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Citation:

Giles, H. C. (2002). Transforming the deficit narrative: Race, class, and social capital in parent-school relations. In C. Korn & A. Bursztyn (Eds.), Rethinking multicultural education: Case studies in cultural transition (pp. 130-159). Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.

Annotation:
This chapter explores the ways in which the roles, racial identities, and socio-economic status of educators, parents, and community members influenced a series of parenting workshops offered by school psychologists and speakers from community-based agencies. Based on her position as Òparticipant-observer,Ó the researcher describes how parents participating in the workshops were able to challenge, and eventually reject, the deficit-based attitudes and behaviors of educators and representatives of community agencies. She found that as parents encountered these attitudes and behaviors, through group process, racial identities were strengthened. They were able to find their own voices and exert their authority to speak and the right to be heard. The setting was an urban elementary school and the majority of participants were low-income African American and Puerto Rican parents. The researcherÕs case notes and observations of participantsÕ verbalizations and nonverbal behaviors were the main sources of data. This article offers some new ways of understanding the relationship between parents, community, and educators when considering race and socioeconomic status. The researcher recognizes the limitations of her study, especially that the observations were filtered through her biases, without the benefit of the other participantsÕ perspectives on the experience. Because of this limitation, the researcher uses her findings to generate research questions and hypotheses to be explored in future research.