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Dissertation
Blueprints of belonging: mapping caregiver stories of school belonging, family engagement, and ableism in middle school
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Drexel University
Jun 2026
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00011481
Abstract
This narrative qualitative study examines how middle school caregivers make meaning of, navigate, and reimagine school belonging and family engagement within the contextual, spatial, and ableist conditions of school life. While school belonging research has largely centered students and family engagement research has often focused on caregiver participation in support of student outcomes, this study centers caregivers as people with their own educational histories, expertise, vulnerabilities, and claims to belonging. Guided by school belonging theory, critical geographies of education, and critical scholarship on ableism in family engagement, the study asks: What stories do caregivers share about school belonging and family engagement across their past experiences as students and present experiences as caregivers? How do they experience and make meaning of school contexts as they navigate and reimagine engagement? What do these experiences suggest for school policies and practices? Using a narrative mapping methodology, ten middle school caregivers created paired educational story maps--one representing their own educational journeys and one representing their caregiving journeys through their children's schools. Together, the visual, narrative, and dialogic data illuminated how caregivers understood belonging, interpreted school spaces, and engaged in visible and invisible labor to support their children. Findings show that caregiver belonging and family engagement are deeply intertwined yet distinct; caregivers could be highly engaged while still feeling unseen, judged, peripheral, or only conditionally welcomed within school communities. Participants' stories revealed how school‑centered and ableist expectations of the "ideal" caregiver shaped whose participation was recognized, whose labor counted, and whose needs were accommodated. The paired maps revealed the intergenerational nature of caregiver belonging, showing how past school memories shaped present caregiving practices, advocacy, trust, and hope. This study contributes to school belonging and family engagement scholarship by theorizing caregiver belonging as a distinct and underexamined dimension of school life. It extends existing literature by showing that increasing engagement alone is insufficient if schools do not also attend to recognition, access, relational reciprocity, spatial context, and the histories caregivers bring with them. The findings offer implications for designing more equitable, inclusive, and family centered school policies and practices that move beyond normative engagement toward conditions in which caregivers and their children can experience belonging.
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Details
- Title
- Blueprints of belonging
- Creators
- Katharine Anne Hayes Hoffman
- Contributors
- Christopher G. Wright (Advisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University
- Number of pages
- x, 236 pages
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- School of Education (1997-2026); Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 991022193296704721