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Patricia
Edwards remembers a different place and a different time.
Growing up in segregated Georgia, nearly all her teachers
lived in her neighborhood. Parental involvement at her school
wasn't an issue; the school was the community.
For
Edwards, a professor in the Department of Teacher Education,
those days are gone, especially in urban or low-income areas.
The result is all too often that parents and teachers find
themselves isolated and estranged from each other because
they share neither a common community experience nor a racial
or ethnic background.
But
for Edwards, it doesn't have to be that way. Much of Edwards'
research has sought to develop ways in which parents and
teachers can talk to each other across the barriers of race,
ethnicity and class. Her research has dealt in large part
with what is known as "parent stories" and the
power they can have in providing insight to teachers, especially
as it relates to literacy.
Edwards
says parent's stories are simply narratives gained from
open-ended conversations or interviews. The questions and
interviews are designed to provide information to the teacher
about learning activities that take place in the home.
In
one study, Edwards worked with 12 elementary school teachers
in Lansing. The teachers in those 12 classes, all of whom
had more than 10 years of experience, recommended two of
their students whom they classified as academically at risk
and whom they said they wanted to know more about.
Edwards
then set out to develop an effective method to get parents
to tell their stories. She developed a set of 50 open-ended
questions in 11 categories that include such things as parent,
child and family routines and activities, and child literacy
interests.
Questions
include: "How did you structure your child's day? What
is a normal weekday routine for you and your child? What
do you and your child enjoy doing together?"
Edwards
also then developed questions designed to go further based
on the answers, such as: "Do you think your child showed
a particular talent early on? Were there specific things
you did as a parent to strengthen this talent?"
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Patricia Edwards
The
open-ended nature of the questioning was effective. Parents
began to reveal details about their lives to the degree
that one of the parents told Edwards that she was addicted
to crack cocaine.
Edwards
and a graduate assistant then transcribed the interviews
and began to analyze the stories. She then pulled out aspects
of stories that where particularly instructive in terms
of what was taking place at home.
She
gave the stories to the teachers and asked them to respond
about the type of things that were taking place in the students'
lives. It became clear to Edwards that the teachers, although
experienced, did not have enough critical information about
their students' family life.
It
was also clear to Edwards that the information could provide
insight into a child's literacy development and problems
that the student might be facing in the classroom.
Edwards
said parent stories begin to paint a portrait that is essential
to understanding student behavior, their communication and
learning styles, and some of the problems parents face and
how those problems affect their children.
Ultimately,
Edwards said teachers must become what she calls "multi-conscious."
They need to understand different identities. For Edwards,
the bottomline is that having educators understand the experiences
of their students and the families from which they come
will make them better, more effective teachers.
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