Transforming educator identities and roles in family engagement through critical participatory action research

Transformative approaches are essential for teachers, researchers, and teacher educators to rethink their identities and roles and to position themselves as both collaborators with and learners from immigrant families and communities. In this article, we share how Transformational Theory and Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) creates conditions for teachers to engage in professional learning that centers on immigrant and refugee families. In collaboration with immigrant and refugee community advocates, we used CPAR to understand the needs and desires of immigrant and refugee families, to integrate that information into our curriculum, and to support teachers to work with families to pursue shared lines of inquiry embedded in their everyday lives, experiences, and needs. We describe positive shifts in teacher identity and perceptions as teachers prioritized families over school structures and processes, and we share challenges we encountered such as the power imbalances connected to our positionality as white native English speaking researchers working in linguistically diverse communities of color.

Automated summary

This article discusses the importance of transformative approaches for teachers to collaborate with and learn from immigrant families and communities, using Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) to understand their needs and desires. By integrating this information into curriculum and supporting teachers to work with families, positive shifts in teacher identity and perceptions were observed, despite challenges such as power imbalances connected to researchers' positionality in linguistically diverse communities.