Gerardo López: Engaging Families

Nov. 13, 2019

Gerardo López is a professor in Educational Administration in the College of Education. López studies parent involvement, school-community relations, immigrant education and issues of diversity and difference. 

I’m a critical scholar and a responsive scholar. A critical scholar because I am asking questions that have not been raised before and a responsive scholar because if it’s not us, then who?

I am currently researching issues of parent involvement in migrant education, particularly the ways in which migrant families come to understand, operationalize and define issues of involvement for themselves. Often times the issue of involvement is taken up by educators, policy makers, researchers, scholars, etc. and the educational world at large. They come to understand and have a particular understanding of what involvement means and so often times that definition really stands outside of the ways in which migrant families and parents are operationalizing that particular term.  

My research is trying to privilege, validate and value what they bring to the table and how they understand issues of involvement. Also, how can the education community learn from that, how do we push our own understanding and how we expand our own definition of involvement so that we can really think about involvement differently not only for this population, but for other marginalized populations as well.