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ARTICLE TITLE: Disrupting Racialized Institutional Scripts: Toward Parent–Teacher Transformative Agency for Educational
Justice
ARTICLE AUTHOR: Sola A Takahashi, Ishimaru, Ann MTakahashi Sola A
VOLUME: 92
ISSUE: 3
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YEAR: 2017
PAGES: 343-362
ISSN: 1532-7930
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Disrupting Racialized Institutional
Scripts: Toward Parent–Teacher
Transformative Agency for Educational
Justice
Ann M. Ishimaru & Sola Takahashi
To cite this article: Ann M. Ishimaru & Sola Takahashi (2017) Disrupting
Racialized Institutional Scripts: Toward Parent–Teacher Transformative Agency
for Educational Justice, Peabody Journal of Education, 92:3, 343-362, DOI:
10.1080/0161956X.2017.1324660
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2017.1324660
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ISSN: 0161-956X (Print) 1532-7930 (Online) Journal homepage:
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PEABODY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, 92 :343–362, 2017 Copyright C o Taylor & Francis
Group, LLC ISSN: 0161-956X print / 1532-7930 online DOI: 10.1080/0161956X.2017.1324660
Disrupting Racialized Institutional Scripts: Toward Parent–Teacher
Transformative Agency for Educational Justice
Ann M. Ishimaru University of Washington
Sola Takahashi WestEd
Partnerships between teachers and parents from nondominant communities hold promise for reducing race- and class-based
educational disparities, but the ways families and teachers work together often fall short of delivering systemic change. Racialized
institutional scripts provide “taken-for-granted” norms, expectations, and assumptions that constrain marginalized families and
educators in exercis- ing collective agency to disrupt educational inequities. In this paper, we bring together the concept of
institutional scripts from organizational theory with transformative agency from sociocultural learn- ing theories to address the
moment-to-moment interactions between families and educators that may rewrite racialized institutional scripts and expand
collective parent–teacher identities. Drawing ex- amples from a parent–educator participatory design-based research project, we
highlight how collab- orative activity might (a) reframe expertise, (b) surface and examine contradictions, and (c) attend to power
in relational dynamics in order to expand identities and interactions in the presence of racial, cultural, and class differences across
roles. We argue that examining parent–teacher activity through these lenses opens possibilities for building parent–teacher
relations toward collective agency and critical solidarities toward educational justice.
Despite concerted attention and efforts to address educational inequities, race-based disparities persist in U.S. educational
systems, as evidenced by dramatically fewer learning opportunities and resources for many low-income students of color
(Darling-Hammond, 2010 ; Ladson-Billings, 2006 ; Noguera, 2003 ). Increasingly, both educational policy and rhetoric have
framed parents from historically marginalized communities and teachers as key “partners” whose collective work can
disrupt these inequities and eliminate disparities in student learning and success (Every Stu- dent Success Act, 2015; Mapp
& Kuttner, 2014 ; No Child Left Behind, 2002 ). Moreover, robust evidence from the literature highlights the positive link
between parent–teacher relations and stu- dent success (Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Easton, & Luppescu, 2010 ; Jeynes,
2005 ).
Correspondence should be sent to Ann M. Ishimaru, Associate Professor, University of Washington, College of Edu- cation, Box 363500,
Miller Hall, Seattle, WA 98105. E-mail: aishi@uw.edu
Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/hpje .
344 A. M. ISHIMARU AND S. TAKAHASHI
Even when policies and structures aim to foster partnerships between families and schools, the dominant norms,
expectations, and assumptions in schools can constrain the possibilities for families from marginalized communities to
work with educators in exercising collective agency to disrupt these inequities (Hands, 2014 ; Ishimaru, 2014 ;
Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2003 ). In this ar- ticle, we bring specific ideas from organizational and sociocultural learning theories
together to conceptualize both the racialized constraints on parent–teacher relations embedded in the taken-for-granted
aspects of schools, as well as the possibilities for equity-focused parent–teacher relationships.
We first highlight the paradox of parent–teacher relations as both rhetorical partners and “nat- ural enemies” (Waller,
1932 ) and argue that teachers should examine and address the complex- ities of the race, class, and power of families from
historically marginalized communities. We then draw on the concept of institutional scripts from neoinstitutional theory to
explain how the unspoken dominant norms, roles, and expectations in schools shape individuals’ behavior and interactions.
We posit that these racialized scripts constrain nondominant parents in schools, which can shape their
dis engagement from educators and schools. We then draw on concepts from cul- tural historical activity theory (CHAT) to
make sense of how engaging families and teachers in collaborative activity might disrupt racialized institutional scripts
and build parent–teacher trans- formative agency. Using examples from a participatory design-based research (PDR)
project, we illustrate how reframing expertise, surfacing and examining contradictions, and attending to power in joint
activity might foster new understandings and parent–teacher identities toward equi- table collaboration. We offer
institutional theory in tandem with cultural historical activity theory to move beyond simply understanding the persistence
of educational inequities and toward efforts to build critical solidarities that advocate for educational justice.
We thus join the larger conversation of this issue to extend the boundaries of the concept of interest convergence (Bell,
1980 ) and to look beyond it to strive toward a more just educational system. Interest convergence, the notion that civil
rights advances were won only when powerful white interests aligned with those of black interests in ways that maintained
existing power hierar- chies, highlights the ways in which many “partnerships” between families and schools maintain
dominant cultural norms and power asymmetries (Auerbach, 2010 ). Even as we acknowledge racial realism, the idea that
racism will always persist in changing form and dynamics (Bell, 1980 ), we suggest that theories from other disciplines
have insights to offer for transforming our educational systems. In bringing new theories to bear on conceptualizing
transformed parent– teacher relations, we seek to open the door to alternative possibilities for engaging issues of power
and difference in building ongoing and sustained solidarities across roles, expertise, communities, and histories.
THE PARADOX OF PARENT–TEACHER DYNAMICS IN SCHOOLS
The literature on parent involvement and family engagement highlights the importance of parent– teacher relations to
student success (Henderson & Mapp, 2002 ; Jeynes 2005 , 2007 ). Also, recent school reform literature has identified
community–school relations as one of five key pillars of successful school improvement (Bryk et al., 2010 ). Yet
scholarship focused on the dynamics of race, class, culture, and language in parent–teacher relations more often describes
power strug- gles and experiences of marginalization for nondominant families (Dyrness, 2009 ; Fine, 1993 ;
TOWARD PARENT–TEACHER AGENCY 345
Lareau & Horvat, 1999 ; Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2003 ). For instance, Stelmach ( 2011 ) says that parents describe their
relationships with teachers as a war, emphasizing its resonance with Willard Waller’s ( 1932 ) characterization of parents
and teachers as “natural enemies.” Particularly in low- income communities of color, power asymmetries and deficit-based
assumptions can result in parent–teacher dynamics contributing to inequity, rather than ameliorating it (Baquedano-López,
Alexander, & Hernández, 2013 ; Olivos, 2006 ; Perez Carreón, Drake, & Calabrese Barton, 2005 ). And yet, despite these
complex and often contested dynamics, nondominant families and teachers share expertise on the daily realities of students
and have a common “interest” in student success. Although parents and teachers typically have limited influence on the
broader policies, resources, and theories of change in systemic change initiatives, the literature on community orga- nizing
provides some of the few examples of collectives of parents and teachers developing power together to influence broader
changes in schools. The burgeoning education organizing literature suggests that organized parents and teachers can create
powerful alliances (Shirley, 2016 ). For instance, in the 1990s and early 2000s, New York’s Community Collaborative to
Improve Dis- trict 9 Schools (CC9) Coalition (and eventually New York City Coalition for Educational Justice) allied with
the United Federations of Teacher union (UFT) to fight for a teacher mentor program. They were successful in obtaining
the program, and it eventually became so successful that the New York Department of Education spread the model to 100
other schools (Fabricant, 2010 ). An- other prominent example involved the teachers’ union in Chicago. The union joined
forces with the community organizing group, Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA), to support a “grow your
own” teacher model that certified community residents as teachers in their own communities (Skinner, Garreton, &
Schultz, 2011 ).
However, these alliances tend to focus on high-level political strategies within a specific time frame. In this sense,
such alliances suggest classic “interest convergences,” in which concessions are made to marginalized groups only insofar
as such concessions hold value for dominant groups and preserve their positions of power (Bell, 1980 ). The focus on
teacher quality aligned the in- terests of nondominant communities with those of the union enough to warrant joining
forces to “win” resources for the program. In Alinsky-based ( 1971 ) community organizing, the notion of “self-interest
rightly understood” (de Tocqueville, 1956 ) builds from a relational notion that one’s individual self-interests are tied up in
those of others. However, there is little evidence to suggest that the power asymmetries and relationships between parents
and teachers—or their interests— fundamentally shifted or were sustained beyond these campaigns and strategic alliances.
Both the general rule of parent–teacher relationships (inequitable parent–teacher dynamics) and the exceptions to it
(organized parent–teacher alliances) raise two key questions:
(1) Given the respective expertise and power of parents and teachers, why is equitable
parent–teacher collective action so constrained and rare? (2) How might we conceptualize what it would take to
build equitable and sustained collective
agency between teachers and parents for systemic change?
First, we highlight how the concept of institutional scripts offers insights about the constraints on equitable
parent–teacher collaboration in schools, particularly across lines of race and class. We suggest that augmenting
institutional scripts with scholarship on race, culture, and learning from cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) opens
new conceptual territory for building col- laborative efforts between nondominant families and teachers.
346 A. M. ISHIMARU AND S. TAKAHASHI
INSTITUTIONAL SCRIPTS IN PARENT–TEACHER RELATIONS
The concept of institutional scripts derives from institutional theory, which has generally been concerned with the
emergence of organizational types and practices and their stability and repli- cation over time and across sites (DiMaggio
& Powell, 1991 ; Meyer & Rowan, 2006 ). While all organizations form around objectives and consist of mechanisms to
reach those objectives, they become institutionalized as their processes and structures become value-laden and norma- tive
themselves (Scott, 2014 ). Institutions are social structures that shape organizational activities through rules and
regulations, values and norms, and cultural-cognition (individuals’ interpreta- tion of the world around them that is
necessarily shaped by their cultural context; Scott, 2014 ). In an institution, social processes and behaviors become routine
such that they attain a “rule-like” status in the minds of the individuals in that organization—people enact a shared
understand- ing of what should be often without being conscious of it (Meyer & Rowan, 2006 ; Scott, 2014 ). These values
and norms, which inhere in institutional structures and processes, reflect the broader historical and societal context in
which they historically arose and presently operate (Scott, 2014 ). Institutional theory, in particular, highlights how
institutions, like the educational system, es- tablish “identities and activity scripts for such identities” (Jepperson, 1991 , p.
146). That is, in contrast to a view that schools are made up of a collection of agents who take action based on in- dividual
rational choice, institutional theory emphasizes the taken-for-granted school norms and routines that define individual
identities, shape the actions that are associated with these iden- tities, and even constrain the possible alternative identities
and actions that might be imagined (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991 ; Jepperson, 1991 ; Meyer & Rowan, 2006 ). Institutional
scripts are a blueprint for identities and actions for different roles within an educational organization, and they manifest
themselves as “observable, recurrent activities and patterns of interaction characteris- tic of a particular setting” (Barley &
Tolbert, 1997 , p. 98). These scripts are “taken for granted” in the sense that they are accepted as reasonable and normal, in
conscious or unconscious ways (Jepperson, 1991 , p. 147).
In U.S. schools, the institutional scripts that comprise the unspoken dominant norms and assumptions about parents
assume their passive support of the school’s agenda in “circumscribed and institutionalized” roles (Crowson & Boyd,
2001 , p. 12). Especially parents from nondomi- nant communities are expected to defer to educators as the sole source of
expertise in educating their children (Ishimaru, 2014 ). Many school-based initiatives focus on involving parents in
traditional roles, such as volunteering, fundraising, chaperoning, Parent Teacher Association (PTA) involvement, and
other peripheral support activities outside of instruction (Epstein, 1995 ). Though well-meaning, such efforts depart little
from a “deficit model” of involvement, in which parents “are expected to agree with and support the structures and
dynamics already in place” in the school (Perez Carreón et al., 2005 , p. 467). The dominant institutional scripts about
parents in school, thus, favor parent involvement that conforms to educator’s expectations for individualistic parental
support, especially through compliance behaviors (for instance, ensuring homework completion, discipline at home that is
consistent with school discipline, and timely school attendance; Cooper, 2009 ). These prescribed parental roles are rooted
in the history of a U.S. public education system designed to assimilate immigrant, native, and rural children into dominant
American culture and into the industrial workforce (Tyack, 1974 ). Such historically rooted institutional scripts implicitly
preclude more reciprocal engagement and collaborative
TOWARD PARENT–TEACHER AGENCY 347
leadership with teachers and other educators to improve teaching and learning in the school (Ishimaru, 2014 ; Schutz, 2006 ;
Shirley, 1997 ; Warren, Hong, Rubin, & Uy, 2009 ).
Although teachers’ institutional scripts in schools represent a more complex dynamic—as both institutionalized
professionals and “semi-skilled workers” (Troen & Boles, 2003 )—we focus in this article on teachers as key school actors
whose interactions with parents reflect, reinforce, or potentially challenge the dominant institutional scripts about parents.
We argue that race and culture infuse the institutional scripts enacted by parents and teachers in contexts of systemic inequity.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, over 80% of the public education teacher workforce is white,
whereas more than half of the U.S. school-age student population (and their families) are now from communities of color
(U.S. Department of Education, 2016 ). Given this context as well as the history of U.S. schools as vehicles for colonization
and assimilation (Smith, 1999 ; Wolfe, 2006 ), then, racialization processes are woven into schooling practices, and racial
and cultural differences are a daily reality of schooling for many teachers, students, and parents. Such racial and cultural
differences are often perceived as a barrier to productive relationships be- tween parents and teachers (Bryk et al., 2010 ;
Olivos, Jimenez-Castellanos, & Ochoa, 2011 ). We draw next from the work of culture and learning scholars to argue that
the dominant institutional scripts about parents in schools are racialized scripts that shape the possibilities for collective
learning and agency between parents and teachers across divides of race, culture, and class.
RACIALIZED INSTITUTIONAL SCRIPTS AND IDENTITIES IN PARENT–TEACHER
RELATIONS
Drawing on the work of scholars who study the relationship between culture and learning, we argue that the institutional
scripts and identities of individuals in schools are fundamentally shaped by broader racial narratives in society, and they
are upheld, enacted, and sometimes contested through social and cultural interactions between individuals (Nasir, Snyder,
Shah, & Ross, 2012 ). Although the typical view of institutional scripts recognizes the dominant power of these norms and
assumptions in organizational life, the nature of these scripts in relation to race and culture has been largely unexamined in
the application of organizational theory to schools and, more specifically, to parent–teacher relations in educational
systems.
Building from critical race perspectives and sociocultural learning theories, scholars of culture and learning have
found that the racialized identities made available to students in their learn- ing environment have implications for their
engagement and learning (Lee, 2001 ; Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2010 ; Nasir & Hand, 2008 ). For example, Nasir et al. ( 2012 )
elaborated how the racial storylines in society about African American boys manifest in the interactions and learn- ing
identities made available (or not) to young people within schools. They highlighted how the predominant racial storylines
about black males portray them as “unintelligent, lazy, inclined to- wards criminality, and as constituting an endangered
species” (p. 290). Such negative storylines also play out in the everyday interactions between students, teachers, and other
school actors and become racialized institutional scripts that can preclude or constrain the development of agentic learning
identities and engagement. Schooling practices are clearly implicated in this process. In her 2011 study, Nasir
demonstrated how the mathematical identities developed by African Amer- ican boys outside of classrooms—in the
context of playing dominoes and basketball—were not only more positive and agentic than in classroom contexts, they
saw themselves as knowers and
348 A. M. ISHIMARU AND S. TAKAHASHI
doers, which led to engagement in those activities that contrasted strongly with classroom en- gagement. Likewise, Bang
et al. ( 2014 ) and Bang, Marin, Faber, and Suzukovich ( 2013 ) centered indigenous cultural practices, epistemologies, and
ontologies in informal learning to nurture agen- tic science learner identities that ran counter to the more typical dynamic
of indigenous erasure in schools.
We build on this scholarship that focuses primarily on students to posit that the racialized scripts make available few
racialized identities for nondominant parents. Likewise, these con- strained identities and opportunities have implications
for families’ engagement and actions in schools as well as teachers’ engagement with and actions toward them. A growing
body of re- search on parent involvement and engagement in schools highlights the racialized norms and as- sumptions in
schools that influence how (often white) teachers perceive and react to parents and families from nondominant
communities (Baquedano-López et al., 2013 ; Diamond & Gomez, 2004 ; Lopez, 2001 ; Nakagawa, 2000 ; Olivos, 2006 ;
Valencia & Black, 2002 ). In practice, the “good parent” supports students where, when, and how educators deem
appropriate (e.g., partic- ipating in fundraisers, classroom preparation, monitoring homework, talking to their child about
going to college). They attend school parent nights and ask questions that further their understand- ing of the school’s
expectations and agenda, but do not call into question the school’s agenda for their children or the professional judgment
or authority of educators. These behaviors align with normative expectations and assumptions associated with white
parents and families. As Lareau and Horvat ( 1999 ) explain, “Whiteness represents a largely hidden cultural resource that
facili- tates white parents’ compliance with the standard of deferential and positive parental involvement in school” (p.
49).
A growing literature on bicultural parent engagement highlights how white, middle-class, English-speaking,
two-parent, heterosexual families are the norm ascribed to parents in schools (Baquedano-López et al., 2013 ). The bulk of
the traditional parent involvement literature—and practice in schools—is grounded in assumptions of white normativity,
which position low-income parents and families of color and immigrant and refugee parents as “uninvolved” and often,
there- fore, implicitly to blame for their children’s struggles in schools (Cooper, 2009 ; Olivos, 2006 ). Although the
racialized scripts for nondominant parents share a largely negative connotation, they reflect the broader racial storylines in
society and, thus, manifest in specific forms for families from different racial and cultural communities.
The “problem parent” is often associated with African American (and sometimes African immigrant) parents who
challenge educators in what are often perceived by (white) educators as “destructive” ways that interfere with or derail
their child’s achievement and undermine the professional authority and expertise of educators (Lareau & Horvat, 1999 , p.
43). For instance, Lareau and Horvat ( 1999 ) found that teachers in their study delegitimized working-class African
American families’ advocacy for their children and claims about patterns of racial injustice at the school, defining their
interest and concerns as “singularly unhelpful” (p. 44). Despite the history of racial inequity in the school and broader
community that shaped these contexts and provided warrant for the concerns, the teachers’ reactions to parent demands
and mistrust of the school led to what Lareau and Horvat ( 1999 ) referred to as “moments of exclusion” in which the school
disadvantaged the child in her or his life trajectory. However, social class appeared to mediate this relationship; although
middle-class African American families shared concerns about racial discrimination toward their children, they often
intervened in ways that adhered to educators’ expectations of deference and support. Similarly, Diamond and Gomez
( 2004 ) also found that
TOWARD PARENT–TEACHER AGENCY 349
middle-class African American parents more often selected their children’s schools and adopted supportive orientations to
them, whereas working-class African American families were often assigned to schools in which they adopted a
“reform-based orientation.” Across socioeconomic class, though, African American families’ higher mistrust of schools is
not unwarranted, as ev- idenced by the racially disproportionate assignment to special education and to disciplinary referrals.
However, the racialized scripts in schools disregard this legacy while dovetailing with broader societal stereotypes
of angry black women or men (Lewis & Diamond, 2015 ).
The institutional script about the “hard to reach” parent (sometimes “lazy” parent) tends to be code for Latino/a,
other immigrant or refugee families, and sometimes Native American fami- lies who are presumed not to care about their
children or their education, as evidenced by their absence from school events or lack of response to communications from
the school (Delgado- Gaitan, 2004 ; Jimenez-Castellanos & Gonzalez, 2012 ; Lopez, 2001 ; Olivos, 2006 ; Valencia & Black,
2002 ). This script frames Latino/a parents as “uninvolved” or “uncaring” (Valencia & Black, 2002 ). This script is
misleading because cultural practices of many migrant Latino fam- ilies constitute forms of parent involvement that are not
recognized by schools (Lopez, 2001 ); their absence from more conventional forms of parent involvement tend to be
interpreted by white teachers and principals as evidence of a cultural disinterest in education (Valencia & Black, 2002 ).
Similarly, Native families are often made invisible, assumed to be dysfunctional, or presumed to devalue education
(Faircloth, 2011 ).
We suggest that it is not coincidental that the “problem” and “hard to reach” parents tend to be parents of color
whose forms of participation often do not conform to predominantly white educators’ expectations for parent involvement.
To be clear, these racialized institutional scripts have local variants, may also exist alongside negative racialized scripts for
white parents, 1 and have positive identities available to nondominant parents as well. For instance, a racialized script of a
“good” parent may also be envisioned as an immigrant Latino or Asian parent who defers to educators and places
unquestioned faith in their authority (Perez-Carreón et al., 2005 ). Nonethe- less, we argue that the unspoken rules of
schools for families of color include normative scripts that are critical of parent engagement that extends beyond
compliance to school agendas and expectations.
AGENCY WITHIN RACIALIZED INSTITUTIONAL SCRIPTS
The constraints placed on students, families, and educators through these racialized institutional scripts in school raise the
question: how might racialized institutional scripts change? Although promising practices and models of equitable
family–school collaboration do exist (Hong, 2011 ; Ishimaru, 2014 ; Ishimaru et al., 2016 ), we suggest that the process of
moving toward equitable parent–teacher relations remains undertheorized in the field of family engagement. As such, we
1 Although beyond the focus of this paper, there also exists the trope of the problematic “helicopter” parent who over- steps boundaries (e.g.,
white, highly educated, professional parent). This racialized script has come to be associated with what a growing number of critical scholars have
referred to as “opportunity hoarding” behaviors that seek to maintain inequities in educational systems that preference or privilege their own children’s
competitive advantage (Lewis & Dia- mond, 2015 ; Oakes & Lipton, 2002 ). Interestingly, this identity shares with other parent scripts a problematic
positioning related to challenging professional authority, albeit in this case, the power asymmetries with teachers and other educators can be reversed
(Freidus, 2016 ; Posey, 2012 ).
350 A. M. ISHIMARU AND S. TAKAHASHI
argue that augmenting institutional theory with concepts from equity-focused cultural-historical activity theory can
amplify our understanding of educational change amid racism and the broader sociocultural contexts that shape
transformation efforts. Such theoretical tools can help us concep- tualize how collective agency might be developed not
only across roles (parent/teacher) but also across historically rooted boundaries of race, class, professional status, and
perceived expertise in ways that might reallocate power and influence, rather than reinforce dominant interests.
CULTURAL-HISTORICAL ACTIVITY THEORY IN PARENT–TEACHER RELATIONS
The concept of racialized institutional scripts illuminates mechanisms that maintain organiza- tional norms, structures, and
interactions in schools. To examine the micro-level, day-to-day social dynamics that can lead to change and transformation
within organizations, we draw on Ogawa, Crain, Loomis, and Ball’s ( 2008 ) work to augment institutional theory with
cultural his- torical activity theory (CHAT). A full accounting of the origins and multiple generations of CHAT is beyond
the scope of this article (see Engeström, 2001 , for a more extensive overview), but CHAT emerged from theories that
attend to the sociocultural and object-focused dimensions of human learning (Vygotsky, 1978 ). From this perspective, all
learning is social and cultural in na- ture (involving both subjects and different communities) and is mediated by a variety
of tools, norms, assumptions, labor division, and rules toward some object or goal (see Figure 1 for a rep- resentation of an
activity system of parent–teacher relations with the elements referenced above). All of these objects, subjects, tools, and
other aspects of an activity system are rooted historically and in broader sociocultural contexts.
Drawing on CHAT, we understand the interactions between parents and teachers as part of an activity system that
constitutes an adult learning context in which roles and identities are constantly being reinforced and negotiated toward the
object or aim of supporting students in school. The normative actions associated with certain roles (e.g., “teacher,”
“parent”) here man- ifest as rules that bound actions and as a division of labor that defines which actions are legiti- mate
for whom; these are linked to broader socio-historical contexts. The interactions between subjects (parents), community
(educators), and tools (ranging from discourses and policies to newsletters and meeting agendas) are shaped by the rules
and divisions of labor in collective, object-oriented activity. These adult interactions have implications not only for
individual stu- dents but also for the broader school and educational system within which parents and teachers operate.
Thus, adding CHAT to our lens offers new insights into how parent–teacher relations might be “re-mediated” toward
addressing educational inequities. That is, conventional school-based models for parent involvement seek to “remediate”
individual nondominant parents, implicitly framing them as a source of the problem. The racialized institutional scripts
make such interac- tions seem normal in schools. However, efforts to improve parent–teacher relations and, by exten- sion,
schooling more broadly, necessitate addressing the entire activity system—or set of interact- ing individuals, tools, roles,
assumptions, and goals and the broader sociocultural and historical contexts—within which parents and teachers interact.
A focus on parent–teacher activity opens possibilities for “re-mediating” parent–teacher interactions and rewriting the
rules and divisions of labor in the form of alternative scripts, or “counterscripts,” that frame educational systems—
FIGURE 1 Parent–teacher activity system (adapted from Engestrom, 2001 ).
not parents, families, or communities—as a source of inequities (Gutiérrez, 2008 ; Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016 ; Gutiérrez &
Vossoughi, 2010 ). These lenses open new insights about efforts to build collective agency between parents and teachers.
TRANSFORMATIVE AGENCY IN PARENT–TEACHER RELATIONS
Building from “third-generation” conceptions of CHAT (which emphasize multiple overlap- ping activity systems), the
concept of transformative agency (Engeström, 2011 ; Engeström & Sannino, 2010 ; Haapasaari, Engeström, & Kerosuo,
2014 ) offers a useful lens for conceptualiz- ing the dynamics of power and shared interest between collectives of parents
and teachers within the context of racially inequitable educational institutions. Transformative agency refers to the
collective will and ability of individuals to break from a given frame and take initiatives to trans- form their activity over
time (Engeström, 2007 ; Virkkunen, 2006 ). In this case, we are interested in how parents from marginalized communities
might come together with teachers to collectively work through tensions, conflicts, and contradictions to “explicate and
envision new possibilities” (Haapasaari et al., 2014 , p. 2) for reshaping their relations within and around schools. Drawing
on transformative agency within a broader framework that brings together CHAT with institu- tional theory has the
potential to both acknowledge the power of structures, institutions, context,
TOWARD PARENT–TEACHER AGENCY 351
352 A. M. ISHIMARU AND S. TAKAHASHI
and power dynamics, and allow for the emergence of solidarities and collective action to change them.
ILLUSTRATION FROM A PARTICIPATORY DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH STUDY
In this section, we illustrate how codesign concepts and practices that draw from participatory design research
methodologies (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016 ) might disrupt and shift the racialized institutional scripts about nondominant
parents to build transformative agency between them and teachers. In particular, we highlight how collaborative activity
might: (a) reframe expertise; (b) surface and examine contradictions; and (c) attend to power in relational dynamics. We
posit that such practices might open new identities and expand shared interests in the presence of racial, cultural, and role
differences. To make these concepts more concrete, we use examples from a parent–educator curriculum design project
within the Kellogg School District 2 , a high-poverty, di- verse suburban school district in the Pacific Northwest (27,500
students; 52% eligible for free and reduced-price lunch; 38% white, 21% Latino, 17% Asian/Pacific Islander, 12% African
Ameri- can, and 0.6% American Indian).
For nine months in 2014, the first author’s research team partnered with Kellogg School Dis- trict parents, teachers,
principals, and district leaders in two high-poverty elementary schools to develop a new parent-education curriculum to
help parents learn how to better support student learning. The curriculum was intended to replace the proprietary
curriculum used in the district’s existing nine-week parent academy, a train-the-trainer model using parent facilitators. The
design project was undertaken with the intention of creating an updated, homegrown curriculum that might improve upon
the traditional approach in the original model (which focused on informing parents how to support the school’s pre-set
agenda) and could be adopted by the district or shared freely across the region. With the exception of the district leaders
and researchers, the design team formed to create a new curriculum had not previously experienced the original curriculum
or parent academy.
Over the course of 13 design meetings held in one elementary school with two district leaders (multiracial
Asian/Pacific American and African American), nine parents (Latina, African Amer- ican, Vietnamese, and white), three
teachers (white), two principals (white), and three to five researchers (African American, Asian American, and Latina/o),
the team identified priorities, de- veloped lesson activities and design principles, piloted lessons, and refined them.
Although both product (final curriculum) and process aimed to develop more productive relationships between families
and schools to support student learning and success, the process of codesign comprised the primary focus of the study. At
the simplest level, the process of codesign created an oppor- tunity for joint work between families and educators that
extended beyond the typical “plug-in” engagement opportunities defined and controlled by school personnel (Terriquez,
2011 ). Such “plug-in” opportunities—such as parent–teacher conferences, parent–teacher organization meet- ings, or open
houses—limit parental participation and influence.
Because we use this case primarily to illustrate concepts, we do not detail the study meth- ods here, but situate its
methodological approach within an emerging set of approaches referred
2 All names of districts, schools, and individuals are pseudonyms.
TOWARD PARENT–TEACHER AGENCY 353
to as participatory design-based research study (PDR) (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016 ). PDR and its attendant research
epistemologies are rooted in the learning sciences—such as design-based research (Bell, 2004 ; Brown, 1992 ) design-based
implementation research (Coburn, Penuel, & Geil, 2013 ; Penuel, Fishman, Cheng & Sabelli, 2011 ; Russell, Jackson,
Krumm, & Frank, 2013 ), formative interventions (Engeström, 2001 ), social design experiments (Gutiérrez & Jurow,
2016 ), and community-based design research (Bang, Medin, Washinawatok, & Chapman, 2010 ). It also shares a
“historical resonance” with critical and participatory action research and decolonizing methodologies (Bang & Vossoughi,
2016 , p. 173). Such approaches focus on studies of learn- ing and human development in the context of interventions for
social change-making purposes (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016 ).
As a research epistemology and not a singular methodology, scholars of PDR are chiefly con- cerned with
designing novel learning environments with nondominant youth, families, and com- munities and understanding how to
account for critical historicity, power, and how they relate to learning (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016 ). We initiated the study
design using these principles. For instance, we positioned parents as key decision makers in the development of a
parent-training curriculum, a move that both acknowledged and challenged historical schooling practices that relegate
parents to paper-cutting, chaperoning, and attendance at school events. We also sought to reflect a critical historicity in the
design process by asking principals to invite parents of color who had not been active participants in the typical
involvement activities of the schools. In do- ing so, we sought to disrupt the historically based racialized scripts in schools
that frame certain parents as productively “involved” with contributions to offer and others as “uncaring” or “dis- ruptive”
with little to contribute to the school. Designing with critical historicity also required attending to the ways that the default
interactions between nondominant parents and educators were likely to reinforce existing power inequities. To account for
this power asymmetry, we made an a priori design decision that parents would meet separately for a few sessions prior to
bringing educators into the team. This not only meant that the design started from parents’ shared priori- ties, it also
enabled them to build relationships with each other that could help to rebalance power and remediate their own roles in
relation to educators. Thus, the key design concepts of PDR figured in the original design, and the concepts elaborated
below—reframing expertise, surfacing and examining contradictions, and attending to power in relational dynamics—all
grew from the initial design and evolved through the process itself.
Reframing Expertise
First, we drew on PDR approaches in the codesign process to disrupt the institutional scripts that position parents as
beneficiaries, clients, or at best, helpers, and vest expertise solely in profes- sional educators (Ishimaru, 2014 ). Rather, the
process positioned nondominant families as cen- tral decision makers “in the driver’s seat” alongside professional
educators and university-based scholars in the research and design of learning opportunities for themselves and others
parents. Simply put, we began from the premise that parents were the experts on their own children and their own learning
priorities and processes; the design team, thus, prioritized the expertise of families alongside that of professional educators,
systems leaders, and researchers.
Moreover, we asked principals to invite parents who reflected the racial and ethnic background of the student
population in their schools to participate in the process, since in the context of
354 A. M. ISHIMARU AND S. TAKAHASHI
the Kellogg School District, the white, middle-class parents most present at school activities represented a narrow slice of
the student population. We also asked the principals to include parents who may not be involved in the way the school
expects. In this way, we sought to diver- sify the typical actors in the broader ecology of family–school activity,
intentionally reframing the role of low-income parents of color as experts. This design decision challenged educator assumptions
about parents of color as barriers to student success by positioning them as “part of the solution” (Ishimaru,
2014 ). As community members who became a part of this particular activity system, we (researchers and district leaders)
intentionally sought to shift the division of labor and rules that shaped parent–educator relations in the joint activity of
creating a parent-education curriculum. This reframing of expertise also meant that experiences of racial inequity became a
form of experiential expertise to leverage in the codesign process (Barajas-López & Ishimaru, 2016 ). Consistent with
critical race theories, the experiences and counternarratives of nondom- inant parents provided alternatives to dominant
discourses and institutional scripts (Howard & Navarro, 2016 ; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995 ). Through the course of the
study, we privileged families’ stories and lived experiences as tools to draw out the distinctions between the enacted or
performative aspects of school organizational routines and policies and the ostentive or idealized notion often perceived by
educational leaders and policymakers (Lewis & Diamond, 2015 ).
Surfacing and Examining Contradictions
Second, the codesign process made explicit the differences between the ideal and actual parent– teacher partnerships,
exposing the power asymmetries between parents and educators. After an initial launch meeting with parents and
educators together, the parents spent three meetings on their own sharing their experiences and identifying collective
priorities for the lesson topics in the curriculum. When the groups reconvened and the parents shared their priorities, the
educators interacted with the parents in ways that aligned with the racialized institutional scripts to which they were
accustomed. That is, the educators acted in ways that appeared to intimidate parents. For instance, they talked more than
parents did and reframed their ideas in educator jargon, such as “PBIS” (positive behavioral intervention support) and
“Second Step.” The principals, in partic- ular, questioned parents’ priorities on addressing bullying and racial identity in
their schools and implied that the parents’ purview was not about improving the school, but how they supported their own
children at home. That is, the division of labor limited parent influence to the margins of the school—to matters that
related strictly to their own children. The principals also framed the parents’ desire to create a parent network to “resolve
issues at the school” together as “so negative,” and suggested that parents should come to their offices only for positive
reasons, such as introducing new babies or celebrating birthdays.
At the next meeting, the groups met by role (i.e., parents, teachers, and principals/district lead- ers) to reflect on the
interactions at the previous meeting and make sense of an excerpt of the meeting transcript as data. We used the data as
another artifact in the activity system to serve as “mirror material” (Engeström, 2011 ) to make the interactions visible to
the team. Parents heat- edly pointed out the power asymmetries with educators and highlighted how the interactions in the
meeting represented microcosms of their broader interactions and histories with teachers and principals. As their
discussion evolved, parents began to distinguish teachers from princi- pals, noticing that some of the teachers were “really
listening.” The principals, who met sepa- rately from the teachers, read the transcript and felt it reflected a positive
collaboration between
TOWARD PARENT–TEACHER AGENCY 355
themselves and parents. The teachers, meanwhile, noticed that parents’ ideas were left behind when principals became
active in the conversation. When asked how they thought the group should proceed as a team, the teachers expressed their
interest in supporting parents in the process in whatever way the parents determined.
These dramatically different interpretations of the very same meeting and data created an opening between parents
and teachers, specifically in relation to their perceptions of power in the design team relational dynamics. That is, a new
collective understanding emerged between parents and teachers, which shifted the subject-subject relations in the activity
system (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016 ). Such role re-mediations can create new forms of accountability and “afford new social
and educational possibilities” (p. 176). The parents subsequently engaged in an ani- mated discussion about how to
proceed, with some arguing that they should proceed on their own without the educators, while others argued that the
parents needed educators’ “buy-in” because otherwise they would “sweep [their efforts] under the rug.”
Attending to Power in Relational Dynamics
Given historical school–community relations in low-income communities of color (that is, ac- counting for critical
historicity), these power dynamics—and their contradiction of a supposed partnership—are not so surprising as they are
predictable. The codesign effort explicitly attended to issues of power and equity not only by putting this contradiction on
the table, but by working to rebalance power asymmetries through adjustments in the process. After another meeting on
their own, the parents shifted the rules by deciding to invite the teachers back to the design team meetings, but not the
principals. Although the principals were eventually invited back into the process, they only attended a single meeting at
which the group used a protocol (another medi- ating tool) that structured feedback on a lesson draft that gave parents
twice the opportunity to speak relative to that of educators. Although this strategy did allocate talk time in more equitable
ways, the principals were not involved in the development or refining of the curriculum from that time forward. Although
this move fundamentally shifted the nature of the parent–teacher activ- ity, it may also have limited the extent to which
these new forms of activity translated to other overlapping activity systems in which parents and educators interact in the
school.
The parents and teachers proceeded to draft nine lessons, pilot one (on addressing bullying) with other parents, and
refine the curriculum. During the process, they realized an emergent trans- formative agency that recognized both
professional and familial expertise as well as profound dif- ferences, particularly around racial and cultural identities. For
example, one of the white teachers reflected afterward that prior to hearing from the parents in the process, she had never
before considered that children’s racial and cultural identities were as important in their learning as any of the other
content she taught. Particularly as they reflected on their learning in the process, both parents and teachers talked about
possibilities for reshaping schools in spite of the top-down policies that seemed to constrain change.
POTENTIAL OF CODESIGN PRACTICES FOR REWRITING RACIALIZED INSTITUTIONAL
SCRIPTS
These concepts help us to theorize how we might rewrite racialized institutional scripts to expand and foster collective
parent–teacher identities within inequitable educational institutions. Through
356 A. M. ISHIMARU AND S. TAKAHASHI
codesign practices centered on fostering equitable collaboration, we intentionally worked to build the conditions and
opportunities for identities beyond the dominant racialized institutional scripts available to nondominant parents and
families. Such identities entailed a form of agency and “self- authoring” (Nasir et al., 2012 ) that went beyond simply doing
what they were told or resisting the school’s authority and the racialized binaries of “good/bad,” involved/uninvolved
parents. For instance, the parents in this case began to (re)claim their primacy over their children’s learning and
development. They framed themselves as essential team players—with teachers (and prin- cipals, in an ideal case)—who
bring particular skills and knowledge to the “game” of school improvement, which they understood as a political process
of organizational change. The par- ents also began to explicitly talk about power and their collective responsibility for
schools to change.
The case also suggests possibilities for making available new identities for teachers. We know that collective efficacy
is vital for teachers of low-income students of color (Takahashi, 2011 ); participatory design theory and interventions offer
potential for expanding this collective efficacy to include parents and address the intersectional dynamics of race, class,
language, and profes- sional status. For example, the teachers—all of whom were white women (like the vast majority of
U.S. teachers)—began to see themselves as systems-based, white allies who could learn from parents’ expertise about their
children and their racialized experiences in schools to improve their own teaching and enact leadership with other teachers.
The white teacher who admitted that the process gave her a new appreciation for the importance of racial and cultural
identities among her students later taught other teachers about racial microaggressions in a regional math education
conference. She credited the codesign process as a space that enabled her to learn from parents about the complex
dynamics of racial inequities.
Moreover, schools typically focus on developing the individual agency of parents to advocate for their own individual
children. In contrast, this process helped parents take hold of collective agency, which was focused on ensuring the success
of all children (not just their own personal children) at school. It also allowed parents and teachers to share these duties
more equitably. Par- ents and teachers began to codesign new ways of interacting that disrupted the institutional scripts
and transformed their joint activity over time. Thus, more than the curriculum itself, this emer- gent transformative agency
became a key outcome of the codesign process (Engeström, 2011 ; Haapasaari et al., 2014 ).
The three aspects of codesign practices described in the case—reframing expertise, surfac- ing and examining
contradiction, and attending to power—represent key features of participatory design-based methodologies rooted in
expansive theories of learning (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016 ; Engeström & Sannino, 2010 ). Although community organizing
groups build collective identities and engage explicitly with issues of power, some also intentionally elect to downplay
racial and cultural differences in favor of constructing shared interest across “everyday folks” (Ishimaru, Gordon, &
Cervantes, 2011 ). In contrast, PDR and other social change design experiences seek to make explicit historical
contradictions and racial, cultural, and power differences in order to catalyze learning and transformative agency, the
ultimate outcome of the activity. That is, while the object of the joint activity was to create a set of lessons for parents to
learn about supporting student success in schools, the broader outcome had to do with a new kind of relationship and
collective action between parents and educators. This illustrative case suggests how racial, cul- tural, and role differences
might become sources of mutual and collective learning for parents and teachers, rather than barriers to authentic
partnerships.
TOWARD PARENT–TEACHER AGENCY 357
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
Racial and other inequities in schools are embedded in complex systems that operate on multiple levels (Lewis &
Diamond, 2015 ; Sullivan, Artiles, & Hernandez-Saca, 2015 ). Contrary to the notion that we know everything we need to
know to create more equitable systems (Edmonds, 1979 ), we posit that dismantling multilevel systemic inequities requires
significant adult learning on the part of both parents and all types of educators. We suggest that bringing together concepts
from organizational theory and sociocultural learning theory can deepen our understandings and strengthen social change
interventions. These concepts address the moment-to-moment interac- tions that are shaped by—and also have untapped
ability to transform—the broader institutional structures that reinforce oppression in schools and school systems.
Both families and teachers have important expertise and resources that can help address the multiscale dynamics of
educational inequities. Teachers and parents are both key actors at multi- ple levels of educational systems and potentially
key learning resources for one another (Barajas- L ό pez & Ishimaru, 2016 ). To tap that potential, particularly in contexts of
cultural and linguistic diversity, schools need to move beyond individualistic, school-driven interactions exemplified in the
15-min parent–teacher conference and other constrained “plug-in” opportunities for involve- ment. Rather, promising
directions lie in fostering collective adult learning spaces that build trans- formative agency across boundaries of role, race,
class, language, and educational background. Although researcher-practitioner partnerships have increasingly included
teachers as decision makers in instructional and curricular changes (Penuel et al., 2011 ), families are still largely left out or
are granted decision-making authority only at the periphery of schools outside the instruc- tional core (e.g., how to
organize multicultural night or communicate school news; Hands, 2014 ). This suggests that educational researchers may
be no less influenced by the “commonsense” insti- tutional scripts that relegate families, particularly from nondominant
communities, as the object of study—rather than key subjects with whom to design, implement, and build new knowledge
and forms of activity.
Building from a burgeoning critical engagement literature, we argue that nondominant fam- ilies must also be part
of the key decisions related to the core work of teaching and learning in schools. Because of the way schools are
structured, the historical relations between schools and communities, and the power-infused, racialized institutional
dynamics between parents and teachers in schools, equitable collaboration between nondominant families and educators is
un- likely to ensue within typical individualistic school-based approaches (Ishimaru et al., 2016 ). Rather, collective
processes that can foster productive, learning-focused relationships between parents and teachers require not only time and
investment but also robust theory to inform the work, strategies at both macro and micro-levels for attending to power and
privilege in relational dynamics, and measures at various scales and levels to assess and improve the work. We sug- gest
that codesign work, supported by participatory design-based research methodologies (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016 )
undertaken through the lens of theoretical concepts such as those explored in this paper, opens new possibilities for tapping
nondominant expertise and building collective capacity to address educational inequities.
Though promising, however, codesign processes are not a panacea to the complexities of sys- temic inequities in
education. Despite the transformative agency suggested by the study we used to illustrate these ideas, the emergent
parent–teacher activity that disrupted racialized institu- tional scripts in the design process did not sustain or become
institutionalized across multiple
358 A. M. ISHIMARU AND S. TAKAHASHI
activity systems in the school. The next level of this work concerns the need to address mecha- nisms and structures for
sustaining and spreading these new forms of activity across schools and systems.
Ultimately, we argue that the concept of parent–teacher transformative agency we discuss here represents only one
example of a broader set of approaches and knowledge with the potential to move us beyond Bell’s notion of interest
convergence and racial sacrifice. Rather, we argue that these concepts and theories open possible ways to build solidarities
centered around difference and interdependence , rather than surface notions of sameness or around temporary interest convergences.
Gaztambide-Fernández ( 2012 ) discusses how necessary this shift in understanding solidarity is if it is to be
useful in the work of decolonizing education:
[U]nderstanding solidarity in relationship to social cohesion or as a source of collective action for groups in competition with
each other has the effect of reissuing the colonizing logics of European social sciences, both classic and contemporary. A
decolonizing pedagogy of solidarity must shift the focus away from either explaining or enhancing existing social arrangements,
seeking instead to challenge such arrangements and their implied colonial logic …. It is about imagining human relations that are
premised on the relationship between difference and interdependency, rather than similarity and a rational calculation of
self-interests. (p. 49)
As such, we suggest that a forward-looking approach to transforming education must push beyond the logics of
interest convergence to avoid reinforcing existing social structures and dy- namics. Rather, our theorizing of
parent–teacher collective activity joins a growing call to question the premise that people act rationally out of self-interest
and come together only around ways in which they are similar. When people come together based on “difference and
interdependency,” as Gaztambide-Fernández urges, new possibilities for building solidarities emerge. Grounded in a
critique of systemic racial inequities, we offer these conceptualizations and examples as potential ways forward for
building transformative parent–teacher agency for educational justice.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank Dr. Rodney Ogawa, Dr. Jennifer Russell, Dr. Megan Bang, and the SMAHRTies for their
invaluable feedback and insights.
AUTHOR BIOS
Ann M.