months of the study. She had been with the school since 2007 but found a job elsewhere 
and left early on in the study. I spent considerable time with Ms. Lourdes during the 2 to 
3 months before she left. I shadowed her twice a week and had the opportunity to 
 75 
interview her twice both during her time at the school and after she left. Ms. Lourdes 
worked in the Family Resource Room and her position was funded through the 21st 
Century grant. She described the Cultural and Family Nights during our final interview in 
late April, 
When I did have those family nights when we first started was just 
listening to their [parents] perspectives. Like I remember we did this Asian 
family night and we had about seven fathers and mothers there. The 
majority of time was they felt like they weren’t included in the school; 
they felt like their voices or concerns weren’t being listed in the school.  
I remember doing this native family night and only like a mom and a 
grandma came. But just listening to their story about their issues in the 
community. Just being that listening ear and again listening to that and 
really taking into consideration how they’re feeling. Even the Latino 
parents, listening to them they’re like we want more programs, we want 
more nights they’re going to talk about these issues and nights where 
we’re going to get together like this and eat food and what not.  
So again it was just more of me just listening and taking it in and really 
taking into consideration like this is what they’re feeling, this is what 
they’re saying, so when that second phase of family night came around 
when they said that they’d never met the principal or they want to have 
questions answered, I brought [the principal] in for the second time. 
Granted not a lot of them came but at least it was able to bring that out and 
it was like okay here’s the person you can talk to or let’s meet the 
principal, this is what she looks like. (April 21, 2011, interview)  
Ms. Lourdes described these nights as a gathering of parents, aimed at providing 
them an opportunity to interact and build networks with each other and a school 
representative. Mainly, it was about providing parents with a space where their voices 
were heard. She took pride in providing this space and following up on parents’ requests, 
like inviting the principal to the next family night event once she learned several parents 
had never met the principal. Recognizing that parents needed this space, according to Ms. 
Lourdes, took considerable time, and she explained that her ideas of what these nights 
 76 
should be were a result of years of information gathering in the community and 
interactions with parents. When I asked her to reflect on the process of organizing these 
cultural nights, Ms. Lourdes shared: 
Yes, in the beginning yeah, when I did the family nights. And so I 
remember the beginning, that was my, the main focus like going out and 
seeing what was around this community. Because it’s like how can you be 
this resource when you don’t know about this community? So I ended up 
going to the community center, talking to them, getting more information, 
just kind of seeing what’s around, and just asking students and staff. 
Because a lot of staff live [here] too. And just seeing what’s around here 
like how is this community, you know, how is it connected to the school 
and what does that look like. So I remember just the beginning part was 
just more getting that information like what is this community, what’s the 
history. (April 21, 2011, interview) 
Ms. Lourdes’s time going out and learning about the community before initiating 
the family nights gave her an opportunity to build personal connections. Through these 
community interactions she identified a need, a space for parents to be heard. Under her 
leadership, the nights were parent focused and she even included parents in the planning 
of nights:  
Like we had this Latino couple from the family from our first Latino 
family night they got involved, we had them do activities and they got to 
share a lot of their stories or their concerns. After that any issues like both 
of them, mom and dad, were like we want to be involved to help plan the 
next one and I was like great. So we kept in contact, we planned the next 
one. Their idea that winter was just to have a night where we just came 
together and just had food and music and just come together so we get to 
know [each other]. I was like we did that. I coordinated with the help of 
the receptionist we coordinated a night just to do that and it was really fun. 
Like it was a really big success. It was their idea, do you know what I 
mean. (April 21, 2011, interview) 
However, this work that apparently took years to build was often times labeled 
unsuccessful by school staff because of poor attendance. As Ms. Lourdes explained: 
 77 
Yeah. And I think that kind of falls into that parent involvement and that 
parent expectation. I felt like Community High too was all about numbers, 
numbers, numbers. Because every time I had a night they’re like oh how 
many people and how big was it. And again, if you’re reaching out, if one 
parent comes it’s better than none. Like you’re making a difference in a 
family; you’re providing that space and that availability for them to ask 
questions and for them to get their questions answered and to hear their 
concerns and take it into consideration. You’re making a difference right 
there.  
I remember we had our African family night and it was pretty decent. We 
had a very decent number of families come out. And to someone, when I 
walked into the office, usually when I come in for work we have a 
partnership there and someone was like oh how did your family night go? 
I’m like it went real well; we had a good amount of people. She’s like oh 
really? She said so and so said it wasn’t really a success; you didn’t have a 
lot of people. And I was just like what; like why would you say something 
like that? (April 21, 2011, interview) 
Ms. Lourdes was well aware of the work it took to achieve this level of trust with 
parents and what she labeled a successful cultural and family night program. However, 
most schools that receive grant funding are required to report outcomes. Although Ms. 
Lourdes struggled to understand the school’s focus on attendance, the reality is that most 
grants and educational funding are connected to the number of individuals served. During 
a meeting I attended with the First Century grant coordinator at the school, she shared 
with the group the documentation and reporting associated with the grant that had to 
account for every student participating in the various programs they offered. 
Additionally, at the KP program meetings parents were required to sign in each night 
they attended. Enrollment in the KP program was closely monitored, and the coordinator 
Sandra was concerned in the fall when enrollment had significantly dropped.20 The focus 
                                                
20 In the 2010-2011 academic year when I started my study the KP program had graduated close to 150 
parents. In the fall of the 2011-2012 academic year enrollment in the program was down significantly at 
less than 50 parents. 
 78 
on numbers was symptomatic of larger issues of educational accountability that did not 
consider the process of building personal relationships with individual families at a local 
school.  
Nevertheless, Ms. Lourdes spoke passionately about the program as a first step in 
the right direction, and maintaining the focus of these nights on parents in her perspective 
was the appropriate way to build parent involvement within the school. Once she left in 
the middle of the spring 2011 semester, the program lost this significant component. The 
family nights are now framed as opportunities for parents to gain needed school 
information.  
Through the suggestion of an Anglo21 parent during a KP session, the nights were 
renamed Multicultural Night in the beginning of the fall 2011 semester in an attempt to 
welcome more parents and encourage cross-cultural interactions among parents. As I 
participated in the planning meeting for the first fall event, the staff suggested that it 
should be formatted as an informational session. The plan was to invite several staff 
members to speak at the event and introduce their services to parents, explain their roles 
within the school, and answer questions. The event looked and felt quite different from 
what Ms. Lourdes had described. Because of the need for interpreters, I noticed that the 
event isolated parents by ethnic groups and actually created a barrier to cross-cultural 
interactions. The invited staff only interacted with each other and parents had no 
opportunities to engage one on one with them. As my field notes reflect: 
                                                
21 I use the term Anglo to refer to nonminority parents at the Common Ground school district. This is the 
term used by immigrant parents, which I decided to use mainly for the purposes of consistency. 
 79 
I arrived early to meet with Sandra and help set up the room. Because of 
the after school programs we didn’t get into the room until 5 p.m. The 
food was ordered from Sam’s and set out on a table. The media center, 
where we met looks clean and organized for the event. Signs on the wall 
directing parents from different ethnic groups to certain locations in the 
room, because translators would be used. Several staff members began 
arriving, about 9 invited guests/staff members are present, they stand 
around together and talk. They then sat at a table together and continue 
interacting. Parents also begin to arrive, 3 different Hmong families sat at 
a table on one side of the media center. Latino parents sat at another table 
in other side of the media center. Translators for each group. (October 5, 
2011, field notes) 
In essence, parents arrived, listened to 2 hours of information, and left. Parents 
only spoke when asking questions to presenters. There were no opportunities for 
socializing, and the idea of a night where parents would come together to share food, 
listen to music, and engage in conversations seemed at a distant past given the new 
structure of the event. A similar situation occurred at Community High with the 
Knowledgeable Parent Program, which was initially promoted as a space for parents but 
later became dominated by the school’s agenda.  
Knowledgeable Parent Program (KP) 
Community High had been awarded a School Improvement Grant (SIG) and 
therefore received third-party recommendations for fund allocations. One area 
recommended was to improve parent involvement, which the school interpreted as parent 
education. In the year of the study, the school had initiated the Knowledgeable Parent 
(KP) program to help improve parent involvement. As Principal Jones highlighted in her 
interview: 
… after we were identified as a school that was persistently low achieving 
an independent agency was brought in to do sort of like an outside 
evaluation of our school. And parent engagement was one of the factors 
 80 
that they cited us on… And so that’s why we did dedicate and set aside—
allocate some of our school improvement [SIG] money that came from the 
grant to making sure that we funded Sandra’s position so we had a full-
time parent engagement coordinator. We were very careful about the 
selection of who we hired for that position and then again getting the KP 
class going and off the ground. (December 14, 2011 interview) 
The KP classes became the hub for all things parent at Community High. It 
became the venue for any access to school parents. This quickly transformed the KP 
classes from their original goal of helping to support parents to a space for school 
announcements and information sharing. I attended 4 KP programs offered to high school 
and middle school parents; each lasted 7 weeks. The staff recruited parents to attend the 
KP program through school flyers and individual calls to each school parent. The 
program also received local attention in the media, and both a TV news segment and 
newspaper article promoted the program during the spring. The format of the program 
was to follow a curriculum (closely adapted from the national PIQE22); this included 
materials that were given to participants. The program was run my school staff 
facilitators whom introduced weekly topics and facilitated group activities aimed at 
helping parents understand general school procedures and their roles in helping support 
the educational achievement of their children. One of the initial sessions I attended during 
my first KP in the fall included a powerful parent group activity. Parents were given 
information about graduation and incarceration rates for different ethnic minorities. 
Parents would then write their children’s name on the board and have to decide which 
ones would graduate. This was a powerful activity, which engaged parents in 
                                                
22 Parent Institute for Quality Education is a program out of California that provides a class curriculum to 
help education parents about the U.S. educational system and how to best help support their children’s 
education. 
 81 
conversations, not only about school but also social barriers for minority achievement. 
The first program maintained a close focus on the KP curriculum, and the majority of the 
session time was spent reading handouts and engaging in group discussions. The 
facilitators followed closely the instructions of the curriculum and spent considerable 
time on the activities such as the graduation–incarceration exercise. There were a few 
invited speakers in the first KP program, but by the final program I attended, speakers 
became the main focus of the sessions. The curriculum materials were provided as 
handouts, and time for group discussion became nonexistent. 
Additionally, the amount of information provided to parents was substantial. 
Community High adopted a community school model that currently had over 100 
partnerships and an overwhelming number of programs offered through these 
partnerships. Although the school made use of several communication strategies to 
announce programs and services—website announcements, newsletters, electronic 
billboard in front of the school, personal messages from the teacher to parents, flyers, 
brochures, posters in the hallways, etc.—it was hard to keep track of everything, and not 
all the information was provided bilingually. As a researcher, it was challenging to 
collect and code all this data because of the high volume. For example, a catalogue of 
resources titled Northwest Community Resources Guide had 12 categories (e.g., culturally 
specific programs, emergency services, education, and health care services) with over 20 
resources listed per category. Parent meetings and the KP program sessions became a 
space to hand out information and showcase all the partnerships and resources the school 
had available. 
 82 
Nevertheless, participation in the KP program and Multicultural Nights became 
the badge for parent involvement at Community High. Parents that participated were 
praised and recognized within the school. During the KP graduation ceremonies, the 
superintendent Mr. Marvin often expressed these sentiments, “I have worked in education 
for 42 years, and I have never been so proud than how I am of these parents graduating 
from this program…We thank you and your children will thank you.” Both the 
elementary school23 principal and Principal Jones at two separate KP graduations 
reinforced these sentiments: 
Next the elementary school principal spoke, he begins with a story about a 
parent requesting a meeting. He says he was not able to attend the 
meeting, but he asked the other staff how the meeting went… the staff said 
that unlike the past when parents were angry and mad about the school, 
these parents were calm, collected, and knowledgeable; I asked what 
happened and the staff said KP…. So I thank all of you for your 
participation in this important program. (May 17, 2011, KP graduation 
field notes). 
**** 
Principal Jones spoke, I am proud to be the principal of Community High 
and the mother of two “real” children. We are making history because of 
you! This is our second KP graduation. I would like to share with you 
some important pieces of information to show how important it is that you 
are part of your children’s education. Studies show that 70% of the time 
students are outside of school, spend time outside of school, so we believe 
that you are crucial to the success of your children. Researchers have 
identified trends, that when parents are involved in school students have 
higher grades and higher graduation rates, better school attendance, 
increased attendance, and better self-esteem. Higher parent participation 
reduces violence, drug use, less suspensions from school, etc. Parent 
involvement is more relevant than SES, in fact twice as important. I hope 
these facts help you understand why we are thankful for your involvement, 
and how it’s important that you are involvement, next time I see you at a 
                                                
23 Although KP classes where different for the elementary school and the high school the graduation 
ceremony was together. 
 83 
graduation will be in the football field when your children graduate from 
Community High. (March 29, 2011, KP graduation field) 
These statements illustrate the high symbolic value placed in participation in the 
KP program. However, the prescriptive nature of program created a barrier for inclusion 
and consideration of parent’s voices. As discussed previously, the agenda was set by 
school staff and often left no room for parent input. When parents attempted to resist the 
agenda and introduce their own discussion topics, the staff quickly pushed back by 
guiding parents back to the academic agenda and program curriculum. An interesting 
example of this was during the session in preparation for the principal night. Parents were 
asked to come up with a list of questions that would be given in advance to the principal 
to prepare for the principal Q&A night in the KP program. Please refer to Appendix A for 
the full list of original questions parents created. 
Reviewing these questions provides insight into what parents valued in the 
opportunity to interact with the principal (see Appendix A). Most of the questions related 
to student safety, almost half of the questions were related to gangs and drugs use, and 
several addressed issues of racism and discrimination. The questions suggest that these 
issues did not go unnoticed by parents, and here they intended to take the opportunity to 
discuss them with the principal. However, as the facilitators reviewed the questions and 
eliminated a few (parents were told they could only ask 10 questions), the 9 questions 
related to drugs and gangs became 1 in the final draft. Parents were also encouraged to 
ask “some academic questions” which meant questions about the curriculum or classes 
offered at the school. Although parents did ask how low test scores affected their 
children, the facilitators suggested more questions that highlighted the new IB 
 84 
curriculum. The following week during the principal Q&A, the focus was on promoting 
school programs and the advantages of having the IB curriculum. The question related to 
drugs and gangs was answered by highlighting the relationship with the local police, the 
presence of Mr. Edwards (Behavior Dean), and calls for parents to report any incidents 
observed. Questions related to the school persistently having low test scores were 
answered by highlighting the achievements of the school as an Art Magnet and IB school.  
Although the cultural nights and KP program played a significant role in the 
parent involvement expectations at Community High, attendance of parent–teacher 
conferences was perhaps the greatest symbol of involvement. As reviewed earlier, many 
schools perceive parent–teacher conference as the ultimate indicator of parent 
involvement. The staff at Community High mentioned conference attendance often, and 
explained the value of parent–teacher interactions during conferences. However, as the 
data suggest, perceiving parent–teacher conferences as the holy grail of parent 
involvement can be problematic. The following section details the parent–teacher 
conference experience at Community High.  
Parent–Teacher Conferences 
During my time at Community High I had the opportunity to participate in two 
parent–teacher conference events24, one of which I served as a Spanish interpreter. For 
most schools in the country, conferences twice a year is standard—once in the fall and 
once in the spring. In many cases, like at Community High, conferences are the only 
structured opportunity parents have to interact with teachers. Often, the parent–teacher 
                                                
24 Community High held only two parent–teacher conference within an academic year, I attended the 
maximum number of conferences during the study. 
 85 
conference is what defines parental involvement for most teachers and school 
administrators, and attendance by parents is expected. Ironically, most immigrant parents 
are simply unaware of the importance of this form of presence and the consequences of 
their absence (e.g., perceptions of disinterest of parents by teachers and staff). Even 
though parent–teacher conferences are highly valued as a visible form of parent 
involvement, such events only happen twice a year. As Mr. Edwards the Behavior Dean 
explains, 2 conferences a year does not seem nearly enough, “Make one [conference] 2 
weeks before the end of every quarter, we have 4 quarters. You increase the number of 
contact with parents by 2, because we only do it twice a year now, which is not enough” 
(December 14, 2011 interview). Mr. Edwards suggests that schools should try to increase 
this valued interaction. Certainly doubling the amount of conferences a year would 
impact teacher contracts, and may not be as simple as Mr. Edwards suggests. Community 
High held 2 days of conferences each semester with day and evening hours. The evening 
conference was held in the school gym; teachers would roll their chairs filled with 
materials through the hallways. Desks were neatly arranged in rows. At the front door of 
the gym, a large desk was set up where parents could pick up student report cards and 
class schedules. Food was provided in the cafeteria. The conferences had several 
interpreters available for parents (e.g., Spanish, Hmong, and Somali). Due to the large 
number of Spanish speaking families, I served as an additional interpreter during the 
second conference. Parents would line up to meet with individual teachers, and direct 
contact between parent and teacher would usually last around 5 minutes. As an interpreter 
I had the opportunity to experience these interactions firsthand. The interaction consisted 
 86 
of a casual and polite exchange, where teachers briefly explained their content area, their 
personal connection to the student, and then would say, “Do you have any questions for 
me?” Parents usually responded by asking how students behaved in the classroom and if 
they were doing well in class. This brief encounter had the added pressure of a line of 
other waiting parents. Conference days were busy and it was clear that Community High 
reflected a typical urban high school setting, highly diverse parent population with a lack 
of diversity among the teaching staff. National data indicate that, although 40% of 
students in public schools are categorized as minorities, the minority teachers only 
account for 13% of the teaching force (Fenwick, 2001). 
Attendance at parent–teacher conferences was frequently mentioned in formal 
interviews with school staff and parent meetings as an indicator of parent involvement. 
However, the current format of conferences brings into question the true meaning of this 
brief contact. Although teachers and staff perceived conferences as an opportunity for 
parents to have meaningful interactions with teachers, the reality is that the current 
structure of parent–teachers conferences at Community High does not facilitate 
meaningful interactions. Take for example how Mr. Joe, the social studies teacher, 
describes conferences: 
Conferences I love because I truly love talking. I’m definitely a talker and 
I truly do enjoy speaking with these students’ parents, guardians and I’ve 
met the grandparents and the whole spectrum and I really love doing that, 
but I think, and many teachers will agree, it’s not always the parents that 
you need to see at the conferences who show up. It’s not that you don’t 
want to talk to your A students’ parents, because you do, but you really 
wish that some of those D and F students would have their folks come in. 
You can have really meaningful conversations on that front as well. (May 
11, 2011, interview) 
 87 
It was difficult to understand how the 5-minute interactions at conferences would 
produce the “really meaningful conversations” Mr. Joe spoke of during his interview. His 
statement potentially speaks to the true advantage of conference attendance, which could 
be to fulfill the school’s expectation of parent involvement.  
School Presence as Parent Involvement Expectation 
The importance of parent involvement was a frequent topic of discussion among 
staff at Community High. They labeled the school as in need of more parent involvement, 
and usually highlighted the lack of a formal parent group such as a PTA, attendance at 
school events and conferences as main indicators. School presence at Community High, 
like most high schools across the country, was the most recognized and valued form of 
parent involvement. The parent involvement expectation at Community High were 
communicated in spaces where parents were present, or expected to be present, for 
example at the KP sessions, multicultural nights and parent–teacher conferences.  
In understanding parent involvement expectations, data from Community High 
suggest a strong association with school presence and interactions with school staff. 
When asked about parent involvement, a typical response from staff included school 
presence, as exemplified by Mr. Jorge one of the guidance counselors: 
Well, we wish there was more parent involvement here than there is. It’s 
difficult to oftentimes get parents involved to the extent that we would like 
them to get involved. We have nights here. We have Latino nights where 
we invite all the Latino parents in and we do a presentation about the 
school and about opportunities for their kids here. We have a Latino night 
and we have a night for the Asian parents and we have a night for the 
African … We’ve tried to do some of those things and we have – for the 
older kids, particularly for the seniors – we have financial aid nights and 
college fairs and we try to bring the parents in as much as we can. 
 88 
And it’s always very disappointing to me that we can’t get more parents 
involved than we do…. Sometimes it’s sad but we really have a difficult 
time getting the parents more involved in their children’s educations. 
(May 24, 2011, interview) 
As Mr. Jorge indicates in his statement, parent involvement for many of the staff 
was constructed as parents attending school functions—particularly ones designed for 
parents, such as the cultural family nights. Low attendance at these events was framed as 
low parent involvement within the school. This substantiates Mrs. Lourdes’s earlier 
statement regarding the parent nights, which expressed the school’s perception of failure 
when the nights had low attendance. At Community High, not only did the staff expect 
presence, they were frustrated when parents did not show up. Consider the remarks by 
Principal Jones when she described the absence of parents at the school during a 
Department of Education visit, “…last week we had the department of education out here 
for a monitoring visit for a school improvement grant. The monitors wanted to speak to 
parents…. only 1 showed up that morning.” Principal Jones described how they had 
recruited several parents to attend the meeting with the Department of Education 
representatives, and shared her disappointment of the turnout. Because the focus on 
presence was highly valued at the school, few staff recognized other ways in which 
parents could be involved. Ms. Lourdes, the Family Liaison when I first started my 
research, and as a Latina female had a different understanding of presence: 
Mrs. Lourdes: … they wanted to do these action teams to get more parents 
involved because someone mentioned I don’t see the parents at the 
basketball game, you know. So and so’s parents have never been to a 
basketball game and blah blah blah blah… So I explained to them, I told 
them like my parents only came to one or two of my athletic games and I 
played sports junior high through high school, it didn’t make them not 
involved… So by saying a parent not coming to a sporting event and not, 
 89 
that doesn’t label them as a parent that’s not involved. And I even said that 
you have to, if a parent’s making sure a student’s coming to school, that’s 
parent involvement right there. Just the little things to make this kid come 
to school. I go you don’t know what these families, some of these families 
come from households where the parents are working all the time, it 
doesn’t mean that they’re less involved in their school…(April 21, 2011, 
interview) 
As Ms. Lourdes suggests in her alternative frame of parent involvement, the staff 
expectation of school presence was not based on a clear understanding of the realities of 
families. The staff often mentioned to me during interviews and informal conversations, 
the several events hosted throughout the year to encourage parent presence in the school 
to illustrate their attempts to reach out to parents. Perceptions of the lack of parent 
involvement by staff at Community High potentially reflect their personal experiences 
and understanding of involvement. Consider some of the responses staff gave when asked 
to describe their understanding of parent involvement: 
Mrs. Heather (Guidance Counselor) Helping their students pick classes. 
Helping when they have questions, knowing who to contact and 
contacting the person. Showing up and saying I want a meeting with this 
teacher, my kid's having a problem. If they're noticing things at home that 
they think are also going on at school that they're contacting us. Being a 
part of the learning about the college process and being an active part of 
that process with their child. Taking them on college tours. Coming to the 
college and informational nights that we hold. Being part of PTA, I don't 
even think we have a PTA here but being part of some type of 
organization at school where they get to help make decisions. Being an 
active role, almost like they go to school with their kid. Not really, not that 
I want a helicopter parent, there's a really fine line with that.  
***** 
Mrs. Elizabeth (Social Worker): In a school environment parental 
involvement is relationships with the people that work with your kids. So 
if I’m a parent and I send my kid to school, do I know who to call if my 
kid were sick, if my kid was failing grades, if the teachers were not 
reasoning to my kids’ needs, who could I pick up the phone and call. I 
mean that’s, to me, is being involved enough to know that if I needed 
 90 
something for my child I could call someone and get that. That to me is 
parental involvement. 
These statements illustrate traditional expectations of parent involvement, which 
place high value on school presence and interactions with school staff. For both Mrs. 
Heather and Mrs. Elizabeth, these descriptions of involvement are reported as simple 
tasks and acceptable expectations for any school parent. However, for many immigrant 
families, these simple tasks present significant barriers. Take, for example, Mrs. 
Elizabeth’s expectation that parents pick up the phone and call the school: For many 
immigrant families, this act is extremely complex because of language barriers. Simply 
picking up the phone is not an option when schools have limited or no bilingual staff. 
Additionally, Mrs. Heather’s expectation that parents help students pick classes and apply 
for college is unrealistic when many immigrant parents are unfamiliar with the U.S. 
educational systems or pathways to higher education. Constructing parent involvement 
this way only creates an environment where immigrant parents will fail to meet 
expectations and consequently be perceived as uncaring or deficient (Whitehouse & 
Colvin, 2001). In some cases the staff was aware that traditional views of parent 
involvement needed to be revaluated and adjusted when working immigrant and minority 
families. Principal Jones seemed to recognize the need to reimagine parent involvement 
with immigrant and minority families at the school in her remarks regarding parent 
involvement: 
Mrs. Jones: Parental involvement can mean that they just are really on top 
of what’s going on here because we do a good job sending out newsletters 
and postcards and mailings that they read. It can be a parent who’s on the 
computer every day checking their kid’s grades and attendance. It can be a 
parent who’s at all the athletic events or all the music events. It can be a 
 91 
parent that’s on committees. But that’s, to me, a sort of outdated or at this 
point mythical definition of parent involvement is the classic like PTA 
parent. I think that there’s about 18,000 different ways to be an involved 
parent and we just have to help parents redefine some of those new ways 
to be involved and actually give them permission that that’s okay. You 
know you’re working two jobs, you have other kids, if you’re not going to 
be an involved parent by being on the PTA or whatnot, that’s fine. There 
are still a million other ways you can be an involved parent and be just as 
supportive of your child’s education as if you were, you know, holding a 
place on a committee. And that’s not to disrespect or to put down the 
importance of committee membership and committee attendance, but 
that’s just to me one way of many to be an involved parent.  
Principal Jones acknowledged that traditional parent involvement expectations 
that only focused on school presence were outdated; however, I did not witness any signs 
of a reimagined approach. In fact, the data from Community High provide evidence that 
traditional approaches are still very much part of the school’s expectation. However, 
updating the established ideologies can often be challenging, as we notice from Mrs. 
Lourdes’ experience when she attempted to define parent involvement more broadly by 
including the little things (e.g., making sure kids come to school). Mrs. Lourdes was one 
of the few Latina staff members and, although she often challenged the established parent 
involvement expectations, I failed to recognize any result in her efforts. Parent presence 
was unquestionably still very much a part of parent involvement at Community High. 
Understanding the Role of Space in Parental Involvement Constructs 
My time at Community High suggests that where matters. Space played a 
significant role in identifying the attitudes and ideologies surrounding parent involvement 
at Community High. Understanding the role of space in parent involvement provides a 
window into how parent involvement expectations are communicated and enacted. It was 
clear that Community High created several spaces to welcome parents into the school, 
 92 
such as the family nights and KP program, but these were spaces controlled by the 
school. Consequently, immigrant parents entering these spaces had limited power to 
impact the message or forms of engagement. My experience at Community High 
reinforces what other scholars have already suggested when school’s set the agenda for 
such interactions (Fine, 1993). Immigrant parents’ potential lack of understanding of the 
U.S. educational system and language barriers positioned them, within these formal 
school spaces, as perceptually deficient. In theorizing about parent involvement 
expectations at Community High, which value school presence and support, it is 
important to understand the role of social and cultural capital in constructing deficit 
descriptions of families at the school. DiMaggio (1982) highlighted that there are specific 
forms of capital that provide students and families with access to needed information for 
successful school outcomes. Some of the significant school capital scholars have 
identified as influential to school success are: socioeconomic statues (Lareau, 2000); 
cultural identity (Valdés, 1996); perceptions of the purpose of education (Dyson, 2001); 
and English proficiency (Blackledge, 2001). These scholars suggest that having or 
accessing this valued school capital allows families the advantage of being perceived as 
caring and supportive of their child’s education. Consequently, when families fail to 
access or embody the valued school capital they are described as lacking or deficient. As 
Whitehouse and Colvin (2001) explain, “marginalized families that are considered 
diverse with regard to language, culture, ethnicity and class are particularly vulnerable to 
representations grounded in a deficit discourse. Diversity gives way to difference when 
we understand and represent these families as lacking” (p. 212). Understanding these 
 93 
theoretical frameworks allows us to better understand the reality at Community High. 
The findings at Community High revealed that school presence and support for school 
administrative decisions were accepted as valued, when immigrant families failed to 
embody this capital by not attending school events and meetings or questioning 
administrative decisions (e.g., 6th grade class move to the high school building) they were 
perceived as disinterested or disruptive.  
In addition, the population at Community High had changed significantly in the 
last 3 decades, as presented earlier the school is one of the most diverse high schools in 
the state, the school continued to rely on traditional approaches for parent involvement. 
This approach to parent involvement only reinforced a deficit model of working with 
immigrant families, where schools believe the challenges of working with families can be 
overcome by teaching them school expectations and procedures for involvement and 
participation (Edwards & Warin, 1999). As earlier descriptions suggest, Community 
High adopted a one-way model of parent involvement, where several events were 
organized to provide parents with school information, understanding of the school 
culture, and accepted forms of parent behavior (e.g., KP program). Certainly the idea that 
parents take on a supportive role rather than participate in decision-making is not unique 
to Community High. Auerbach (2010) also reported from her work with school 
administrators that most principals welcomed and valued parent participation but were 
less welcoming of what they called professional parents that took on more active roles in 
councils (p. 740). In many schools, parental involvement is approached with mixed 
messages. Although most schools seek parent support and expect their participation in 
 94 
school events, this usually does not imply an invitation to question the school or take on 
roles of decision makers. Although scholars have argued that meaningful parent 
participation can only come as a result of comprehensive parent participation at all levels 
of the school (Anderson, 1998), in most cases school administrators rarely welcome or 
desire the presence of professional parents. My findings suggest that potentially at 
Community High parent involvement expectations positioned parents in supportive roles, 
such as attending events like the family fun night and acceptance of the 6th grade move. I 
speculate that parent involvement was welcomed, and highly desired by staff, as long as 
it followed school’s expectations for involvement. 
The expectation of presence at Community High, through the attendance of 
school events, was not surprising. In their study with Latino immigrant parents in two 
elementary schools, Carreón et al. (2005) suggests that “parental engagement needs to be 
understood through parents’ presence in schooling, regardless of whether that presence is 
in a formal school space or in more personal, informal spaces, including those created by 
parents themselves” (p. 465). Most studies that report on parent involvement support the 
understanding that parents and school staff have differing notions of school presence 
(Lareau, 2000; Valdés, 1996). At Community High, the expectations of presence also 
suggested the staff’s lack of understanding of the cultural and social reality of parents in 
the school. Rather than reflecting on school practices to engage parents, most of the staff 
blamed parents for failing to be involved and attend school events. As Bourdieu (1986) 
recognized through his theoretical constructs of social and cultural capital, schools 
become spaces where social inequalities are reproduced. The staff at Community High 
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had normalized the forms of involvement based on traditional notions of parent 
involvement. As Bourdieu (1986) explains with his theory of cultural capital, schools 
possess their own set of capital that are recognized and valued, and require students and 
families to “activate” in order to have a successful schooling experience. At Community 
High the efforts to reach out to immigrant parents were focused on changing parents; 
providing parents with what the school viewed as necessary information to conform to 
acceptable parent behavior. In essence, parent initiatives reinforced school norms and left 
little room for parents to negotiate their own interests within the school. 
Understanding the role of space in parent involvement expectations also provides 
an opportunity to understand the ability of individuals, such as immigrant parents, to 
access and embody capital and access the benefits of membership in closure group 
(Coleman, 1988). For example, the family nights were originally initiated to encourage 
minority parent participation, and provide welcoming spaces for the diverse families that 
existed within the school community. However, it seemed that the only space where 
parents were once the focus had quickly become another venue to provide scripted school 
information. These nights initially had been opportunities for parents to access a social 
capital that would grant membership in valued closure groups (Coleman, 1988). As the 
comments from Mrs. Lourdes suggest, the night was perceived by parents as an 
opportunity to build networks with each other and some of the school staff. The informal 
environment favored conversations where trust and support were achieved without 
predesigned strategies. Additionally, the focus on attendance by the school was 
frustrating to Mrs. Lourdes; she believes gaining trust among diverse parent communities 
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was significant even with small numbers. For Mrs. Lourdes, entry and acceptance started 
with only one parent. Some scholars support Mrs. Lourdes beliefs of building trust as a 
first step, “high-quality human relationships are strongly predictive of whether or not a 
school can gather itself together to get better” (Payne, 2008). As Blase (1991) explains, 
schools deal with a variety of external forces including government mandates that impact 
their daily operations. Therefore, understanding parent involvement within a school 
context requires understanding of how different individuals and agencies within the 
institution influence and impact each other. Nevertheless, in practice schools need to 
report numbers and little consideration is given to the potential of one individual to 
impact an entire community.  
The KP sessions were also being transformed and now reflected a stale and 
traditional embodiment of parent roles, by positioning them as passive receivers of 
information. Where once parents felt ownership of the space, now the school had 
reframed the nights to push their own agendas and valued forms of involvement. My 
feeling during the early sessions of the KP program was that parents were building a 
powerful understanding of how they could support each other and create the change 
needed for all their children to graduate. However, the school staff agendas became the 
curriculum and parent discussions quickly vanished through the inclusion of more invited 
speakers. The belief that parents lacked needed information to properly support their 
children and the school, failed to recognize the school’s lack of information about parents 
and their backgrounds. Several scholars have reported on the important resources parents 
can bring to school (Auerbach, 2010; Gonzalez et al., 1995); however, at Community 
 97 
High there were no informational sessions for school staff to learn about the vast 
resources parents had.  
Other studies have reported similar findings of schools essentially attempting to 
hijack parent spaces. Delgado-Gaitan’s (1991) study with Spanish-speaking parents in a 
California school district illustrates how a school presents and promotes involvement can 
clash with the realities of what parents experience during engagement. Her field notes on 
a parent meeting reflect the dynamics of parent–school interactions:  
The principal took the floor again and recommended that the group 
become a fund-raising organization to help the school purchase 
instructional materials because the school district was low in funds. The 
parents, however, quickly protested about their group being relegated to a 
fund-raising group (p. 37).  
Here Delgado-Gaitan documents an interaction where parents came together and 
organized a group with differing goals from school administrators. Although the group 
was welcomed and encouraged, when interactions with administrators occurred, the 
message was that parent involvement include fundraising activities. Parents in her study 
resisted and maintained their original position as a group providing a “support system for 
each other” rather than advancing the priorities of schools. What is significant is that 
school staff discourses that promote reimagined parent involvement initiatives 
nevertheless continue to reinforce traditional approaches during the implementation 
process. It became clear to me that at Community High the school staff perceived the lack 
of parent involvement as lack of school information; thus, if parents knew more about the 
school and what it provided, parents would become more involved. Consequently, the 
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purpose of interactions between staff and parents was one of information giving, from 
staff to parents. 
Another important example illustrated by my experience in the KP program was 
how staff perceived parents attending the sessions. Participation in the program, and 
access to this important closure group provided significant capital to parents. As detailed 
earlier, participation in programs such as the KP program granted parents the status of 
being supportive, of both their children and the school. Lareau and Horvat (1999) have 
suggested that parents perceived as supporting the school are accepted as “good” and 
those that resist are viewed as “problematic” (Carreón et al., 2005). Principal Jones 
earlier remarks during the KP graduation made a connection between parent participation 
in the KP program and student graduation. Her statement highlights parent roles and 
responsibility within the educational achievement of their children, and communicates 
the school’s expectation of accepted forms of involvement. Additionally, by attaching her 
statement to references to “research” Principal Jones brings unquestioned authority to her 
message, one that implies parents are significantly responsible for their children’s school 
success. However, it simultaneously ignores the well-documented research on 
institutionalized disadvantages minorities face within the school system (Lareau, 2000; 
Ogbu, 2003; Valdés, 1996; Zhou & Bankston III, 1994). For example, Minnesota public 
schools have persistently had one of the largest achievement gaps in the nation. Although 
Minnesota schools rank among the top nationwide, the reality is that students of color 
consistently score lower than their white peers and data suggest the gap is only widening 
in recent years. Principal Jones’s statement and research reference spotlight parent 
 99 
responsibilities, but fail to recognize the school’s responsibility. In connecting KP 
participation to student achievement in her graduation remarks she also ignores 
significant research that document the challenges some minority parents face in parent 
involvement. The barriers for school presence have been extensively discussed in the 
parent involvement literature (Kim, 2009; Perreira et al., 2006; Peterson & Ladky, 2007; 
Turney & Kao, 2009). There may be a variety of reasons why parents are unable to attend 
the program, from work responsibilities to language barriers (e.g., there were no Hmong 
or Somali language KP classes). Finders and Lewis (1994) work with Latino and low-
income Anglo parents also suggests that, “for many parents, their own personal school 
experiences create obstacles to involvement. Parents who have dropped out of school do 
not feel confident in school settings…this situation is compounded by language barriers 
and lack of written literacy skills” (p. 51). The opportunities provided by Community 
High for parent involvement assumed parents already possessed the school capital 
necessary to navigate these spaces as expected.  
The data also suggest that, even when events were promoted as parent spaces such 
as the Multicultural Nights, they quickly transformed into other venues to advance the 
school’s agenda for involvement through sharing of school procedural information. Space 
mattered in the context of Community High because it signaled that parent involvement 
occurred inside the school building. It also mattered because space dictated the types of 
interactions possible, in the formal informational sessions the school provided the staff 
were typically positioned as the holders of knowledge about school and student 
achievement. Parents, on the other hand, were typically passive receives of this 
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information. Community High, like many other schools, must recognize that the 
background of families is an important factor in both the development and potential 
success of parent involvement programs. For example, Vazquez-Nuttall, Li, and Kaplan 
(2006) report that, “…the recent immigrant Hmong parents should be seen in the 
sociocultural context of their transition from an oral, agricultural society, to a 
postindustrial society with very different languages and customs” (p. 90). Interactions 
between school staff and Hmong families consequently can be significantly different, for 
example Hmong parents may not ask questions to staff and engage in passive listening, 
be reluctant to shake hands and avoid eye contact; all these actions can be linked to 
Hmong cultural norms for interactions. The expectation of urban school staff members, 
which are based on American cultural norms, may likely be in conflict with Hmong 
cultural norms. Therefore, as Vazquez-Nuttall et al. (2006) explain, “these mismatches 
often create problems in a multicultural and multilingual urban school setting” (p. 90).  
As I detail in this chapter, interactions among immigrant parents and supporting 
school staff at Community High where greater than with teachers. Although the 
supporting staff would talk about the importance of parent–teacher interactions, 
opportunities to interact with teachers were extremely limited. For example, parent–
teacher conferences were frequently mentioned during KP sessions and informational 
nights as an important resource for parents, and most of the staff including teachers 
mentioned it during interviews as significant part of parent involvement. However, it was 
difficult to imagine conferences as opportunities for meaningful interactions as many 
teachers and school administrators claim; the structure and setup of conference events 
 101 
simply did not lend themselves to such opportunities. Although symbolic, it simply was 
not possible to achieve the status of meaningful conversations during a 5-minute 
interaction. It seems that the only recognizable benefit of parent–teacher conferences is 
for parents to provide the perception of caring to teachers with the hopes that this will in 
turn benefit their children. Additionally, I attended several other school events, and in 
most cases Sofia, the bilingual family liaison, was present to represent the Health Clinic 
and serve as interpreter. In some cases school staff members were present, but rarely 
teachers. Although parent presence in these spaces was frequent it was unlikely a 
recognized form of parent involvement, because it was invisible to teachers and the 
school staff working outside the space. 
The data suggest that parents at Community High had limited access to teachers, 
and in fact, most contact with the school was through interactions with supporting staff. 
This finding is significant because it indicates that parent–staff relationships are actually 
the key to a better understanding of parent involvement. Studies that focus only on parent 
involvement through the lens of teacher relationships can potentially be only presenting 
part of the story. Absence of scholarly work about parent interactions with supporting 
staff (e.g., guidance counselors, testing coordinators, family liaisons, social workers, 
school physiologists) within the parent involvement paradigm suggests a significant gap 
in the current literature; which tends to focus on parent–teacher relationships to 
understand parent involvement (Carreón et al., 2005; Paratore et al., 1994; Pomerantz et 
al., 2007). Essentially, my findings at Community High suggest that understanding what 
it means to be an involved parent comes from interactions with supporting staff in formal 
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school spaces. Parent involvement expectations were being communicated and enacted in 
spaces where teachers were absent.  
Where Have All the Teachers Gone? 
Unfortunately, the current school structure provides parents with limited access to 
teachers. In fact, during KP sessions, parents were told that if they wanted access to 
teachers they should schedule meetings or attend conferences. Staff frequent suggestions 
to schedule meetings with teachers and school staff in order to be involvement tend to 
minimize the additional challenges faced by non-English speaking parents. For example, 
on one occasion a Latina mother requested a meeting with Mr. Edwards to share her 
concern with student piercing in the school. According to the mother, her daughter had an 
infection from a belly piercing that was done by another student in the school. A meeting 
between a school staff member and a non-English speaking parent required considerable 
work; the mother had to contact Sofia who then had to arrange the schedule with Mr. 
Edwards, and subsequently had to also be available himself to interpret. Even in a 
community model school that provides additional services to students and families, there 
were still no spaces to access teachers other than their classrooms and parent–teacher 
conferences. Although the school attempted to promote teachers as partners, the reality 
was that teachers were distant and hard to reach. When I suggested inviting teachers to a 
multicultural night event during a planning meeting (field notes 10/5/2011), the staff 
explained that teachers could not work more than 40 hours a week, and requesting them 
to stay after school hours would violate contract rules. It was also mentioned at one of the 
KP sessions that if teachers were asked to stay after regular school hours they would have 
 103 
to be paid and funding was not available. After reviewing some of the teacher contracts in 
the state, I realized that duty day and hours vary by district. In some cases school districts 
listed specific times for parent–teacher conferences and any teacher responsibilities 
outside the established duty day hours. At Community High the contract specified that a 
duty day was 7 3/4 consecutive hours, but that principals could call meetings beyond the 
duty day hours. In any case, I speculate that there has been a cultural shift in schools in 
the last decade that have impacted teacher behavior, and may have resulted in lower 
morale among the teaching profession. The image of a dedicate teacher staying after 
school and being actively involved in all aspect of student life is less likely given the 
fragile structure of the current educational system. At the KP program meetings, Family 
Resource Room, Health Center and Multicultural Nights it was staff members (e.g., 
testing coordinator, guidance counselor, family liaisons, disciplinary dean) and not 
teachers that were present. 
When parents prepared questions for the Q&A session with the principal, as 
detailed earlier, one of the most interesting questions was regarding creating more 
opportunities for parent–teacher interactions. Parents clearly expressed a desire to have 
more contact with teachers (question 19), a request that was also expressed at other 
parent events. During a summer parent meeting, one of the Latino mothers shared her 
thoughts regarding the issue of creating more opportunities to interact with teachers at the 
school: 
Para empezar, como ahora que vine las clases, no ya regulares. Yo pienso 
lo primero que no debe de (inaudible 0:08:51.1) es hablar; tener una 
relación mas cercano con los maestros para que lo conocen a uno y 
también conocerlo y sepan los maestros que uno tienen interés en sus 
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propios hijos. Yo pienso que eso es una manera buena de empezar una 
relación.25  
Interpreter: I think now that school is getting close to start again, I feel that 
it would be good for us to get to know the teacher, meet the teacher, and 
make sure that they know us; not just that one day. Just be more involved 
so that they know that we're interested in our children's academics and that 
we're there with them. They have to know us, that we're there. (July 26, 
2011, Parent Meeting) 
Some of the staff recognized the value of interactions with teachers; consider 
what Mr. Edwards shared during my interview with him: 
By having those social gatherings where they [parents] don’t feel 
intimidated and it’s not something that they have to talk punitive about 
when it comes to their kid. As long as they don’t have to talk about that 
Johnnie with an F, and you’re just socializing, got your name tag on and 
you’re walking around sipping on punch, eating some spaghetti, chicken 
or something. And then that way they don’t feel intimidated. And then, 
once they feel comfortable with that parent, be it that parent is vocal or 
not, then at least you’ve met with some parents. You’re not going to hit 
everything, there’s nothing 100%. But the fact is we’ll get more parents 
involved the more teachers involve the parents, if that happens. (December 
14, 2011, interview) 
Here Mr. Edwards points to the benefits of social interactions as opportunities to 
build meaningful relationships among parents and teachers, a space where formal school 
talk can be avoided and social talk can be utilized to build personal connections and trust. 
The data from Community High suggest that opportunities for interactions with teachers 
only occurred if teachers made efforts outside their designated duties. Because Mr. 
Edwards made himself available to parents outside school hours, his belief was that 
teachers should take similar steps—a fact he validated to me by saying his personal cell 
                                                
25 I made a personal decision to keep data sections with interpreter translations as is. Utilizing the 
interpreter translation for data analysis and discussion help provide a more authentic experience of the 
event participants. 
 105 
phone was included on the business card he gave to parents, and they had contacted him 
during out-of-school hours to report issues. Mr. Edwards was frustrated by teachers’ 
attitudes that their job ended at 3:30 p.m., and they hide behind their contracts to limit 
their availability to parents. Although contacting Mr. Edwards directly would likely be 
impossible for non-English speaking parents, his belief that part of his job was to make 
adjustments to his schedule to accommodate the schedules of parents speaks to his 
understanding of the community at the school. Only individual efforts by teachers 
resulted in closer connections with parents. For example, Mr. Gonzales the ELL teacher 
and ELL Coordinator shared his personal strategies for connecting with parents, which 
included doing home visits: 
I do and when it requires it and when there's a need, definitely. I've done 
that for a number of families who either the students—we've had it where 
the student wasn't coming to school. Okay, well let's go find out what's 
going on so I had somebody cover my class and I went to the house with 
our social worker and you know, "Hey, what's going on? Why—how can 
we help?" I've had conversations with parents who are like, "I'd really like 
to come and talk with you but I can't." "You know, we'll work in—when 
can I come over to your house? I'll print everything, I'll bring it over to 
your house and we can sit down and talk about it." "Oh, that'd be 
awesome, Mr. Martinez."  
So I've done that where I've printed grades and their transcripts and we've 
gone over there and I explained it to them and talked with them about it 
and I mean, those are things that I've done in order to make that 
connection but to get that parent involved and to say, "All right. Let's work 
together. Let's help everybody be successful." And I'll continue to do it 
because I just know that it's one of the most effective ways to establish 
those relationships but then get that vine and help students be successful. 
(April 26, 2011, interview) 
For Mr. Gonzales, these efforts had significant results in building his rapport with 
immigrant parents and creating the forms of relationships policy makes advocate between 
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parents and teachers. Consider his remarks in reflecting on the impact of his efforts to 
reach out to parents: 
… the first time that you get invited to a Quinceanera, you know that you 
made an impact with that family and that student, you know, to know that 
as a teacher, you've been invited. Or the first time that—yeah, the first 
time that parent comes, you see that parent out in the community 
someplace and they recognize you and they're willing to have that—I 
mean, they want to make that connection to you because you're the teacher 
like, "Hey, Gonzales, how's it going?" I mean, just those small subtle 
connections with families make it—those are the ones that, you know, that 
you look at to say, "Okay, well I did make a difference." (April 26, 2011, 
interview) 
Although teachers have traditionally been viewed as the bridge between home and 
school, and the key to increasing parent involvement, it became clear to me while I was at 
Community High that access to teachers could only be during regular school hours or 
scheduled parent–teacher conferences. At Community High interactions with supporting 
staff, and not teachers, played a key role in building parent involvement within the 
school. I spoke about this with Principal Jones about parent’s limited access to teachers: 
MA: So I guess my question is how do they kind of work with—because it 
seems like when we talk about parent engagement and parent involvement 
we’re talking about teachers and parents. But I feel like in this school 
setting what I’ve observed is a lot more of those connections are made 
with the staff rather than the teacher. 
Principal Jones: Yeah.  
MA: I mean the teacher might see the parent during parent teacher 
conference and that might be their only contact with the parent.  
Principal Jones: Yeah. So I think that fits right in with what we were 
talking about how it’s up to us as a school to provide alternate creative 
ways for parents to be involved other than the traditional ones. And that is 
definitely a wave that you’ve picked up on, is by having guidance 
counselors, school psychologists, school social worker, you know, a full 
range of staff in the guidance office. They often are the first point of 
contact for parents. And you’re right, a teacher might say I’ve never seen 
 107 
Maria’s dad, I’ve never talked to Maria’s dad. But then you ask a school 
guidance counselor or a school social worker and they’re like, “Yeah, I’ve 
talked to them several times.” You know so they often are our first and 
most important point of entry. (December 14, 2011, interview) 
Here Principal Jones frames supporting staff interactions with parents as an 
important asset to the school, one that provides alternative pathways to connect to the 
school.  
Impact of Teacher Access  
Traditionally parent involvement studies tend to focus on the parent–teacher 
relationship. This is potentially the result of scholarly connections between parent 
involvement and student achievement. In this context teachers obviously become central 
to investigations of successful parent involvement. However, findings from this study 
challenge these notions and highlight the importance of supporting staff in fostering 
effective parent involvement. Although some studies have focused on school 
administrators (Auerbach, 2010; Epstein, 1987; Vazquez-Nuttall et al., 2006), principals 
(Peterson & Ladky, 2007), parent liaisons (Martinez-Cosio & Iannacone, 2007), and 
school psychologists (Christenson, 1995; Raffaele & Knoff, 1999), within the parent 
involvement paradigm these are rare. And such studies focus investigation on the impact 
of these positions in creating and implementing successful programs; few detail how 
interactions with school administrators, principals, and school psychologists impact 
parent perceptions of schools and involvement. At Community High interactions with 
teachers were limited, thus parents relied mostly on supporting staff to build their 
understanding of parent involvement. Although I acknowledge that constructs of parent 
 108 
involvement can, and most likely are also, constructed through out-of-school interactions, 
the data from this study present a unique lens in understanding the role of teachers.  
Furthermore, the expectation that parents are responsible for involvement resulted 
in the unspoken expectation that parents also make the necessary accommodations to be 
involved. For example, requesting language interpreters when needed. The school 
frequently reminded parents they could request interpreters in any language, although the 
school had a large population of Hmong and Somali families, access to these language 
interpreters were mostly observed during conference days. Language barriers were often 
dismissed at the school because of the assumed access to interpreters and bilingual 
materials. However, Sofia was the only full time bilingual supporting staff at the high 
school26, and she divided her time between her role as family liaison and Health Center 
coordinator. Language barriers had significant impact on everyday school procedures. 
For example, Sofia would often spend considerable time tracking down teachers that left 
messages for Latino families. Teachers would call parents and leave messages in English. 
The parents would then call Sofia to say they received a message from the school but 
they could not understand what was said. In most cases parents had multiple children in 
the school and even in the district. Sofia would then have to look up the schedule for all 
the children and email all the teachers to track down who contacted the family. Once the 
teacher was located; she would then have to get the message, contact the family, and 
again the teacher to facilitate the communication. This process could take days and was 
obviously ineffective. These findings suggest again that parents are responsible for 
                                                
26 Mr. Gonzales, the ESL teacher and coordinator was also a fulltime bilingual Spanish-English staff 
member. He also helped interpret for parents during meetings and parent–teacher conferences. 
 109 
making the accommodation for involvement, in this case finding ways to translate the 
teacher information. Could the teacher have contacted Sofia directly in the school to send 
the message to parents, saving valuable time? I content that these situations only distant 
teachers from parents, and constructed a parent involvement ideology where teacher 
absence was accepted. 
Findings from this study potentially indicate a greater need to understand the 
consequences of limited teacher–parent interactions. What happens when parents have 
limited access to teachers? And how does it impact parents’ understanding of 
involvement? At Community High I speculate that the consequences of limited access to 
teachers resulted in parent’s relying on school staff to understand their roles within the 
school. Although the school welcomed parents through several school-sponsored events 
they rarely included teachers. In the numerous events I attended at the school, parent–
teacher relationships were often mentioned as an important way parents could stay 
connected to school. But I was left wondering how these relationships could be built. In 
piecing together parent involvement ideologies at Community High, it was clear that 
efforts for involvement were the responsibility of parents and not teachers. Parents were 
expected to attend events, but not teachers. The absence of teachers potentially reinforces 
the perception that teachers are the authority in school and parents have little room to 
negotiate their needs within the school, and much less the curriculum. Consequently, 
parent involvement was framed as a parent initiative.  
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Chapter 5 
Parent Involvement Expectations: 
Online Access as the New Form of School Presence 
Schools are filled with parent expectations: homework support, attendance at 
parent–teacher conferences and school events, and communication with supporting staff 
and teachers. In the case of Community High the expectation was changing, not in 
response to the new diverse student population, but to the new technologies available to 
schools and the personal experiences of staff. Of particular interest was the new 
expectation of online presence, where parent involvement now includes the use of online 
resources. As Principal Jones mentioned, going online to check kids’ grades and 
attendance by use of the School View27 was strongly associated with parent involvement, 
and the data suggest this has become a new normalized form of involvement. In fact, 
accessing School View was a significant part of the parent involvement at Community 
High. Like many schools nationwide online resources for parents have become 
commonplace, however for some families it only serves to distance them further from 
schools and reinforce even more misconceptions of involvement. This chapter will 
discuss in further detail the role of online resources in shaping parent involvement views 
and how messages of the importance of these resources were communicated to parents 
during interactions at the school. 
                                                
27 School View is an online resource parents can access to check information from the teacher (e.g., grades, 
assignments, attendance). In some schools this resource is called Parent Portal. This has become a 
common resource for schools today and is not unique to Community High. 
 111 
Although computers and the Internet have become mainstream, they are relatively 
new, only existing in the last two decades. Today most schools have websites that 
provide a variety of information from daily school activities to important announcements 
to the public, students and parents. Additionally most schools have different versions of 
School View, an online site where teachers provide, for example, information on class 
assignments, student grades and attendance records. Parents can then access the site to 
view information on their children. The use of online resources has become so 
normalized that it has now transferred into an excepted form of school presence by 
parents regardless of visible barriers for many families. Take for example Ferrara and 
Ferrara’s (2005) statement in reporting a study in a teacher training program, “web site 
access are becoming increasing available to all homes in the community as the cost of 
computers and Internet access decreases” (p. 81). The reality is that the cost still presents 
a significant barrier to a large number of low-income families. Furthermore, for some 
immigrant families where cost is not a problem a variety of additional barriers could still 
be present; for example adequate knowledge in operating computers and navigating 
websites, and language. Nevertheless, narratives from school staff at Community High 
suggest that these skills are necessary if not required for parents to be considered 
involved. Consider my conversation with Mr. Joe, a social studies teacher at the school, 
when I asked how he identified an involved parent he responded: 
Mr. Joe: That’s a good question. There’s two ways that I do that. One way 
is the formal way. If I need to get a hold of a parent, I know whether or not 
they are, I don’t want to say abiding by, but at least being respectful of my 
expectations by whether or not I can get a hold of them. If I try four or five 
different times to get a hold of the parent via email, telephone, whatever 
mode of communication I used and I can’t hear back from them, 
 112 
something’s not right. The other way is just keeping an eye on trends, 
general trends. For example, if I have a student who has an F for 3 weeks 
in a row and their grade is sitting on an F and I don’t get a phone call or I 
don’t get an email that’s telling me that somebody’s not checking in. 
MA: How do they check in? You’re saying for a week. Do you give 
grades out every week? 
Mr. Joe: We have School View available that you can access online. You 
have the logon information. You can check your student’s grade live at 
any moment, pull it up; even if a teacher has just updated it, it will refresh. 
Even for our families who don’t have Internet and access for computers at 
home, which is a real possibility, you check that at any public library with 
internet access. I really do think that you need to make the sacrifice to 
check; you’ve got to check. I could call home every day if I want to, but I 
can’t make you have that conversation with your kid. 
MA: So you’re saying that a student has an F for 3 weeks and the parent 
doesn’t contact you or if they did then you would know that this parent is 
involved. 
Mr. Joe: … can things happen where you can lose touch for 3 weeks; 
absolutely, so I don’t like to jump to conclusions but at the same time you 
get to know the trends and the patterns that you see with certain students 
and their household that their living in….Some people have actually told 
me, “You can’t really tell people what your expectations are of them, 
they’re the kids’ parents.” I know that’s a little bit more bold than I guess 
some people are willing to be, but I don’t down talk anybody and I just 
think that in order to be successful it’s a team scenario. It’s not just the 
student, it’s not just the teacher, and it’s not just at home either; it’s a 
combination of all three and until we figure that out, we’re going to be in a 
lot of trouble for a long time. I don’t mean just here, I mean nationwide. 
(May 11, 2011, interview) 
Here Mr. Joe makes it clear that routine access to the school’s online resources 
are part of the parent involvement expectations, in fact for him it is a critical cultural 
capital parents must embody in order to successfully support their children and be 
recognized as involved. These sentiments were not exclusive to Mr. Joe, several staff 
members (e.g., guidance counselor, social worker, testing coordinator, etc.) mentioned 
 113 
online resources in conversations and presentations. It was clear that the preferred 
method of communication within Community High was through email.  
Furthermore, online access has now become the new form of school presence, 
rather than physically being in the school parents can be ‘present’ by logging in daily or 
weekly. In fact, this is now the new form of recognized parent involvement, and 
alternative path for many families; however, it continues to be a form of involvement that 
lacks depth or meaningful interaction. Parents are still passive receives of school 
information through the School View system, and the school continues to control and set 
the agenda for information sharing. This highlights the school’s approach of one-way 
communication that values the school’s agenda and ignores the potential contribution of 
parents. It may be that online presence has become the alternative to truly examining 
ways in which schools can engage with families to meaningfully collaborate in the 
educational achievement of their children. 
On several occasions, parents showed me that they resisted this form of 
communication through their concern with language barriers and computer knowledge, a 
consideration that was always quickly dismissed by staff by offers of interpreters. The 
message of online access was strongly present in several interactions with parents. 
Consider this exchange that took place at the Multicultural Night between Mai a Hmong 
mother and Beth the school testing coordinator: 
Mai (Hmong mother, through interpreter): Every time the son is coming 
home is not doing homework, she is not seeing homework; so she wants to 
know what is going on why she is not seeing homework? 
Beth: I would check with individual teachers. I can guarantee that there is 
Language A or English homework on a daily basis, math homework on a 
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daily basis. They have foreign language every other day there is 
homework. And also, do you have access to Power School? Which is our 
online system where parents can check the kids’ grades, assignments, etc.? 
Mai (through interpreter): They don’t know how to use a computer and 
don’t know how to go online to check anything 
Beth: Heather is coming in later tonight, ask her and she can give her the 
information…All parents though please come to conferences, please talk 
to your kids teacher ask them these questions because there is homework 
being assignment and it is required of students 
Mai (through interpreter): Sometimes you have conferences, parents we 
are very busy so that is why we can’t come 
Beth: Call, email all teachers have voicemail all teachers have email. 
Mai (through interpreter): [laughs a little] We don’t speak English. 
Beth: There are interpreters to help.  
(October 5th, 2011, Multicultural Night Presentation) 
In this 2-minute exchange Beth fails to recognize the resources of the immigrant 
communities and the realities in which they navigate their relationships with schools. 
Beth’s message was clear, online access is crucial for parents at Community High to 
successfully support their children. Mai’s resistance by identifying herself as a parent 
without access or knowledge of how to navigate online resources was simply dismissed. 
Even after it was established that Mai could not make use of the Internet, Beth still 
presented that as an alternative for not attending conferences. What Beth failed to 
recognize was that Mai needed an alternative pathway to communication with teachers 
and the schools. Although the school made computers available to parents in the Family 
Resource Room and even provided computer instructors to help parents, none were 
bilingual and neither were the school’s online resources. Beth minimized the language 
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barriers by offering interpreters; however, the reality was that access to interpreters was 
not easy particularly for the Hmong and Somali community (e.g., no onsite Hmong or 
Somali interpreter). This exchange potentially shaped Mai’s perception of her role as an 
involved parent and she never returned to the KP meetings.  
Although it would be easy to be critical of Beth’s behavior, the truth is that her 
personal understanding of parent involvement was limited to her own reality and 
perceptions. In many of the conversations and interviews I conducted with staff I asked 
about their personal experiences with parent involved as students and as parents. In most 
cases teachers and staff reported personal experiences that mirrored their current 
descriptions of parent involvement. Mrs. Heather, the social worker, shared a story about 
meeting with the principal and teacher when her child had an issue at school. In her 
descriptions of parental involved she clearly mentions relationships with school staff as 
essential to parent involvement. Similarly Mrs. Lourdes also explained that her parents 
did not attend any of her school events while she was growing up, and in her descriptions 
of parent involvement she focuses on the less visible little things parents do to define 
involvement. This indicates a complex relationship between personal experiences and 
definitions of parent involvement.  
Some studies have examined the relationship between teacher belief and practice, 
suggesting that teacher belief plays a significant role in how teachers teach (Pajares, 
1992). In some cases such beliefs are not based on actual fact or general consensus, but 
still remain unchanged because of individual belief systems. In her extensive work 
analyzing the role of beliefs in teachers’ thinking, Nespor (1987) suggested that a “crucial 
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experience or some particularly influential teacher produces a richly detailed episodic 
memory which later serves the student as an inspiration and a template for his or her own 
teaching practices” (p. 320). Furthermore, in his review of the literature on teacher beliefs 
Pajares (1992) concluded that “educational beliefs of preservice teachers play a pivotal 
role in their acquisition and interpretation of knowledge and subsequent teaching 
behavior and that unexplored entering beliefs may be responsible for the perpetuation of 
antiquated and ineffectual teaching practices” (p. 328). I suggest that a similar 
phenomenal is occurring with constructs of parent involvement. Teachers and supporting 
staff at Community High are constructing definitions and expectations of parent 
involvement based on their personal experiences and realities. The apprenticeship of 
observation (Lortie, 1975) is occurring with educators’ understanding of parent 
involvement. Consequently staff past experiences and realities reflect their constructs of 
current expectations for parent involvement; in the case of Mrs. Heather that means 
having relationships with the school principal and teachers, and for Beth that meant 
learning how to use online resources. Unfortunately these do not reflect the experiences 
and realities of most immigrant families.  
The majority of the strategies and ideas for parent–teacher interactions were only 
realistic for certain groups of parents (middle class), thus reinforcing the reproduction of 
standards and expectation most minority parents do not share. As we saw in the example 
with Beth, expecting parents to use the Internet to access student information was 
unrealistic given the reality of the populations within the school. Nevertheless, at 
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Community High staff and teachers continued to construct parent involvement based on 
their personal experiences. 
Findings also reveal that parents were rarely viewed as resources at Community 
High. Although the staff was frequently invited to speak to parents about their school 
roles and “train” parents on the school culture; parents were never given opportunities to 
be sources of information for staff. Failing to consider parents as resources was a visible 
barrier to beneficial changes in parent involvement expectations at Community High. 
Bao, the only Hmong teacher and 1 of only 2 minority teachers in the school, spoke in 
detail about the need for staff development when it came to cultural awareness: 
Sometimes it may take professional development at the cultural level, 
understanding who is their students and how can we incorporate the 
parents’ voices. I think they [staff] have to understand that within different 
cultures, education is viewed differently. You have to understand that. I 
think it’s just a lot of cultural understanding of how is education 
perceived. They have to understand that in some cultures, teachers are 
held to a higher esteem, so they wouldn’t necessarily question what 
teachers do. It doesn’t mean that they’re not involved; it just means that 
they perceive that position differently.  
I think, really, it’s just being knowledgeable of the community that you’re 
working with, the parents, the culture, how do they view education, how 
do they view expectation, discipline and all of that, and find a medium that 
will allow them [parents] to voice their concerns. So, really just open up 
communication, I think. (May 6th, 2011, interview) 
Informed by her personal experiences as a minority student in the U.S. 
educational system, Bao focuses on a two-way model for parent involvement. For Bao 
communication means equal opportunities for parents and staff to share information, 
concerns and engage in negotiating expectations. Nevertheless, the school continued to 
focus on parent education in most of their parent involvement efforts. Again this speaks 
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to the schools’ approach of viewing parents through a deficit model and their one-way 
approach to parent involvement. 
Synthesizing the Findings 
At Community High the opportunities for parent involvement were limited to 
spaces where parents were given information about the school. The school’s perception 
was that parents wanted and need information about the school in order to be actively 
involved. Parent programs and groups were formed around academic goals, where the 
school provided information about the curriculum, acceptable forms of engagement, and 
school procedures. These spaces were filled with supporting staff that provided an 
overwhelming amount of formal resources. Although welcomed by parents, it failed to 
provide opportunities for building meaningful connections and rapport between the staff, 
teachers, and parents. Although some of the staff recognized the need for these 
opportunities, institutional structures were often barriers (e.g., teacher contracts). 
Additionally, at Community High parent interactions were mostly with supporting staff, 
including social workers, testing coordinators and family liaisons, rather than teachers. 
This presents a significant gap in the current literature that tends to focus on parent–
teacher interactions (see Christenson, 1995 for an exception). At Community High, 
parent contact with teachers was limited to 5–10 minutes twice a year at parent–teacher 
conferences. Unless parents initiated contact to follow up on specific classroom issues, or 
returned teacher phone calls and email messages, access to teachers was limited. 
Teachers never attended the various events that welcomed parents. This access created a 
significant distance between parents and teachers.  
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Finally, through the data collected, I built an understanding of how parent 
involvement expectations were constructed, communicated, and enacted at Community 
High. Traditional beliefs of parent involvement were present in discourses among 
administrators, supporting staff and teachers. These beliefs were transmitted in 
interactions with parents. School expectations for parent involvement were 
communicated to parents without consideration to their social or culture realities. The 
issue was not parents’ misunderstanding of what was expected, for example they knew 
the school expected them to attend parent–teacher conferences and access school 
information online. These expectations were often communicated in various spaces 
where parents were present. However, parents’ ability to meet these expectations were 
never considered. In particular online access, as reported in the study, was an assumed 
requirement for parent involvement at Community High. Most schools today utilize some 
form of School View and in some environments this may be a convenient and efficient 
way for schools to communicate with parents. However, online access is just another 
form of school presence and superficial involvement. The supporting staff clearly 
communicated the importance of School View, and teachers like Mr. Joe used this school 
resource to identity which parents were involved in their child’s education. School View 
was part of the parent involvement script at Community High. However, some immigrant 
parents at the school were not equipped to meet these expectations. For example, Mai the 
Hmong mother clearly identified herself as unable to access School View for 
information. Rather than creating alternative methods to reach out to parents like Mai, the 
staff expected Mai to carve out time in her schedule to come to the school and learn how 
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to use the computer. Access to School View is part of the new school capital at 
Community High, and potentially illustrates the evolving nature of social and cultural 
capital frameworks introduced by Bourdieu (1986). Imposing additional challenges, like 
learning new computer skills, for parental involvement only further alienates parents like 
Mai and continues to reinforce social inequalities within the school. Most importantly, 
schools fail to recognize that online access to school information provides no meaningful 
form of parent involvement. 
Nevertheless, the findings of this work suggest that schools recognize the 
importance of parent involvement and that they are in fact engaged in parent involvement 
initiatives. In the past decade schools, like Community High, have invested considerable 
funding to developing and introducing online systems like School View. Additionally 
program similar to KP have been emerging in several schools and districts. In fact, as 
presented earlier the KP curriculum was adapted from another existing parent program. 
Nonetheless all these initiatives continue to promote a one-way form of involvement, 
where the school sets the agenda and the forms of engagement. The school’s online 
system exemplifies one-way communication, since parents were not able to add or 
change the information posted, leaving the school in control of the interaction. 
Additionally, programs like KP also promote a one-way form of involvement in which 
parents have little voice or power. Parents are expected to attend, but they have no 
control of the agenda or subject matter. The curriculum is designed with content the 
school assumes parents need to successfully support their children.  
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Chapter 6 
Making Sense of Parent Involvement Expectations 
The literature is filled with arguments of why and how parents should be involved 
in the school experience and there are just as many viewpoints among educators and 
parents. In U.S. public schools, parent involvement is said to play a key role in positive 
school experiences and successful student outcomes. Recently conversations about the 
diversity of parents and their unique needs have also begun to shape new approaches to 
parental involvement. The presence of an increased number of immigrant students both in 
urban and suburban schools is only expected to increase. This suggests that old ways of 
approaching parent involvement need to be reconsidered for each school context. How 
schools design parent involvement efforts and how educators define and communicate 
parent involvement expectations will play a key role in the success of immigrant students. 
Established notions for involvement, such as homework help, attending parent–teacher 
conferences, talking about college at home, or attending school functions, etc., may need 
to be reconsidered and adjusted. The conversation of how schools can develop 
meaningful partnerships with families where school staff, teachers and parents can work 
together to provide students with positive school experiences is only just beginning.  
There is no question that the amount of research in the area of parental 
involvement has provided significant contributions to educators. The last 2 decades of 
research in this area have come a long way from blaming parents or teachers for 
ineffective home–school partnerships, and highlighted the significant impact other factors 
have on parental involvement. Based on Bourdieu’s (1986) instruments of analysis 
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(social and cultural capital), researchers have been able to uncover the structures that 
shape the home–school partnership—for example, socioeconomic status (Lareau, 2000), 
race (Carter, 2003; Ogbu, 2003), and ethnicity and culture (Dyson, 2001; Valdés, 1996), 
which all influence how parents and teachers perceive and construct their interactions. If 
educators are to fulfill promises of “access to all” in school, they must question current 
parental involvement practices and begin the process of “upsetting” existing definitions 
of what counts as involvement. Through this process educators can recognize that current 
practices favor white upper-middle class and disadvantage low-SES immigrant families.  
In Chapter 2, we learned how social and cultural capital mediate educational 
experiences and outcomes through a close examination of studies in the field of 
educational research. These studies reveal that social and cultural capital is an important 
instrument of analysis that serves to unveil the reality of school inequalities. Through 
definitions of social capital as the connections or networks within families, and more 
broadly within communities, researchers have pointed to vast amount of resources 
members can access and activate for the benefit of students. Acquired cultural capital 
provides students with an important “commodity” that can be “traded” in school settings 
for greater opportunities. These concepts build a strong argument, accepted by many in 
the field, that schools are not neutral spaces. They replicate the inequalities of society by 
recognizing and legitimizing certain capital while marginalizing others. As a 
consequence, some students are disadvantaged compared to others. There is evidence that 
SES and ethnicity play a role in the ability to access, transmit and embody the required 
capital of schools. However, even with all their contributions, researchers have continued 
 123 
to position social and cultural capital as “possessions”: if individuals or communities 
acquire X and have access to Y they can obtain Z.  
When I began my dissertation work at Community High, I intended to investigate 
the process of constructing parent involvement. I imagined teachers at the center of this 
process. I quickly discovered that supporting staff played a significant role in this 
process. Although the current literature focuses on teacher–parent relationships, I 
discovered that parent contact with teachers is extremely limited and it is actually the 
supporting staff (e.g., guidance counselors, family liaisons, social workers) that engages 
in interactions and communication that shape parents’ perceptions of involvement in 
schools. At Community High school spaces that welcomed parents were a crucial factor 
in situating this reality. As I described in Chapter 4, the school provided several spaces 
for parents at the school (e.g., Family Resource Center, KP program, Health Center, 
events); however, none of these provided opportunities to interact with teachers. Data 
presented here coincide with Chávez-Reyes (2010) statement that “most teachers center 
their role of parent involvement in the classroom—staying within their domain of power. 
To diffuse the unequal balance of power and to model collaboration… teachers [must] 
engage in a range of strategies across community/homes, school campuses, and 
classrooms to generate an inclusive approach to parent involvement” (p. 493–494). At 
Community High, this means teacher presence in spaces other than their classrooms and 
parent–teacher conferences; parents need opportunities to interact with teachers socially 
and begin the process of building trust by getting to know each other.  
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Another significant discovery in this dissertation work is that the supporting staff 
played a key role in shaping parents’ belief of acceptable forms of involvements. In 
spaces of interaction the staff focused on providing academic school information; this 
positioned staff as knowledgeable informants and parents as deficient. At Community 
High parent involvement programs reflected a parent education approach, were the 
school focused on informing parents on specific school materials. The school’s position 
suggests that low parent involvement is a result of parents’ lack of understanding of the 
school system and ways of providing support. Under this assumption, the expectation was 
that once parents were taught how to engage in school, parent involvement would 
increase. However this was not the case, the number of parents participating in the KP 
program and Multicultural Nights decreased dramatically during my time at the school. 
The findings suggest that parent expectations and needs were drastically different. Parent 
narratives expressed a need for personal relationship building. Currently studies suggest 
that immigrant parents feel they are forced to adapt to existing expectations of home–
school interactions and consequently sacrifice their own ethnic identities (Inman et al., 
2007; Patel, Power, & Bhavnagri, 1996). Although both educators and researchers have 
advocated for the need to problematize this reality, few have begun the process of 
reflection that leads to actual transformation. The data here suggest that parent 
involvement programs need to be school wide initiatives, where collaboration between 
teachers and parents is extended to include supporting staff. 
In Chapter 5, I also present a new problem in the parent involvement paradigm, 
where new expectations for involvement are being accepted in school without regard to 
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parents’ reality. As the findings show, online access is now expected as a form of 
involvement. For many families, this is simply not a realistic expectation. Although the 
use of computers may seem commonplace for many families this continues to be 
challenging for some. Having a computer, knowing how to use it and access to bilingual 
online information is still a significant barrier for many families. In most cases school 
websites and parent resources are only provided in English. At Community High the 
expectation of online access for involvement only further marginalize immigrant 
families. As Mr. Morales, the English Language Learning coordinator, explained, “…the 
biggest thing that we find is that it's the technology piece that isn't accessible and so even 
as much as we encourage it and we want that, a lot of our immigrant parents are like, 
"Can't help you. Don't have internet at home." And we understand that.” Because of his 
direct contact with parents, Mr. Morales seemed to understand the challenge of requiring 
parents to access information online. This suggests that Community High was a space 
where families were limited in their ability to access the necessary school capital for the 
benefit of their children. 
Limitations 
I had the unique opportunity to experience the interactions at Community High 
for an entire year. The staff at the school gave me access to a variety of spaces; they 
encouraged and welcomed me to participate in all parent related activities at the school. 
But even with such access, I undoubtedly missed important interactions between parents 
and staff. My data did not include private interactions between parents and teachers. 
Observing these interactions may have provided me with a different lens to interpret 
 126 
teacher access. How parents describe these interactions are key in understanding how 
they navigate their relationships with teachers and perceive the limited access.  
Another limitation of my work is that I was unable to gather data in the homes of 
immigrant families. Few studies have ventured into the home to collect data on family 
interactions (Lareau, 2000; Valdés, 1996). In fact, the vast majority of studies in the area 
of parental involvement rely on the school as the primary research site. Home practice 
information is usually gathered through survey data that rely on the self-reporting of 
parents. Although valid, this approach leaves many unanswered questions on what 
actually is happening in the home (i.e., parent–child interactions that promote learning). 
Researchers that have ventured outside the school building for data collection have 
reported poignant information on the topic of parental involvement. Valdés’s (1996) 
work in the Mexican immigrant community, where she interacted and observed families 
in their homes provided an enormous amount of relevant information on how this 
minority group perceived the school–family relationship and home practices that promote 
learning. In addition, the work of the Funds of Knowledge project has also recognized the 
vast amount of resources existing in homes that can be integrated into the curriculum and 
utilized in classroom practices. This work has also helped teachers realize their 
preconceived notions of family home interactions, and recognize that learning takes place 
in different forms. Although home learning, in many cases, does not mirror classroom 
learning it nevertheless serves to support educational goals shared by both the home and 
school. If teachers want to continue to grow as experts in education they must be 
 127 
encouraged to welcome additional tools to their teaching practices, which can be found 
inside the homes of students.  
Finally, I recognize that my analysis is often through the lens of the staff, and not 
parents, and this troubles me as a parent advocate. I believe that parent involvement 
should be a two-way dialogue where both school staff and parents have equal voice. 
However, access to parents outside the school may be difficult given the constraints 
researchers have by their universities’ internal review board (IRB) process. It troubles me 
that when I began this work my intention was to report on the experiences of parents, but 
as I reviewed and analyzed my data, it was the voices of staff that emerged. Although 
troubling, it only reflects the reality that school staff dominate parent involvement 
discourses and control the forms of engagement. I hope future scholars will be 
encouraged to capture the experiences and voices of parents, and report on parent 
involvement expectations through their lens.  
Final Words 
I feel it is important to point out that the principal and staff at Community High 
welcomed my presence at the school. After several meetings where I shared my research 
goals; the staff were excited about my work and were always willing to talk with me 
throughout the study. During my numerous conversations with Principal Jones, she often 
asked me about my findings and invited me to share ways in which I felt the school could 
improve their parent involvement efforts. Regardless of the faults I have identified, the 
desire to reach out to parents and improve parent involvement efforts were genuine. I 
chose Community High because of these efforts, and their commitment to invest in 
 128 
parents at the school. The school’s community school model provided a variety of 
resources that were appreciated by families. On several occasions I heard parents express 
their gratitude for the Health Center that provided free care for their children. The model 
went a long way in positing the school as a caring environment that went beyond 
academic learning. But even when schools create systems to support the needs of diverse 
families it does not guarantee successful parent involvement.  
Like many novice scholars I entered Community High filled with excitement and 
considerable knowledge of current research on my topic. I had spent extensive time 
reading and writing on issues related to parent involvement. I had conducted several 
small-scale pilot studies exploring issues of immigrant parent involvement and felt 
prepared to engage fully in an extended 1-year ethnography. I even expected to encounter 
some of the obstacles and barriers that are widely reported within the literature of parent 
involvement. The mismatch of expectations by immigrant parents and traditional school 
staff personnel is not in itself new information. Lareau (2000) and Valdés (1996) have 
written extensively on these issues in their books, and numerous other scholars have 
made significant contributions through journal publications. Still it was shocking to 
recognize that most of this academic work had virtually no impact on the realities of 
everyday school routines. This leads me to question the trickle down approach of 
academia. Does the considerable amount of research conducted by scholars in higher 
education reach the actual K–12 school context? What responsibility do academics have 
to share research findings with actual school agents that implement change?  
 129 
Community High functioned, as I assume most schools nationwide, with limited 
understanding of the realities of the communities they serve. Bourdieu’s (1986) 
groundbreaking work on the social reproduction of social inequalities in school has been 
around for over 50 years. Countless studies have provided evidence that institutional 
practices contribute to the inequalities of the school experience for diverse students 
(Lareau, 2000; Ogbu, 2003; Valdés, 1996; Zhou & Bankston III, 1994). In the particular 
case of Community High, the community school model helped alleviate some of these 
social inequalities by providing important social services to school families. 
Nevertheless, the school struggled to build trust among the immigrant community, which 
in some cases felt marginalized by teacher and staff attitudes, school expectation of 
Internet access, limited access to teachers, lack of bilingual staff and spaces for 
engagement with school staff. My experience at Community High suggests that school 
change regarding implementation of programs that establish meaningful parent 
involvement requires more than academic inquiry, it requires policy actions at the local, 
state and national level. If schools are to promote greater parent access to teachers, 
contractual changes need to take place that will allow time and space for such 
interactions. For example, compensated time for teachers to do home visits and be 
available to parents after school. Additionally, state and national funding attached to 
parent involvement needs to include cultural awareness training for teachers and 
supporting school staff, rather than simply require the documented paperwork and 
meetings under current title I and III regulations. In order for principals to be affective 
leaders and fulfill their administrative roles to “orchestrate activities that will help staff 
 130 
study and understand parent involvement, and to select or design, evaluate, and revise 
programs for parent involvement” (Epstein, 1987), there needs to be official value to 
parent involvement. Rather than simply providing research evidence that increased parent 
involvement results in greater student achievement; educational institutions needs to 
validate these narratives with actual policy implementation.  
Although the benefits of parental involvement are well documented, educators 
have been slow to respond, for example, at the teacher preparation level (Shores, 1998). 
As Gonzalez-DeHass and Willems (2003) rightly conclude the “deficit is born from a 
lack of preparation of preservice teachers and is perpetuated with lack of professional 
development through in-service training” (p. 95). In other words, regardless of whether 
training to work in meaningful ways with parents should start at the preservice level or 
wait until in-service experiences are formed, the reality is that teacher training is 
necessary in order to achieve effective parental involvement. Furthermore, recognizing 
the lack of teacher preparation to engage parents is meaningless if it is not followed by a 
call to action (Shores, 1998). Teachers will continue to underutilize and potentially 
marginalize parents if parental involvement is not valued within teacher preparation 
programs and legitimized as a key factor for student achievement. As Katz and Bauch’s 
(1999) study at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University (that has required a parental 
involvement course for over 10 years) found, teachers who took parental involvement 
courses as undergraduates were more likely to implement parent involvement activities 
and engage parents. The study also found that teachers felt more prepared to engage in 
parental involvement activities and consequently “reached more families in their classes 
 131 
than teachers who did not take the course” (p. 66). Even with strong evidence that 
preparation makes a difference, few universities or states have taken steps to include 
parent involvement as part of licensure requirements. At Community High there was a 
recognized effort to address parent involvement, the school initiated and implemented the 
KP program, however the success of such program still require that all staff buy into 
these efforts. This is unlikely when individual schools are up against boarder institutional 
forces that fail to recognize the importance and value of such programs.  
In the final chapter of her book Con Respeto, Valdés (1996) poses an important 
question, “Can we and should we intervene?” Here Valdés questions the intention of 
parent involvement programs, and points to her fear that some programs are simply 
promoting assimilation. I agree that when parent involvement programs are only 
providing school information and school expectations for involvement they inadvertently 
become spaces to reproduce existing ideologies, many of which are negative in regards to 
immigrant families. However, I do believe intervention is needed, but it must begin 
among teachers and supporting staff. The greatest lesson I have learned is that parent 
involvement training is needed, and the greatest need is in fact among school staff. 
During my time at Community High I was reassured that parents do want to be involved 
and desperately seek opportunities to support their children’s educational achievements, 
but not always in ways the school expects or accept. 
What many schools fail to understand and recognize is that for most immigrant 
families, being here is the ultimate form of parent involvement. The sacrifice of leaving 
their home countries and family members, and coming to the U.S. to provide their 
 132 
children with better educational opportunities is in many cases, particularly for Latino 
immigrants, the reason families migrated in the first place. Once here, they enroll their 
children in school and expect schools will provide the quality education they went to 
great length to access. Unfortunately, given the current structure of schools and the 
ideologies surrounding parent involvement expectations, the rewards of this sacrifice are 
increasingly unlikely for many immigrant families. 
 133 
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Appendix A 
Parent Generated Questions for KP Principal Night 
1. Cual seria la major manera de nosotros ayudar a los estudiantes poner mas interes 
a la escuela y obtener buenas calificaciones? (What is the best way we can help 
our kids be more interested in school and get better grades?) 
2. Cual es su opinion acerca del racismo en la escuela? Que medidas se toman? 
(What is your opinion about racism in the school? What measures are taken?) 
3. Que tanprove o que nivel de pandilleros shoy en la escuela? (What is the level of 
gang involvement present in the school?) 
4. Hay alguen en la escuela que controle el uso de drogas? (Is there someone at the 
school that controls the use of drugs?) 
5. Como nosotros podemos estar seguros que neustros hijos estan dentro de la clases 
por todo el dia escolar? (How can we as parents be sure our children are in class 
during the full school day?) 
6. Que metados tienen para controlar las pandillas/drogas? (In what ways do you 
control gangs and drugs?) 
7. Que medidos/precaciones esta tomando la escuela para prevener que los 
estudantes no tragan armas la escuela? (What measures and precautions are the 
school taking to prevent students from bringing guns to school?) 
8. Que ajudas les dan a los estudantes que se sienten molestadoes o intimidados por 
otros estudiantes? (What help is provided for students that feel harassed or 
intimidated by other students?) 
9. Por que no usan uniforme? (Why don’t you use uniforms?) 
10. Por que los estudantes se basan y se abrazan en frente de padres, estudantes, e 
maestros? (Why do students kiss and hug in front of parents, students and 
teachers?) 
11. Por que canbiaran el horario da escuela? (Why did the school time change?) 
12. Que podemos hacer los padres, o ustead como directora para ayudar a los 
estudantes cuando lo necesiten? (What can we as parents and you as the principal 
do to help kids when they are in need?) 
13. A los ninos que reuben clases especiales, les, afecta no estar en clases regulares? 
(For students that are in special classes, does that affect them in regular classes?) 
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14. Que tanto afecta al estadiante que la escuela tenga bajas calificaciones en los 
examenes del estado? (Does it affect students that the school has low scores in the 
state exams?) 
15. Y como padres que podemos hacer para ayudar? (What can I do as a parent to 
help?) 
16. Aqui hacen un examen para detectar drogas? Que puedo hacer yo como padre si 
hubo alguien que le oferecio draga a mi hijo en la escuela? (Do they do drug tests 
at the school? What can I do as a parent if someone offers my child drugs?) 
17. Soy un padre con un poco de ignorancia y quesiera saber un poco mas del 
funcionamiento de la escuela. Como podria ponerme en contacto con persona 
indicada? (I am a parent that is a little ignorant and wanted to know more about 
how the school functions? How can I contact the right person?) 
18. Por que no podemos mandar mensajes de texto cuando no estamos en clase? 
(Why can’t we send text messages in class?) 
19. Se podrian hacer unas platicas mas seguidas entre padres y maestros par aver 
como podriamos ayudarnos mutualmente en la educacion de nuestros hijos? 
(Could there be more frequent conversations between parents and teachers so we 
could mutually help in the education of our children?) 
20. Cuantos anos tiene trabajando aqui? (How long have you worked here?) 
21. Cual es su major consejo para un estudiente? (What is your advise to students?) 
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Appendix B 
Sample School Staff Formal Interview Protocol 
1. Can you start by telling me a little about your background? How did you 
end up working at CH? 
2. Can you tell me a little about your educational background? 
3. *** 
4. Let me start by asking you how would you define parental involvement 
here at CH? What does parental involvement mean at this school? 
5. Can you describe in your own words what is your expectation of CH 
parents? How are these expectations communicated to parents/immigrant 
parents? 
6. In your understanding how does parental involvement connect to student 
academic achievement? 
7. How does your position provide you with opportunities to interact with 
immigrant parents? Can you share with me a meaningful interaction you 
had with an immigrant parent recently? 
8. How prepared to you feel as an educator to interact with immigrant 
parents? 
9. In what ways to you feel CH differentiates their strategies for parental 
involvement based on their specific student populations? 
10. In what ways do you feel the school staff (not teachers) impacts the home–
school relationship? 
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11. In what ways does the school work with supporting staff (e.g., family 
liaison, guidance counselor, social workers) to build the home–school 
relationship? 
12. How would you imagine the home–school relationship ideally?