Breaking Down Barriers: Museum as Broker of Home/School Collaboration

ABSTRACT

Parents have a major influence on children's learning, yet parent involvement remains weak in many communities. This article addresses the role of a museum in bringing home and school together, describing results from 2 complementary studies of a museum-designed and -implemented parent involvement program. The first study was an exploratory, mixed-methods investigation designed to understand the program's impact on parents' engagement in their children's learning. The second study used a grounded theory approach to develop theoretical hypotheses about the programmatic mechanisms that facilitated parents' engagement. In terms of impact, the program gave parents a platform through which to create new and more meaningful spaces for connecting to their children's learning, including conceptual spaces, social spaces, and physical spaces. In terms of mechanisms, the program first helped parents to build relevant capital and then to author new and relevant ways of engaging with their children's schooling. Taken together, study results broaden current thinking about the spaces in which parent engagement occurs and emphasize the important community-based role that museums can play to bring parents and schools together in support of children's development.