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        <h1 class="thinner-title">What Does it Take to Form Meaningful Connections among Cultural Brokers, Parents, and Teachers? </h1>
        <div class="subhead">Lessons from the i3 We Are A Village Grant</div>
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              <h2 class="profile-img-title">Joanna Geller</h2>
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            <h4 class="authors">Authors: Joanna Geller, Vianna Alcantara, Danielle Boucher, Ruth López, Elizabeth Harris, Keith Catone, Jaein Lee, & Rosann Tung</h4>
            <p><a href="/images/hand_outs/CFi3-AERA-handout.pdf" target="_blank">Download AERA handout</a></p>
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              <span class="bold-it">Objective:</span> The purpose of this study is to explore what factors facilitate and hinder meaningful connections among cultural brokers, parents, and teachers. Cultural brokers help culturally and linguistically diverse families navigate the language, customs, and norms of the school system while simultaneously affirming parents’ own culture and rights. We examine how trust and respect – or the lack thereof – manifested in relationships among cultural brokers, parents, and teachers; how trust and respect improved over time; and to what extent improved trust and respect between cultural brokers and teachers dismantled uneven power differentials between teachers and parents.
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              <span class="bold-it">Study Perspective:</span> This question emerged from the evaluation of an Investing in Innovation (i3) grant, entitled We Are a Village, issued by the U.S. Department of Education to the Central Falls, Rhode Island School District. The intervention staffed each of the five participating schools with a full-time bilingual cultural broker, termed “Collaborator.” Each Collaborator oversees a team of 1-9 parent leaders, who are paid small stipends in exchange for at least 12 hours of volunteer work per week in the schools. The broader goal of the parents’ volunteer commitment is for them to become equipped with the capacity to also serve as cultural brokers. Thus, our use of the term “cultural brokers” includes both Collaborators and parent leaders. Little is known about how cultural brokers develop relationships with teachers and help build teachers’ capacities to engage families.
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              <span class="bold-it">Methods and data sources:</span> During the 2013/14 school year, across the five schools, we conducted over 30 semi-structured focus groups with English and Spanish speaking parents, paid parent volunteers, and teachers; interviews with Collaborators, school leaders, and i3 project staff; and observations of i3 activities. Focus groups and interviews included many of the same respondents in the fall and the spring in order to assess change. Our research team systematically coded the transcripts using qualitative data analysis software. We supplement these data with quantitative data tracking parent participation in i3 activities. 
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              <span class="bold-it">Results:</span> We found that trust and respect were the foundation of meaningful connections among cultural brokers, teachers, and parents. Trust and respect among these groups improved through a combination of intentional relationship-building activities and more opportunities for these groups to interact regularly. Trust and respect improved most substantially when daily interactions revolved around students and their well-being. Despite these improvements, many teachers continued to harbor deficit-based attitudes toward parents. Our main conclusion is that increasing daily interactions between teachers and cultural brokers cannot undo the effect of hegemonic norms that characterize poor families, families of color, immigrant families, and single-parent families as lazy and uncaring at worst and simply unable to be good parents at best.
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              <span class="bold-it">Significance:</span> Our findings reinforce the significance of the Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Home-School Partnerships, released by the Department of Education in 2014. Effective partnership between parents and teachers depends on simultaneous efforts to develop the capacities of both groups. We suggest a variety of practical strategies for achieving this goal.
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      <h2>Building Powerful Family Leadership for Educational Success:</h2>
      <h5>PTA Comunitario in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley</h5>
      <p class="reduced-story1">The Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) partnering with five South Texas school districts and community-based organizations (CBOs), is studying the effects of its innovative parent and community engagement model, the PTA Comunitario. </p>
      <p class="btn-space"><a class="btn btn-font btn-aera" href="/aera-2015/Building-Powerful-Family-Leadership-for-Educational-Success/" role="button">View details &raquo;</a></p>
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      <h2>FAST for all Kindergartners:</h2>
      <h5>A Randomized Controlled Trial on Family Engagement and School Climate Effects</h5>
      <p class="reduced-story3">Families and Schools Together (FAST) for Kindergartners is the parent involvement and family engagement strategy used in 60 Title I-eligible schools in Philadelphia. The purpose of FAST is to increase parent social support, improve parent-child relationships, and increase positive family-school engagement.</p>
      <p class="btn-space"><a class="btn btn-font btn-aera" href="/aera-2015/FAST-for-all-Kindergartners/" role="button">View details &raquo;</a></p>
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      <h2>Parent Involvement and Engagement in the Midwest Child-Parent Center Expansion Program</h2>
      <p class="reduced-story4">The Midwest Child-Parent Center program (MCPC) is a PreK to 3rd grade (PK-3) program designed to improve low-income children’s school success, in part through enhancing parental involvement in their children’s education</p>
      <p class="btn-space"><a class="btn btn-font btn-aera" href="/aera-2015/Parent-Involvement-and-Engagement-in-the-Midwest-Child-Parent-Center-Expansion-Program/" role="button">View details &raquo;</a></p>
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