Latinx Family Involvement, Role Construction and Children’s School Readiness

Abstract

This chapter will examine Latinx parent involvement in children’s schooling. Family involvement is generally defined as family participation and collaboration in children’s schooling. It is well documented that family involvement is critical in young children’s academic achievement and well-being. Families who are more involved have children that are academically more successful. While much is known about family involvement among primarily White families, little is known about the facilitators and barriers to school involvement of Latinx families. Although prior research documents that Latinx families value their children’s academic success, linguistic and sociocultural differences in involvement and role construction often lead to misunderstandings between schools and Latinx families especially where involvement expectations extend beyond typical involvement activities such as parent-teacher meetings. One innovative means of increasing Latinx family involvement to engage parents is through the use of social media. Social media platforms such as Facebook can be used to create a family-friendly community of trust that demonstrates teacher empathy and understanding, partnerships, and acceptability; factors important to building family social capital. In this chapter, we review the literature on Latinx family involvement including barriers and facilitators to involvement, predictors of family involvement families and the use of social media to foster collaborative relationships with schools.