TY - JOUR
T1 - A timely opportunity for change
T2 - Increasing refugee parental involvement in U.S. schools
AU - Koyama, Jill
AU - Bakuza, Fortidas Rwehumbiza
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
PY - 2017/8/1
Y1 - 2017/8/1
N2 - Refugee youth attend schools in every state in the United States. Yet, little is known about their schooling experiences or the ways in which schools engage their parents. In this paper, we resituate notions of parent involvement by focusing on the interactions between refugee parents and U.S. schools Drawing on data collected during a twenty-six month ethnography of refugees in a Northeastern city, we examine how the influx of refugee students into one school district, not only changes the district’s student demographics, but also leads to policy changes mediated by the repositioning of refugee parents’ involvement in decision-making at one public school, and a reconfiguring of the school leadership advisory team. We document the ways in which refugee parents, when joined with others, engage in what Das Gupta (2006) calls space-making, or the process by which transnational migrants make spaces for themselves within, between, and outside of existing policies, practices, assumptions, and expectations. We show refugee parents advocating for themselves and their children, and working with teachers and community members to navigate uncertain and unfamiliar educational spaces and to build new, more adequate spaces for the emergent needs of a school with changing demographics.
AB - Refugee youth attend schools in every state in the United States. Yet, little is known about their schooling experiences or the ways in which schools engage their parents. In this paper, we resituate notions of parent involvement by focusing on the interactions between refugee parents and U.S. schools Drawing on data collected during a twenty-six month ethnography of refugees in a Northeastern city, we examine how the influx of refugee students into one school district, not only changes the district’s student demographics, but also leads to policy changes mediated by the repositioning of refugee parents’ involvement in decision-making at one public school, and a reconfiguring of the school leadership advisory team. We document the ways in which refugee parents, when joined with others, engage in what Das Gupta (2006) calls space-making, or the process by which transnational migrants make spaces for themselves within, between, and outside of existing policies, practices, assumptions, and expectations. We show refugee parents advocating for themselves and their children, and working with teachers and community members to navigate uncertain and unfamiliar educational spaces and to build new, more adequate spaces for the emergent needs of a school with changing demographics.
KW - Demographic change
KW - Ethnography
KW - Parent involvement
KW - Policy, refugees
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U2 - 10.1007/s10833-017-9299-7
DO - 10.1007/s10833-017-9299-7
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85020714057
SN - 1389-2843
VL - 18
SP - 311
EP - 335
JO - Journal of Educational Change
JF - Journal of Educational Change
IS - 3
ER -