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Ecologies of Parental Engagement in Urban Education

Teachers College, Columbia University, 412 Main Hall, Box 210, 525 W. 120th Street, New York, NY 10027; acb33{at}columbia.edu. Her primary research interests are focused on urban education and the role of culture and place in learning, and access to science in formal and informal settings

Corey Drake, Assistant Professor in Math Education

University of Missouri–St. Louis, 315 Marillac Hall, 8001 Natural Bridge Road, St. Louis, MO 63121-4499; drakec{at}msx.umsl.edu. Her primary areas of research are focused on teacher learning and mathematics reform in elementary schools

Jose Gustavo Perez, Doctoral student in Educational Psychology

University of Texas at Austin, 340 Sanchez Building, Austin, TX 78712; gpx{at}mail.utexas.edu

Kathleen St. Louis, Doctoral student in Science Education

Teachers College, Columbia University, 412 Main Hall, Box 210, 525 W. 120th Street, New York, NY 10027; kstlouis{at}grow.net. Her research focuses on urban science education and parental engagement

Magnia George, Postdoctoral Fellow in Education Studies

University of Michigan, School of Education, 4049 SEB, Ann Arbor, MI 48109; magnia{at}umich.edu. Her areas of specialty are science education, curriculum development, and teacher learning

What we know about parental involvement in schools cuts across two areas: how and why parental involvement is important and the structural barriers that impede parental participation. However, it has been difficult to construct an account of parental involvement, grounded in everyday practice that goes beyond a laundry list of things that good parents do for their children’s education. In this article we make a case for a new data-driven framework for understanding parental engagement in urban elementary schools, the Ecologies of Parental Engagement (EPE) framework. The EPE framework marks a fundamental shift in how we understand parents’ involvement in their children’s education—a shift from focusing primarily on what parents do to engage with their children’s schools and with other actors within those schools, to also considering how parents understand the hows and whys of their engagement, and how this engagement relates more broadly to parents’ experiences and actions both inside and out of the school community. In explaining this framework, we situate parental engagement as a relational phenomenon that relies on activity networks. In doing so, we highlight the crucial importance that both space and capital play in the relative success parents (and teachers) have in engaging parents in the academic venue of urban schooling. Drawing from our understanding of the intersections between space and capital in the worlds of parents and school, we make the argument that parental engagement ought to be thought of as the mediation between space and capital.

Educational Researcher, Vol. 33, No. 4, 3-12 (2004)
DOI: 10.3102/0013189X033004003


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