ABSTRACT
Few studies pay careful attention to issues of gender, race, class, sexuality, or ability and how these intersectional identities affect family involvement in schools. This case study examined a family involvement course taught at two partner schools in different neighborhoods with parents, in-service, and preservice teachers of varying races, ethnicities, and gender/sexual orientations. Working out of intersectional and critical frameworks, using teacher research and participant observation we sought to understand storytelling, and in particular digital storytelling, as a critical literacy practice that might trouble, complicate, and support understandings of family involvement. We used thematic coding to focus on how participants – parents and teachers/interns – viewed family involvement and one another, and how intersectional identities affected these views. Findings suggest that unpacking and reconstructing single stories with teachers and family members of the same school holds the potential to trouble existing power structures and hold space for intersectional voices that are frequently silenced or rendered invisible in discussions of families in schools.
