Title:
FROM NEEDS TO STRENGTHS: DEVISING ASSETS-BASED PARENT-EDUCATION ICTS FOR LATINX/A/O IMMIGRANT PARENTS IN THE UNITED STATES
FROM NEEDS TO STRENGTHS: DEVISING ASSETS-BASED PARENT-EDUCATION ICTS FOR LATINX/A/O IMMIGRANT PARENTS IN THE UNITED STATES
Author(s)
Villacres Falconi, Lucia Marisol Marisol
Advisor(s)
DiSalvo, Betsy
Kumar, Neha
Kumar, Neha
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Abstract
Immigration to higher-income countries such as the United States (U.S.) is a worldwide, growing phenomenon. As the number of people moving across the world increases, so does the number of children of immigrants needing support to succeed academically. While a growing number of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) offer parent-education support, these rarely respond to the complex reality of parents from nondominant backgrounds, such as immigrants. When ICTs cater to these groups, they tend to do this via patches to help these parents catch up with mainstream society. By disregarding immigrant parents' strengths and capacities—or assets—to contribute solutions to their own problems, most parent-education ICTs end up perpetuating information inequities. In response, my dissertation works with low-income, Spanish-speaking Latinx/a/o immigrant parents to explore design pathways for parent-education ICTs to better respond to parents from nondominant groups.
I approach this problem through an assets-based approach to design, which fosters technology-supported transformations that build on and amplify users' strengths. Through ethnographic fieldwork and Participatory Design (PD) engagements, this dissertation offers two contributions to existing Human-Computer Interaction research on the role of technology in learning, education, and families. First, it contributes a holistic understanding of how information channels in the educational system operate as assets for parents. Second, it proposes assets-based design pathways for parent-education ICTs to support Latinx/a/o immigrant parents. This research also contributes to HCI's growing interest in an assets-based design process by advancing analytical approaches and methodological considerations for working with assets in a large-scale system. These contributions can significantly inform critical transformations for technology in educational systems and illuminate a design process that supports vulnerable groups in attaining sustainable, emancipatory changes.
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Date Issued
2021-04-28
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Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Dissertation