Research
Key Areas of Interest
Debbie Pushor is a researcher and published author in the areas of parent engagement and leadership, parent knowledge, a curriculum of parents, and systematic parent engagement. She strives to radically shift the ways in which parents are given place and voice (or not) in their children’s’ teaching and learning experiences.
Her teaching arises out of her research, with the two being integrally connected. What is exciting is that the work is webbing outwards - cohorts of students are taking up this work through collaborative endeavours (writing books, filming video series, planning and facilitating conferences). As a result, the parent engagement work is extending outward - into families, schools, childcare centers, communities, and community organizations. No piece of Debbie’s research or writing sits alone, each piece arises out of or leads to another, all of this body of work woven meaningfully together. Debbie has said, “I’m not doing this by myself - people are taking it and growing it. It now has a life of its own.”
She is known for her commitment to and her deep relationships with her students, current and former. She does not work with an individual or group and then let them go, but continues to stay in relationship with them, bringing them into an every-broadening community with a web of connections and supports.
Debbie is so excited about how the work on parent engagement is changing the educational landscape of Saskatchewan, “Educators and parents are doing all this cool stuff because they took a concept or idea and ran with it.” Debbie is there to cheer them on, to showcase their work, but the work becomes their own.
Parent Engagement and Leadership
A foundational area of Debbie’s research is parent engagement and leadership. To understand what this means, it’s important to also understand parent information and involvement, and how they are different from engagement and leadership.
Information is simply the act of providing parents with details that enable them to know what is happening for their child or at their child’s school. It maintains the positioning of school personnel as the knowers and the deciders, and it positions parents as receivers of the school’s decision-making. Information is a one way, passive process.
Parent involvement is a step forward on the continuum. Just as with information, involvement keeps school personnel in the position of knowers and deciders. What it acknowledges is that the school staff cannot do everything they want to do on their own and that parent help is needed. The agenda determined by the school is still central, but “warm bodies” - volunteers - are needed in roles such as aide, organizer, fundraiser, or audience member to realize that agenda. The good thing is that there is interaction here between staff and parents. What hasn’t changed is whose knowledge counts or who decides.
When it comes to engagement, there is a synergy in which parents and teachers are now working together, no longer with one above the other but side by side, in a relationship in which a commitment is made to one another - both giving and taking, both leading and following, both listening and learning - and both knowing and deciding. With engagement, parents are no longer “warm bodies” but holders of parent knowledge that is used alongside teacher knowledge in decisions that affect teaching, learning, and students.
Extending beyond engagement, parent leadership occurs when parents actually become the ones taking the leadership role. Parent leadership invites leadership to fall to the person best equipped to take the lead at any point in time, as the ones with cultural knowledge or community knowledge, as examples, or as the ones working to realize their hopes and dreams for their children.
Important to note is that each element along this continuum has a contribution to make, each different from the others. What is ideal is when a school has all elements at play. What is key to note, though, is that most schools only get as far as parent involvement. Why does this matter? Because research evidence shows that it takes getting to the place of parent engagement and leadership to positively impact student achievement and other educational outcomes. Otherwise, those efforts are nice but they don’t make a difference to the core work of the school.
Each school has a largely untapped resource in its community - its parents. When parents are engaged in their children’s learning, kids stay in school longer, like school more, and do better. And that’s why engagement!
Parent Knowledge
In Debbie’s program of research, she worked to explore two key questions in regard to parent knowledge. First, what is parent knowledge? Second, how do parents hold and use their parent knowledge?
Let’s back up. Everyone holds “funds of knowledge” and that includes their personal, practical, professional, and craft knowledge, garnered experientially, informally, and formally throughout their lives. Only parents possess parent knowledge, the particular knowledge held and used by someone who nurtures children in the complex act of childrearing and in the complex context of a home and family. Parent knowledge reflects the ways in which a parent knows their child in a way that no one else ever will, including their teachers. Every parent has knowledge to contribute to their child’s teaching, learning, and development - relational, intimate, bodied, embodied, intuitive, and shifting knowledge. One of the critical attributes of parent engagement is that it uses parent knowledge, that’s how you know it’s engagement and not parent involvement.
A Curriculum Of Parents
Exploring and building a curriculum of parents is central in all areas of Debbie’s work. The term “curriculum of parents” refers to a body of knowledge that prepares educators to work with families in honouring, inclusive, and equitable ways.
As of now, teachers are rarely being educated to work with parents and families. The whole narrative that gets written about parents is typically negative. They are often portrayed as something teachers should fear. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that every single teacher works with parents but with no formalized and thoughtful education that asks them to examine their beliefs and assumptions about parents and families or provides them with ideas about how to work with them and engage them in their child’s education. In so many instances, schools remain places for kids and teachers only.
A curriculum of parents re-defines what it means to be a teacher and works to (re)present families in schools. It makes visible how parents are as much a part of the school landscape as the kids, teachers, and subject matter.
A curriculum of parents, then, works to deconstruct and reconstruct teachers’ notions about a parent’s place in their child’s schooling and education.
Systematic Parent Engagement
Most often, what is happening in the education field right now can be described as “random acts of parent engagement.” The question stands: how do we move from random acts to a systematic approach so parent engagement is not seen to be an add on “if I get the time,” but, rather, the core fabric of what teachers do. Debbie understands parent engagement as a philosophy and a pedagogy. Research shows that when parents are engaged, kids will do better. Therefore, she sees it so important to develop and implement deliberate systematic steps to move from random acts to an embedded approach. None of the above concepts stand alone. Systematic parent engagement is about taking all of the pieces and bringing them together. Parent engagement has been proven to benefit kids, teachers, and parents while also strengthening families and the school landscape as a whole.