Power, Culture, and Family–School Relations

“Power, Culture, and Family-School Relations: Towards Culturally Sustaining Practices raises important questions about well-meaning family outreach efforts and argues for an examination of the power dynamics of family-school relations. It is a must-read for researchers and practitioners seeking to build on the often-ignored cultural wealth of immigrant families.” Guadalupe Valdés, Professor Emerita, Stanford University. “In her critical ethnographic study of a school-based family outreach program, Stacy breaks new ground in the field of family literacy. This is a must-read for educators, teacher educators, and administrators, particularly those seeking to create culturally sustaining family literacy programs.” Cathy Amanti, Retired Faculty, Georgia State University, USA “In this book, Dr. Jen Stacy carefully examines the world of family literacy. Through her ethnographic study of one public school-sponsored family literacy program in Nebraska, she skillfully demonstrates the perils of the interventionist, deficit-based approach that is most often used in this field. She provides an in-depth introduction to the field, unveils the influence of neoliberalism, and shows how mothers in the program took agentive action to get their needs met. This text is a must-read for anyone wanting to ensure that schools are true partners with immigrant and refugee families in ways that are empowering rather than infantilizing.” Jessica Sierk, Associate Professor, St. Lawrence University, USA “Dr. Jen Stacy delivers an incisive, at times scathing, but candid and necessary critical analysis of neoliberal family literacy programs enmeshed with border theory that frequently divest families of their ways knowing and ancestral teachings to gain the promised rewards of “parent engagement”. Most notably, this thoughtful critical ethnographic examination of the “cultural innerworkings” of one family literacy program ultimately suggests ways to co-create culturally sustaining programs with parents as partners and upend extant power dynamics and assimilationist ideologies to center liberatory praxis.” Yesenia Fernández, Associate Professor and Former K-12 District Administrator, California State University Dominguez Hills, USA