Third Grade Commitment

This project focuses on a recently revised district wide policy that will impact local second graders based on their literacy scores. We use semi-structured interviews to investigate parents’ and teachers’ knowledge about and attitudes towards the new initiative and revised retention policy. We intend to share our preliminary results with study participants and other educational stakeholders such as principals and school leaders.

Project co-led by Dr. Aixa Marchand & Dr. Laura Taylor (Rhodes College).

CPES

The Critical Parent Engagement Scale (CPES) is a recently developed and validated scale intended to capture Black parents’ perspectives of structures of power and oppression while exploring how their worldview may influence their feelings of self-efficacy and the ways in which they critically act on behalf of their children within schools. This scale can be used by researchers and educators to better understand how Black parents’ perceptions of their child’s schools influences the ways in which they engage.

Publication in prep.

Black Familial Experiences Rooted in Storytelling (B-FERnS) Project

This project aims to better understand the relationship between Black families in Champaign Urbana with the aim of documenting the experiences that they have with their children’s public schools by using a collaborative community-based Photovoice project. Photovoice is a tool that community groups and researchers have used to empower community members to share their experiences and expertise on a topic through storytelling. Participants will take photographs of their experiences with the public schools and then collaboratively reflect upon the process and the elicited photos with the research team and fellow participants. Through this process of photo-taking and collaborative discussion, participants will identify common strengths and challenges, which will in turn be used to inform future community efforts.