Dr. Parr earns research grant to examine parental engagement

Dr. Michelann Parr, associate professor in the Schulich School of Education at Nipissing University has been awarded a $100,000 research grant from the Ontario Ministry of Education to study parental engagement in partnership with the Simcoe Catholic District School Board.  
School-based parent engagement initiatives typically aim to improve the home-school connection and help families understand what it is that schools do, attempting to align family practice with school practice. Such initiatives often stem from "How can we fix families?" or "Schools know best" discourses instead of understanding, exploring, and extending what it is that families already do to support their children's development and learning.

Dr. Parr’s research will contribute to the current discussion on parent engagement by offering a detailed understanding of how diverse families and school teams can work as collaborators in practical and empowering ways. It is anticipated that this research will lead to an understanding of parent engagement as a local and situated practice; a model of parent engagement that recognizes families and schools as collaborators, re-establishing equitable power balances in children’s development; a set of theoretical and practical principles and strategies to build capacity in families, schools, districts, and teacher education programs.

Specifically, the project addresses the following objectives:
identify and build upon current school and district strategies, identifying characteristics that sustain capacity in the area of parent engagement, namely those that bring together family and school-based literacies;
provide additional evidence-based strategies that can be drawn upon to support literacy development, student achievement and well-being;
explore and identify family-school practices that enhance collaborative partnerships between home and school and interrupt family-school power imbalances, identifying innovative ways to engage diverse families including those who have not been reached or those whose children may be at risk of not achieving their full potential;
document effectivestrategies so that they may be adapted/used by Ontario schools and boards.

This project extends ongoing work in family literacy, including a project funded by the Schulich School of Education in partnership with the Near North District School Board, initially published in Supporting Families as Collaborators in Children's Literacy Development.