Online

McGann, Gabriel T

Education

2023

Ph. D.

The purpose of this Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR) study was to work with local stakeholders involved in the RAFT (Relationships Among Families and Teachers) Project pilot study (Haines & Reyes, 2022a) to identify the constructs necessary to understand the impacts of RAFT implementation and build a tool to assess those constructs. The Participatory Action Research Team (PART) involved in this study included school administrators, Multilingual (ML) teachers, classroom teachers, home-school liaisons, and families. The PART participated in three focus groups and eight cognitive interviews to develop an understanding of the goals of RAFT implementation and design a survey to measure the impact of RAFT using those goals. Three goals or constructs emerged that were of primary importance behind the motivation for schools and families to use the RAFT Protocol: (a) School-Family Connection, (b) Student Success, and (c) Unified Welcoming School Culture and were used to build a survey known as the Tool to Assess the RAFT Protocol (TARP). The purpose of the TARP was to increase the understanding of how the RAFT Protocol impacts relationships between refugee families and school staff. Schools and districts will use the data from the TARP to make decisions on how to allocate resources to sustain ongoing implementation of the RAFT Protocol and thereby adjust practice and policy in the classroom and district to create stronger connections with families to support their students.