URSP Student Beverly Auman Researches Parent Affiliation And Involvement With D.C. Public Charter Schools

I am working on a case study with my research partner Miranda Carver on what effects parent involvement and affiliation in a DC public charter school. The goal of our research is to study the different aspects that help and hinder DC parents from becoming involved in charter schools. I became interested in this project because I am very passionate about education and am fascinated by how it can interact with the community and culture of the students’ families. I believe that anthropology has a lot to offer education research, such as its holistic and ethnographic approaches. I have a passion for education and hope that our project can help schools facilitate and maintain parent engagement.

Our research methods include surveys, interviews, site visits and observations of school events. We have been using anthropological methods to try to discover how and which parents become involved and if they are able to have input in their child’s education. On a weekly basis we attend school sponsored events, schedule or transcribe parent or teacher interviews, code qualitative data, and encourage more survey responses. This past week I have been learning how to code interviews to organize and categorize our qualitative data. It is a long but rewarding process that really helps you frame and analyze your data.

This project relates to my long term goals because after I finish my undergraduate degree I am planning to go to graduate school to study Educational Anthropology. I hope to use anthropology one day to study our education system and research what we can do to reform it and reach more students. I would like to work as a university professor conducting research on the anthropology of education, while also teaching students.  I specifically want to work to improve education for low income urban areas and minority students.