Supporting Consequential Learning in Middle School STEM through Rightful Familial Presence

Familial presence in school supports children’s learning. However, few models exist that illustrate forms of familial presence in STEM learning that center familial cultural knowledge and practice. The project will produce a model for familial engagement in STEM along with instructional tools and illustrative case-studies that can be used by teachers and school districts nationally in support of increasing students’ STEM learning. This three-year study investigates new instructional practices that support rightful familial presence in STEM as a mechanism to address the continued racial and class gaps in STEM achievement for historically marginalized students. Rightful familial presence is a powerful form of authentic family engagement that legitimizes families’ community cultural capital. It fosters capital movement between families and schools, especially when these forms of capital have historically been marginalized within STEM learning.

The goals of the Rightful Familial Presence in STEM project are 1) to collaborate with 6th grade teachers and family members to produce a model for familial engagement, and 2) to study whether and how the model supports opportunities for equitable and consequential student learning in two different STEM content areas among middle school students from underrepresented backgrounds. The project seeks to advance theory by developing practice-based, theory-driven empirical understandings of how rightful familial presence supports STEM teaching and learning. Over three years and using cycles of participatory design-based intervention research, the Rightful Familial Presence in STEM intervention will be designed, tested and refined. Teachers and family members will collaboratively engage in new activity systems that will yield insights into STEM-specific curricular and instructional practices for equitable middle school STEM education. This project brings together teachers from two large urban public school districts, community leaders, parents and family members and researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The project seeks to yield a) new knowledge on how instructional practices may foster new forms of rightful familial presence in support of student learning, and how teachers make sense of and take up these practices; and b) a practice framework with fleshed out teacher and familial roles to systemically increase rightful familial presence in middle school STEM learning, to be shared as explained in our communication plan.