Building Family Partnerships Toward Equitable Community Engagement and Integration in STEM Education

In their quest to further their understanding of the power of plática (authentic dialogue) in community engagement efforts, the researchers/practitioners embedded themselves in deep, critical conversations with family leaders from a community-based organization on issues of equity and excellence in education. A family-centered theory of change developed by trusting relationships and partnerships with students, their families, and educators, was incorporated in the professional development of STEM faculty, revision of STEM curricula, and the transformation of teaching practices. This study advances the body of knowledge on the operationalization of servingness and provides insight on the utilization of sense of belonging metrics to assess the impact of equitable, community engagement efforts. Two-way ANOVA on baseline data (N=779) showed that female undergraduate students have a statistically significant (α=0.05) higher sense of belonging than males throughout their first three years of college. Using a mixed-methods research design, the researchers/practitioners took a critical ethnographic approach to assess the impact of their community engagement efforts. Through critical reflection and reflexivity, the researchers used sense of belonging and student success metrics to assess the impact of the internal processes and methods of a family-centered theory of change which led to equitable outcomes among participants. Keywords: theory of change, servingness, sense of belonging, STEM education, community engagement