Fostering a Child's Foundational Skills Leading to Self-Determination: A Case Study of a Refugee Family, a Head Start Agency, and their Family-Professional Partnership

Abstract

This qualitative case study investigated and described the views of both Head Start staff and a refugee family regarding adult fostering of foundational skills leading to self-determination in a young child at risk for disability as well as how these adults worked together in partnership. Chapter 1 provides an overview of this dissertation. It discusses background information, describes the purpose of the dissertation, and establishes the scope of the study. Chapter 1 explains that chapter 2 presents the part of the study that investigated the adult behaviors (in home and Head Start) that influence a child's foundational skills leading to later self-determination while chapter 3 focuses on the part of the study that investigated the relationship between the adults at home and the adults at Head Start. Chapter 2 presents research on how the refugee family and Head Start staff influenced the foundational skills leading to later self-determination of a 4-year old boy at risk for disability. This study reports that adult expectations and practices related to protection, intervention, and affective response in his home environment differed greatly from those in his Head Start environment; he had difficulty traversing the parallel worlds; but his foundational skills improved in both settings during the 4-month duration of this study. This chapter situates the study in the literature; outlines the research methods; presents and discusses the findings; and highlights implications for practice, research, and policy. Chapter 3 presents research on the relationship between the Head Start staff and the family discussed in chapter 2. Children from refugee families' attendance at Head Start agencies provides the opportunity for Head Start staff to foster trusting, collaborative, respectful, and goal-oriented partnerships characterized by comprehensive two-way communication to support child and family outcomes. Such partnerships could help launch refugee families as partners in their children's education in the U.S. and ultimately improve family and child outcomes. This chapter provides a review of the relevant literature, describes the methods for the study, presents and discusses the findings, and details numerous implications for practice, policy, and research. Chapter 4 concludes this dissertation by rejoining the two parts of the study discussed in chapters 2 and 3 and then proposing a future research agenda. After connecting the previous chapters, it presents a framework to illustrate how future research can systematically build upon this exploratory research. Then, it connects this research framework with several future studies and explains how the studies connect to the case study conducted for this dissertation.