Perpetuating Racist and Nativist Ideologies: Examining Teachers’ Perceptions of Parental Involvement and Support

Background/Context: Despite the critical and more inclusive counterstories around parental engagement, teachers continuously lean into and reify traditional school-centric notions of parental involvement. In other words, schools and internalized deficit ideologies (unconsciously or not) by a predominantly white teaching force help maintain and perpetuate deficit and dehumanizing spaces for racially and linguistically marginalized parents, families, students, and communities. We recognize, however, that these ideologies are more likely than not un/subconsciously internalized by teachers, which ultimately shapes teacher perceptions and attitudes toward marginalized families. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: In this paper, we aim to disrupt the traditional deficit thinking about parental involvement and support by analyzing racialized and nativist patterns among teachers’ perceptions of parental involvement and support. We apply critical race theory and racist nativism to explore teacher perceptions of racially and linguistically marginalized parents and families. As such, our work is guided by the following research questions: (1) to what extent does teacher race/ethnicity predict their perceptions of parental involvement and support of linguistically and racially minoritized students; and (2) do Teachers of Color with higher numbers of multilingual learners have more positive perceptions of parental involvement and support? Research Design: We use QuantCrit to explore teacher perceptions of racially and linguistically marginalized parents and families. We use the nationally generalizable 2015–16 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) to test whether teacher race is a predictor of more positive or negative perceptions of parental involvement and support. Conclusions/Recommendations: Our findings suggest that minoritized student bodies generally reduce all teachers’ perceptions of parental involvement and support. This leads us to conclude that deficit and racist nativist narratives toward racially and linguistically minoritized student bodies and their parents and families are held not just by white teachers but also by Teachers of Color. We believe we may be seeing this result because of the mismatch between school-based definitions of parental involvement and support and more culturally authentic expressions.