For some families, volunteering at classroom parties or chaperoning field trips just isn't possible. Now, Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj, an associate professor at UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, is helping to improve family involvement in education by researching the needs immigrant families in the Lompoc Unified School District.

“The best way to know what’s most impactful is to actually ask the folks who need support or who are on the ground,” said Sattin-Bajaj.

A recipient of a UCSB Blum Center’s 2022-2023 Central Coast Regional Equity Research Award, she reached out to the L.U.S.D. and explained her background in qualitative research on school policy and school experiences of immigrant families. The L.U.S.D. recently initiated a three-year exploration of family involvement and Sattin-Bajaj offered her help.

In a recent interview Sattin-Bajaj said the L.U.S.D. is exploring family involvement from the family side, to learn about the experiences of different families, how they hope to connect to schools, and what can be done differently.   

Q: Why is the role of family involvement so important for a child’s development in school?

A: Traditionally, a lot of people think that family involvement means volunteering in the classroom and parent-teacher association membership. That’s part of the impetus for Lompoc to be investing in this because what’s more important is all the other things that families do. And in fact, that’s more consistent with the ways that historically underrepresented, non-English dominant, immigrant families support their kids. There are so many other ways that families can and do support their children: by asking them about school, asking them about their homework, and talking about aspirations and educational goals.

Q: What will come of the findings of your research project?

A: It really depends on what I learn… The district folks are interested in hearing what I learned from families in these schools because I’ve been trying to do it via particular schools that have larger populations of immigrant parents. So, I’m not totally sure what I’m going to learn, but I’ll certainly funnel it back to the district and see how it works with what they’re learning on the schools’ principals’ side. If there are recommendations that make sense coming out of the findings, we’ll put those together.

Q: Are their ways for the larger community to reform and reinvest in schools to help marginalized students and their families?

A: The hope is that whatever larger initiative emerges— this project is the initial exploratory phase— that it does not feel like something that the district is doing to the families or pushing out, but more so an opening. To say, ‘hey, this is meaningful’ and we want to understand how to improve our relationship with families and make schools places that families feel comfortable and empowered, and give families the support to help their kids and be involved in their education. Not just by coming to greeting groups on a Thursday morning, but also day-to-day, on their terms, and in their own languages. There is clear evidence in the research that all parents —not all, but in general —parents want to support their kids. There might be one very narrow view of what that’s supposed to look like and this is a way to blow that out and say ‘no, there are a lot of ways,’ and families can help and build on their assets and with their strength.

The face behind the research: Blum Center’s Central Coast Regional Equity Research Award recipient Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj

Hannah O’Connell is a third-year Communication Studies and Psychological and Brain Sciences double major at UC Santa Barbara. She wrote this piece for her Writing Program class, Digital Journalism.