African American Parental Engagement in a Public Middle School: Contributing Factors

Parental engagement with schools is often considered one of the major contributing factors to a child’s success in school. There is not, however, a definition of parental engagement that takes into account the social, historical, and cultural factors that shape a parent’s view of their own engagement. This qualitative case study examines how African American parents in a high poverty, urban, charter middle school, come to understand practices and beliefs at their child’s school, while building relationships with other parents and school staff. Through the lenses of critical race theory and cultural-historical activity theory, the researcher analyzes how the convergence of race, power, history, and culture frame perspectives of policy makers, those who work in schools, and parents. Through the voices of African American parents, in a socioeconomically disadvantaged school community, they define their own engagement

A Multicase Study of Local Church Leaders\u27 Perceived Impact on Reducing Inequity in Majority-Minority Urban Schools

The purpose of this multi-case study was to explore the local churches’ perceived impact on reducing education inequity in majority-minority urban schools in the northeast and mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. In this research, education inequity is generally defined as the lack of academic resources such as school funding, experienced teachers, and technology in a community that has been historically excluded. This study was guided by social capital theory as it relates to education and how they influence community and parental involvement levels and investments that impact educational success. The research questions are as follows: (1) How do local church leaders perceive the impact of their partnership on improving educational equity and lowering the achievement gap in local schools? (2) Why do local churches provide services and resources to support educational equity? What are the experiences, barriers, and successes? (3) Why do factors such as faith and family significantly impact school outcomes? This study will be bound to local churches and school districts in the Northeast regions of the United States. The sample was composed of 8 participants from three churches and faith-based nonprofits. Data collection included individual interviews, a focus group, and surveys. Data analysis was conducted using pattern-matching logic, coding, and transcripts interpretation

How Digital Natives Learn and Thrive in the Digital Age: Evidence from an Emerging Economy

As a generation of ‘digital natives,’ secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). This issue has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students’ background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents’ level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students’ digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students

Parents’ online self-disclosure and parental social media trusteeship: How parents manage the digital identity of their children

Obwohl Eltern versuchen ihre Privatsphäre zu schützen, offenbaren sie in sozialen Medien oftmals persönliche Informationen ihrer Kinder. Der Beitrag untersucht das «privacy paradox» und die Selbstoffenbarung in sozialen Medien und schlägt das Konzept elterlicher Medientreuhänderschaft als ergänzende theoretische Perspektive vor, um zu verstehen, wie Eltern die digitale Identität ihrer Kinder verwalten. Die theoretischen Überlegungen werden durch Ergebnisse von 46 Tiefeninterviews ergänzt. Sie zeigen, dass sich die Eltern der Verantwortung ihrer Treuhänderschaft kaum bewusst sind und die Folgen ihrer Social Media-Aktivitäten nur mit Einschränkungen abschätzen können. In der Analyse der Interviews lassen sich insgesamt drei unterschiedliche Ansätze elterlicher Medientreuhänderschaft identifizieren: Während (1) einige Eltern versuchen ihre Kinder weitgehend von sozialen Medien abzuschirmen, scheinen (2) andere nur eingeschränkt in der Lage zu sein, angemessen auf Risiken sozialer Medien zu reagieren oder (3) blenden diese weitgehend aus. Schliesslich wird mit Blick auf die elterliche Vermittlung von Medienkompetenz deutlich, dass die befragten Eltern keine konsistente Vorstellung davon haben, wie sie ihren Kindern einen achtsamen und verantwortungsvollen Umgang mit sozialen Medien vermitteln können.Although parents consider online privacy important, they insouciantly include personal information about their children. Reviewing research on the privacy paradox and online self-disclosure, this article suggests the concept of media trusteeship as an additional theoretical perspective to understand how parents shape the digital identity of their children. The results of 46 in-depth interviews indicate that parents are largely unaware of the described role duality and are only partially able to foresee the consequences of their activities. The analysis identifies three distinct types of parental media trusteeship: While some parents shield their offspring from social media, others appear unable to respond adequately to the risks of social media activities or seem to ignore them completely. Finally, it became clear that the parents surveyed had no idea how to teach media literacy and guide their children to a safe and careful use of social media

Digital Equity in the Time of COVID: Student Use of Technology for Equitable Outcomes

This issue brief is the third and final in a series published by the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC) addressing digital equity in K-12 schools. It examines research regarding students’ use of and outcomes related to technology. Research finds that inequities exist in use and outcomes for students based on gender, language, ability, race, SES and other sociocultural factors. Based on these inequities, theoretical and practical recommendations are discussed

Gender and Justice: Implementing Gender Fairness in the Courts

In November, 1990, the Judicial Council unanimously adopted a comprehensive set of recommendations designed to ensure gender fairness in the the state courts of California. this implementation report will highlight the progress made to date in greater detail and outline future objectives

Exploring Equity through the Perspective of White Equity-Trained Suburban Educators and Minoritized Parents

The intent of this qualitative critical incident study was to explore the interpretation of equity by White equity-trained suburban educators (WETSE) and minoritized parents (MP) in a Midwestern suburban school district to address and change inequitable student outcomes. WETSE and MP participated independently in focus groups. The research design used critical incident technique (CIT) as the methodology; focus groups as the data collection tool; and thematic analysis (TA) as the analytical tool. Zones of Mediation (ZONE) and Transformative Leadership Theory (TLT) were used to distill and categorize the research findings. WETSE and MP established an agreement on four themes thought to represent impediments to achieving equity in schools (implicit bias, White privilege, diversity, and power). Two divergent themes (WETSE—deficit thinking and MP—stereotyping) and one emergent theme (Equity Training) were generated. The singular stand-alone theme, assimilation, was a complete outlier, and it was generated by MP. All themes were categorized as “normative” or “political” elements of ZONE, demonstrating that technical changes are disconnected from WETSE and MP equity perspectives. Transformative leadership theory (TLT) is composed of eight tenets. WETSE and MP prioritized two of the eight tenets as essential to achieving equity. These findings indicate that changing mindsets (tenet #2) and redistributing power in more equitable ways (tenet #3) are central to achieving equitable school conditions. This study contributes to existing, albeit minimal, literature detailing longitudinal equity training’s effectiveness at deconstructing beliefs and ideologies of White equity-trained suburban teachers and comparing them to minoritized parents’ interpretation of equity using critical incidents. There is a disconnect between this study’s findings and what researchers and practitioners are doing to achieve equitable school outcomes. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA, https://aura.antioch.edu/, and OhioLINK ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.edu/et

Control Challenges Parents Experience When Monitoring Adolescents\u27 Internet and Social Media Use

Abstract The ubiquitous nature of social media/internet use among adolescents in the United States has become a concern for parents due to risks to safety (e.g., sexual predators), emotional and psychological wellbeing (e.g., cyberbullying), academic achievement (e.g., poor grades), and physical health (e.g., sedentary lifestyle/obesity) faced by unsupervised youth with unlimited access to digital media. Parents readily acknowledge the importance of monitoring their adolescents’ social media/internet use; however, studies have documented their failure to do so. For various reasons, parents encounter challenges in their attempts to keep children safe such as adolescents’ desire for independence, lack of parental digital skills, and the secretive nature of social media and digital world writ large. This qualitative study explored parents’ perceptions of challenges experienced while monitoring their adolescent’s social media/internet use. Guided by the parental mediation theory for the digital age, 10 semi-structured interviews were conducted with parents of adolescents who used social media/internet. Data were analyzed through coding and themes. Participants shared their experiences monitoring their adolescents’ social media/internet use, revealing concerns about lack of parental interest, early monitoring, communicating with adolescents, building trust, and app use and parental controls. These findings have implications for positive social change, as the findings can inform training programs developed by school administrators to assist parents’ efforts to keep children safe while enhancing academic performance

Parental Involvement, Socio-economic Status and Students\u27 Perceptions of the Classroom Learning Environmnet as Predictors of 8th Grade Students Academic Achievement: A Structural Equation Model

Problem Academic achievement among the nation’s youth has been on the decline for decades. The statistics from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) paints a bleak picture of the academic performance of more than half of the 4th and 8th grade students being below the required levels of proficiency in reading and mathematics. This is evidence that a problem of low academic achievement exists among certain student groups within the public education system. Therefore, it creates an academic achievement gap, which is reflected in the disparity in the standardized scores between students of color from low socio-economic status with their white/ middle-class counterparts. The negative ramifications associated with this low level of academic achievement cannot be underscored sufficiently. Purpose The purpose of this study was to analyze the collective influence of the predictors parental involvement, socio-economic status and students’ perceptions of the classroom learning environment on 8th grade students’ academic achievement in mathematics and language arts. The intention was to provide an analysis of these predictors of academic achievement and to expand knowledge of the inter-relationships between the variables correlated with it. Additionally, insights into the academic achievement gap are provided. Research Design The study employed a quantitative, cross-sectional, survey, Structural Equation Modeling design. The sample was drawn from the middle school population. There were 77 student participants with their parents who were from two middle schools across two states in the US. The data was analyzed using AMOS statistical package to estimate the parameters and to determine the fit of the structural model with the observed data. The statistical significance level of .05 was established for the study. Results The results from the analysis partially supported the structural model. Some of the hypothesized relationships emerged as expected with positive, moderate and statistically significant correlations. These include Parental Educational Status (PES) with Free and Reduced Lunch (FRL), FRL with academic achievement (AA), PES with Parental Involvement (PI). The hypothesized relationship between FRL and PI, PI and AA, PI and CLE and CLE and AA did not emerge as expected. Their correlations were statistically non-significant with the correlation between CLE and AA and PI and CLE being in an inverse direction. Regarding the sub-models, the lack of a statistically significant correlation between PI and AA, resulted in its inability to mediate the relationship between PES and AA and FRL and AA. Therefore, PI failed to mediate the influence of both FRL and PES on AA. These sub-models of the inter-relationship between FRL, PI and AA and PES, PI and AA were not confirmed as expected. Further investigation is required to explain these unexpected findings, although the small sample size could be partially responsible for this outcome. Conclusions The conclusions that were drawn from the results of this study are that a direct relationship existed between the variables FRL and AA, PES and FRL and PES and PI. PI was unable to mediate the relationship between FRL and AA because of its non-significant relationship with AA. However, the direct robust influence of FRL on AA, eliminated the need for mediation from PI. This confirmed the potency of FRL to influence AA without any mediation from PI. The correlation between FRL and PI was not practically or statistically significant, which is in contrast with the relationship between PES and PI. PES had a strong and positive correlation with PI, which signifies that the higher levels of PES result in higher levels of PI. Therefore, it appears that PI is a function of PES, as evidenced by the higher parental involvement scores reported by more educated parents. Additionally, the intensity of the correlation between PES and FRL is not as strong as that of PES and PI. PI and AA did not achieve a statistically significant relationship, which may be attributed to the strong and robust correlation between FRL and AA. The school-based forms of PI like communication, decision making and volunteering as well as the home-based form of PI, academic socialization require social/cultural capital. This resource is not readily available to lower socio-economic parents, compared to their middle class counter-parts. The disparity in the standardized tests scores between students from the diverse socio-economic status groups requires an understanding of the role of parental involvement in academic achievement and how its types are influenced by SES. A comprehensive perspective of academic achievement must be filtered through the lens of these variables. Thus, it is imperative that the home/school partnership be effectively promoted and maintained