From Parent Involvement to Family Ecosystem Engagement: A Culturally Responsive Framework for Strengthening Belonging and Equity among First-Generation Students

Policies and strategies regarding the interaction between schools and families in the United States have been shaped by assumptions characteristic of Western cultures that view school involvement primarily as parental engagement in activities carried out within the school [1,2,3]. Such frameworks may not take into account the different family compositions and forms of caring practiced by many first-generation and minority students, who may include those from the Latino, Asian, Middle Eastern, African and immigrant communities where educational support and care could be provided by a range of individuals such as grandparents, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins and many others [4,5,6]. Additionally, the structural barriers facing families from under-resourced communities include work obligations, odd working hours, difficulty in transportation, and lack of institutional flexibility, making their participation in traditional school activities difficult [1,2].
A Family Ecosystem Engagement (FEE) Framework will be proposed as a culturally responsive intervention that extends beyond parents to include grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and other trusted caregivers in the family engagement process. This structure has been developed using concepts from ecological systems theory, relational developmental systems, and current research on belonging and school connectedness [7,8,9]. It assumes that schools will function as community centers where interactions between educators and extended family members are established intentionally.
Utilizing the ideas of Nancy Hill on family-school partnerships, Richard Weissbourd on relational health and belonging, Stephanie Jones on social-emotional learning implementation, Geoffrey Cohen on identity-safe environments, Christopher Emdin on culturally responsive pedagogy, Deborah Rivas-Drake on identity development, and Stephanie Rowley on identity development and social context, it maintains that extending school engagement beyond parents is a means to promote equity and will enable educators to strengthen belonging among their students, improve attendance, increase academic persistence, and reduce educational disparities among first-generation and culturally diverse students [8,11,13,15,17,18].
A model of the intervention strategy for the school community will be proposed at the end of this paper.

family engagement, belonging, first-generation students, collectivist cultures, educational equity, school climate, immigrant families, culturally responsive education, relational health, social-emotional learning

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