









































Vol.1, Issue 1


Vol.1, Issue 1 

 

ENGAGE!  2019 Vol. 1 No. 1 https://doi.org/10.18060/22816 

Copyright © 2019 Author(s). 

 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. 

FORMING A MUTUALLY RESPECTFUL UNIVERSITY-COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP 
THROUGH A “FAMILY AS FACULTY” PROJECT 

CRISTINA SANTAMARÍA-GRAFF AND JOEL BOEHNER 

ABSTRACT 

In this paper, we, a university special education 

professor and an executive director of a parent-to-

parent non-profit organization, describe our 

collaborative partnership built on a common 

understanding that parents of children with disabilities 

are educational leaders. We address how we work 

collaboratively to locate and establish families as co-

educators in an undergraduate special education 

course on families for pre-service special education 

teachers by using a Family as Faculty (FAF) approach. 

We use narrative inquiry as a methodology to detail 

shared moments and individual thinking about 

entering into this partnership. Through our narratives, 

we detail the ways in which we have worked together 

to construct a solid foundation for the first and 

subsequent FAF projects rooted in community-

engaged participatory research. We highlight the ways 

in which our partnership began through establishing 

trust, respect, and clear, common goals. These 

mutually created goals are tied to specific outcomes 

that include: a) parent leadership in higher education 

settings, b) greater pre- and in-service special 

education teacher awareness of family rights and 

advocacy, and c) on-going structured commitments by 

both the university professor and the executive 

director to support each other’s projects and 

organizations. Finally, processes and outcomes 

centered around FAF are built on values such as 

reciprocity, mutual respect, and sustainability. Family 

as Faculty’s success is ensured only to the degree that 

stakeholders are committed to these values and are 

honest with each other about their roles in FAF at any 

given moment.  

Keywords: university-community partnerships, Family 

as Faculty, collaboration, community-engagement, 

special education, disabilities, family engagement, 

reciprocity 

FORMING A MUTUALLY RESPECTFUL 
UNIVERSITY-COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP 
THROUGH A “FAMILY AS FACULTY” PROJECT  

This is a narrative of events relating the 

ongoing community-engaged, professional partnership 

between a university professor of special education and 

an executive director of a parent-to-parent non-profit 

organization. In relating our story, we hope to provide 

context for ways to establish and maintain a 

sustainable community partnership that is mutually 

beneficial for all stakeholders. We present this 

information as a narrative of our lived experiences, 

giving special weight to understandings about 

partnership that emerge from these tellings. We begin 

with who we are and our first correspondence and end 

with where we are now as we enter our third year of 

continued commitment to the families of children with 

disabilities whom we serve. We use narrative inquiry 

https://doi.org/10.18060/22816
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/


ENGAGE! / Vol.1, Issue 1                                                              Santamaria-Graff/Forming A Mutually Respectful 

51 

 

within this paper to tell our stories, but on a larger 

scale, embedded within the Family as Faculty project, 

the methodology used to enter into and sustain our 

partnership is rooted in community-engaged 

participatory research (described in a later section). 

Narrative inquiry as a storytelling tool is helpful in 

describing our experiences using a combination of 

first- and third-person voice. We use first-person 

singular to reflect upon our own stories, first-person 

plural to demonstrate our shared experiences, and 

third-person singular to distinguish our unique roles in 

this partnership. Though we structure our narrative 

through a linear progression of events, we also 

interweave critical self-reflections residing outside or 

on the periphery of actual events. These insights 

illuminate underlying metanarratives or self-reflection 

focused on power and privilege and the ways we 

grapple with our distinctive positionalities or identities 

in relation to one another and to the community 

members and families with whom we interact. For 

clarity, some of the terms used in this paper are 

unpacked in Figure 1.  

Figure 1:  
Concepts and Terminology Defined 

Equity Within the context of partnership, equity 
is achieved when all stakeholders feel 
represented as full participants in the 
project, when power is fairly and evenly 
distributed, and when mutually created 
goals and intended outcomes are 
honored, acted upon, and/or realized.  

 
Mutual respect Within the context of partnership, 

mutual respect is viewing and treating 
the partner as an equal decision-maker 
and stakeholder. It is also the feeling of 
authentic trust that is engendered 
through gestures, words, and actions 
centered in a 2-way appreciation of one 
another’s strengths and assets each 
person is bringing to the project.  

 

Positionality  Within the context of partnership, 
positionality is one’s identity as 
understood within social and political 
constructs. It takes into consideration 
identity markers such as race, class, 
gender, sexuality, and ability that 
position an individual’s status differently 
depending upon the specific 
circumstances. For example, a 
community member with a dis/ability 
may have power and authority at a 
university-community meeting centered 
on equity issues and simultaneously may 
be marginalized by lack of access to the 
building at which the meeting is 
occurring.  

 
Power  Power refers to the amount of status, 

authority, or decision-making ability one 
has within the specific circumstances of 
the partnership. It can be uneven or 
balanced; vertically-enforced or 
horizontally distributed.  

 
Privilege  Privilege, in relation to power and 

positionality, is the advantage one has in 
a specific reality or set of circumstances. 
Within the context of partnership, 
privilege can favor one group over 
another, cause inequitable 
circumstances, fuel a sense of group 
entitlement, or reproduce damaging 
patterns related to colonizing practices.   

 
Reciprocity Within the context of partnership, 

reciprocity is an intentional choice and 
act between stakeholders of sharing 
time, energy, and resources with the 
other while receiving a proportionate 
return of service.  

 
Sustainability  Within the context of partnership, 

sustainability is a mutually founded 
commitment with long-term 
implications. It requires honoring 
processes that may take an extended 
period of time.  

  

Our stories narrate our experience of and 

involvement in Family as Faculty (FAF) approaches. 

Family as Faculty is a term to describe an approach to 

teaching or research in which family members take on 

leadership roles, teach others through their insider 

perspectives, and broaden understandings of those 



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52 

 

who are working with or for their children (Heller & 

McKlindon, 1996; Johnson, Yoder, & Richardson-

Nassif, 2006). These approaches originate from family-

centered healthcare models and have been adapted in 

special education teacher education programs to 

influence and impact pre-service special education 

teachers’ dispositional understandings of working and 

collaborating with parents/families of children with 

dis/abilities1 (Forlin & Hopewell, 2006; Macy & Squires, 

2009; Patterson, Webb, & Krudwig, 2009; Williams, 

2012). Specifically, we are interested in ways that FAF 

approaches can center family leadership and 

knowledge in special education teacher education 

courses and programs while, at the same time, provide 

structured opportunities for family members to expand 

upon their roles as advocates for their children and for 

other families (Warren-Gordon & Santamaría Graff, 

2018). 

NARRATIVE INQUIRY 

 To describe our partnership within the context 

of FAF we use narrative inquiry. Narrative inquiry is 

based on the premise that “stories are lived, and told, 

not separated from each person’s living and telling in 

time, place, and relationships” (Clandinin, Cave, & 

Berendonk, 2017, p. 91). It is a relatively new qualitative 

methodology that centers individuals’ stories as a way 

of making meaning of larger phenomena (Clandinin & 

Huber, 2010). Through storytelling, tensions can arise 

that shed light on specific challenges that are told, 

                                                                 
1 Disabilities with a slash (/) refers to the social construction of identity, 
rather than fixed, immutable traits. How meaning is attached to ability 
is, oftentimes, more disabling than the dis/ability itself due to the ways 
dominant mainstream society has normalized the conditions for ability 
and able-bodiedness (Davis, 1995; Davis 2013). In this paper, disability is 

talked through, reflected upon, and examined 

(Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007). This method is particularly 

useful in analyzing the complexities of partnership in 

forming and building a collaborative relationship that 

is both unique to our personal, lived experience as well 

as informative for others outside of this inquiry who 

are engaged similarly.  

We structure our narratives through a back-

and-forth descriptive (re)telling of events that 

occurred between 2016 – 2018. To capture these events 

in written form, we pulled from a number of primary 

and secondary sources that included: a) notes from 

meetings we both attended, b) notes from informal 

conversations, c) materials from a conference 

presentation we were both involved in, and d) 

reflective writings about our partnership. Additionally, 

for this paper, we shared our writing in a Google 

document and were able to provide one another 

written with a slash in specific references to children or students with 
dis/abilities. 
 

Though this paper has in its title university-
community partnerships what needs to be clear is 
that Family as Faculty – though 
(re)conceptualized and initiated at the university 
level – was never intended to be university-driven. 
The intention was always to use the resources at 
the university level to support and help facilitate 
community-engaged participatory approaches 
that were, to the greatest degree possible, 
community-driven. 



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53 

 

feedback over the course of two months as we engaged 

in written correspondence about our partnership. 

Themes that emerged included the importance of 

mutual goals and values of respect, reciprocity, and 

sustainability. Underlying these goals and values were 

some tensions, namely how each of our roles in 

relation to one 

another and to the 

partnership brought 

up concerns around 

privilege and power. 

These goals, values 

and tensions are 

discussed and 

interwoven in 

subsequent 

sections.  

COMMUNITY-

ENGAGED 

PARTICIPATORY 

RESEARCH 

 Although 

we use narrative 

inquiry as a tool to 

share our lived 

experiences, the 

underlying approach to how we enter into and sustain 

a mutually respectful partnership is grounded in 

community-engaged participatory research. Though 

this paper has in its title university-community 

partnerships what needs to be clear is that Family as 

Faculty – though (re)conceptualized and initiated at 

the university level – was never intended to be 

university-driven. The intention was always to use the 

resources at the university level to support and help 

facilitate community-engaged participatory 

approaches that were, to the greatest degree possible, 

community-driven. Our definition of these approaches 

stems from the southern tradition of Participatory 

Action Research 

(PAR) (Fals Borda, 

1987, 2006; Freire, 

1970/2000) and is 

reflective of what we 

determine to be 

“community-engaged” 

(See Figure 2).  

“Community-

engaged,” for us, is 

distinct from what we 

have defined as 

community-based and 

community-driven. All 

three terms, 

community-based, 

community-engaged, 

and community-

driven, in our view, 

can be represented on 

a continuum toward more critical approaches to how 

we, as researchers and community stakeholders, ask, 

think about and examine the following questions:  

• What is the purpose of the research?  

• Who does the research benefit? Is it mutual? 

Reciprocal?  



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• Who holds the power? In other words, who is 

driving the research questions, research design, 

data collection, implementation, and 

dissemination of research outcomes?  

WHO WE ARE 

 In this section we begin by describing who we 

are, our backgrounds, and what brought us to our 

current work in a long-term, community-engaged 

partnership.  

Cristina 

I am a female professor in special education at 

a university in the Midwest who has been an educator 

for over twenty years. I self-identify as a biracial 

Mexicana which, to me, means that I come from a 

mixed-race background. My father is Mexican and my 

mother comes from Italian/Irish heritages. For me it is 

critical to self-identify who I am in my work so that 

others understand how I foreground my biracial 

background in what I do professionally. Research-wise 

I have chosen to work with families of children with 

dis/abilities, particularly Latinx families. Many of the 

families with whom I work and collaborate with are 

immigrants (Santamaría Graff, McCain, Gomez-Vilchis, 

2013; Santamaría Graff & Vazquez, 2014). Being 

forthright and transparent about my positionality as an 

able-bodied mother of non-disabled children and as a 

biracial, bilingual (but English-dominant), educated 

female in higher education is important in 

acknowledging the privilege that comes with each of 

these identity markers. More important, is the 

constant critical self-reflection I undergo in checking 

my own ego and power as I engage with community 

partners who, oftentimes, are parents of children with 

dis/abilities.   

Joel 

I am a male executive director of a parent-to-

parent non-profit organization, IN*SOURCE. I have 

served in this role for just over a year and have been 

with this organization for three years. While what 

most characterized my upbringing was my family’s 

conservative evangelical Christian religiosity, what has 

come to most characterize my identity as an adult is 

how I identify in relation to my children. I am a white 

non-disabled foster/adoptive father to two African-

American children with special needs. Understanding 

their stories before and after they entered my life 

shapes my understanding of privilege in an ongoing 

manner.  

 Professionally, I am the highest-ranking 

employee in an organization of about fifty employees 

nearly all of whom are parents of children with 

dis/abilities. IN*SOURCE is a parent center with 

federal and state funding sources. Our founding is 

rooted in the disability rights movement and the 

activist efforts of the disability community to establish 

a place in public education for students with 

dis/abilities. Our work is based on and informed by 

power dynamics and privilege as it affects the disability 

community, particularly students with dis/abilities and 

their parents.  

 Leading a parent center demands a publicly 

expressed identity where personal experience informs 

and legitimizes professional judgment. I don’t think I 

could do my work without frequent self-identification, 

yet my identity as a father drives my professional life 



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and is my defining passion. I am often the de facto or 

official parent representative in meetings of systemic 

importance where a parent’s perspective is necessary 

or desired, and this representative role challenges me 

and informs my approach to collaborative efforts. The 

representative role that I play and that IN*SOURCE 

plays in the scheme of special education in my home 

state challenges me to seek ways of more and more 

thoroughly equipping all families to advocate for their 

children. Without explicit attention on systemic 

inequities beyond disability such as opportunity gaps 

facing communities of color and non-English-speaking 

communities, for example, our role as a representative 

is problematized. My personal experience in a 

transracial family is the basis of my understanding of 

privilege and that perspective drives my professional 

judgment as a de facto or official parent representative.  

CONTEXT OF OUR PARTNERSHIP 

Cristina 

 Over two and a half years ago after I moved to 

a major metropolitan city in the Midwest to become a 

professor at a research institution, I decided I wanted 

to dive more deeply into community-engaged work 

with families of children with dis/abilities. To do this, I 

relied heavily on my previous experiences as a doctoral 

student in the Southwest United States and as an 

Assistant Professor in the Northwest. In both regions, I 

had the opportunity to work with Latinx families 

(Santamaría Graff, McCain, & Gomez-Vilchis, 2013). In 

the Southwest, however, I was able to work closely 

with a parent-to-parent organization that assisted me 

in recruiting Latina mothers of children with 

dis/abilities. I soon discovered through this work that 

these Latina mother-advocates were experts about 

issues that impacted their children. I quickly learned 

that to work with these mothers meant I needed to be 

an active listener and learner who, in spite of my 

education, knew little about what it was to be a parent 

of a child with dis/abilities (Santamaría, 2009).  

Having had this positive previous experience 

with the Southwest parent-to-parent organization, I 

decided, when I started working in the Midwest, to 

reach out to two parent-to-parent organizations. One 

was situated locally and the other’s main office was in 

the northern part of the state about 150 miles away 

from where I was living and working. My first step was 

to research each organization’s mission statements and 

to find out if their goals and values were in alignment 

with mine. Though both organizations responded 

positively to my initial emails, this narrative only 

describes the experience I’ve had with one of these 

organizations, specifically my interactions with 

IN*SOURCE.  

 Joel  

When I first came to IN*SOURCE, my job was 

to manage one of our grants. In this role I supervised 

as many as fourteen staff which included supporting 

personnel in a major Midwest metropolitan area. The 

grant I managed included deliverables around 

“outreach” efforts to historically underserved 

populations including families with incarcerated youth 

with dis/abilities, low income families, and non-

English-speaking families. In order to support families 

whose primary language is Spanish, we employ staff 

who are bilingual in Spanish and English. Prior to any 



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awareness of FAF or relationship with Cristina, 

IN*SOURCE bilingual staff had observed enough 

systemic shortcomings with respect to Spanish-

speaking access to special education information that 

they had begun to work with IN*SOURCE 

administration to raise further awareness of this 

problem. The solution that emerged from 

conversations with bilingual program specialists 

centered around the need for IN*SOURCE to present 

the data and stirring anecdotes to our State 

Educational Agency (SEA) along with a request for a 

funding package that would support work training 

interpreters for special education.  

I was personally affected by the stories our staff 

had accumulated through their work with Spanish-

speaking families that involved unprofessional 

disclosures of private information, consequential 

technical details being misrepresented, conflicts of 

interest being unaddressed, and Local Educational 

Agencies (LEAs) able to abide by the letter of special 

education law without being equipped to know 

whether an interpreter is properly qualified for their 

important work. My work with bilingual staff to 

develop a solution that addressed the known issues 

and that the SEA would be able to support with 

funding brought me into a new place professionally. 

With the support of the Executive Director, 

IN*SOURCE engaged the state office of special 

education around this concern culminating in a 

successful “pitch” to the state director of special 

education for support of this project as an additional 

node to our ongoing work with them.  

As a statewide organization, IN*SOURCE often 

is contacted by researchers who are pursuing studies 

that relate to disability and special education. We have 

varying degrees of involvement with scholars and 

institutions of higher education that range from 

participating in studies mutually designed with our 

feedback and access to families we work with in mind 

to the all too pervasive mass email with a link to a 

survey. If the study seemed particularly relevant, I 

would pursue the author requesting our support with 

some follow-up questions designed to get at their 

approach to working with families with special needs 

and even more basically whether they cared enough to 

answer my questions. I learned that almost always, the 

mass email was not intended to elicit substantial 

follow-up conversations. It is in this context that I 

learned of training requests from a professor of special 

education whose approach to working with our staff 

and her students particularly valued something that we 

too value--the importance of a parent’s perspective in 

their child’s special education. It was through staff 

involvement in a “training” capacity to Cristina’s 

students that led to a request for more formal, more 

integrated support of Cristina’s research emphasis, the 

FAF study. Cristina’s approach and methods were a 

welcome contrast to the much more common 

transactional approach.  

ESTABLISHING MUTUAL TRUST AND RESPECT 

 In the following narratives, we discuss the first 

time we met. Our stories highlight the importance of 

entering into partnership with trust, respect, and clear, 

common goals. These goals center on family member 

leadership and ways that family members are 



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positioned in FAF projects to assist future teachers in 

their understanding of families as resourceful partners 

or allies. In this section, the value of mutual respect is 

integral in establishing a foundation for strong 

collaboration and communication.  

Cristina  

My first email correspondence with Joel 

focused on my conceptualization of Family as Faculty 

(FAF) and the ways I believed IN*SOURCE could be a 

key stakeholder in its organization and 

implementation. In the email, I introduced myself and 

provided IN*SOURCE with a draft of the Internal 

Revenue Board (IRB) proposal in which I described the 

mixed methods study I intended to implement through 

a FAF approach. I hoped that sharing the proposal with 

Joel and other IN*SOURCE members would engender 

trust. I provided them with the context for and 

purpose of the FAF study as well as give details about 

the ways I was positioning parents as teacher-leaders 

in my special education course. I wanted to 

demonstrate my commitment to the parents associated 

with their organization. I believed that a definitive plan 

with specific procedures and a timeline would provide 

IN*SOURCE members with the opportunity to critique 

the project and give feedback.   

In the email I sent to Joel and IN*SOURCE, I 

not only sent the IRB draft proposal but also I 

specifically asked if IN*SOURCE could provide me 

with access to families’ emails so I could contact them 

to see if they would be interested in the FAF project. 

Joel shared the draft with the former IN*SOURCE 

Executive Director and a few days later, after perusing 

the document, they asked if they could meet with me 

face-to-face.  

 We met downtown in a hotel café where they 

were attending a state conference. Over coffee, both 

Joel and the former Executive Director seemed happy 

to meet with me and, at the same time, asked me 

pointed questions about the breadth and scope of my 

involvement with parents. Though asked with respect 

and politeness, Joel centered his questions carefully 

around specific protections I would be providing for 

parents who might be interested in participating in the 

study. I remember thinking how important it was for 

me to provide in-depth answers to his questions 

because he seemed to have concerns around how 

parents or family members may be exposed in public 

or academic settings. Both Joel and the Executive 

Director were clear that if they were to assist me in the 

recruitment of parents for my study, they needed to be 

assured parents were in good hands. In other words, I 

needed to demonstrate “good faith” by providing them 

with clearly written procedural steps, goals, and 

outcomes as documented in my proposal and 

throughout the project.  

I remember describing the purpose of the FAF 

study and receiving an encouraging response by the 

Executive Director who said that our goals were “in 

alignment.” What I believe he meant was that my 

intentional positioning of parents and families as 

experts of their children was central to IN*SOURCE’s 

goals as well. Specifically, it appeared he shared my 

view that families’ innate and experiential knowledge 

of their children was an important component of their 

advocacy. The Executive Director and Joel extended 



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their support by offering to assist me in recruiting 

parents through their Listserv. I crafted a “recruitment” 

email asking for voluntary parent participation, 

submitted it to IRB for approval, and then sent it to 

IN*SOURCE. The Executive Director and Joel approved 

of the language in the email and sent the email out to 

approximately 100 families affiliated with IN*SOURCE. 

This gesture was significant because they sent the 

information from IN*SOURCE’s official email and 

signaled to recipients that they approved of my study. 

Moreover, because parent/family recipients trusted 

IN*SOURCE as an organization, they, in turn, trusted 

me because I was now directly affiliated with 

IN*SOURCE. 

CONSIDERATION OF STEPS 

Some of the ways that mutual trust and respect 

were established are listed in Figure 3 as delineated 

through specific steps. These “steps” are not formulaic 

nor are they always linear. Cristina’s story highlights 

the ways she initiated contact with IN*SOURCE and 

the steps she considered before and during the initial 

meeting with Joel. Joel’s narrative below illustrates the 

careful consideration he took to ensure that 

IN*SOURCE’s parents’ and families’ best interests were 

being accounted for before committing to the Family 

as Faculty project. Both perspectives are reflected in 

Figure 3’s “Steps” and may be helpful for those who are 

considering entering into university or higher 

education – community partnerships. 

 
 
 
 
Figure 3:  
Steps in Establishing Mutual Respect and Trust 

 
1. Know who you are and what you stand for. You should be able to 
articulate this orally or in writing succinctly.  
 
2. Know the purpose and mission of your project/organization and be 
prepared to articulate this for your community or university partner or 
other stakeholders.  
 
3. Do your homework. Before establishing contact, research the 
partner’s information. Whether it is a Curriculum Vita, an organization’s 
mission statement, or individuals’ biographies, find out if your work is in 
alignment with theirs.  
 
4. Learn key players’ names and their positions before meeting with 
them, if possible.  
 
5. Reach out in appropriate ways and through the proper channels. 
Establish parameters for communication. Demonstrate courtesy and 
respect in email and phone correspondence and in face-to-face 
interactions.  
 
6. Be open and gracious when meeting and interacting with your 
partner. Allow one another to speak without interruptions and without 
set expectations. The process should flow with space for negotiation.  
 
7. Allow expansion of your ideas. In line with number 6, a partnership 
should be given room to grow rather than feel forced, closed, or fixed.  
 
8. Discuss alignment of one another’s purpose or mission. Here, 
transparency is key. Be upfront about number 2 with your (potential) 
partner and actively listen to their responses.  
 
9. Find common ground and discuss mutual goals. Co-generated 
projects should yield mutuality – in other words – all parties involved 
should feel that they are benefiting from the experience.  
 
10. Make a commitment, set timelines, and discuss responsibilities. 
These elements should be formalized and operationalized in writing for 
clarity, documentation, and accountability. Honoring responsibilities 
engenders trust and establishes mutual respect.  
 
 
Joel 

 Initial phone conversations about IN*SOURCE 

helping launch FAF with Cristina instilled confidence 

in her approach to working with families. Broad 

mutual interest was established that included what was 

effectively an effort to establish parent perspective 

authoritatively in the curriculum of pre-service special 

education teachers at a major university. This was a 

gift, but Cristina’s careful positioning and awareness of 

power differentials did not make it feel forced as it had 

with other researchers who had taken time to answer 

my questions. Rather, I see the FAF launch as a 



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59 

 

collaboration in every mutual sense of the word. From 

an IN*SOURCE perspective, there was no easily 

discernible or realistic path toward realizing the 

opportunity to participate in the education of future 

special educators that Cristina was offering. Yet, this 

opportunity resonated so clearly with the persistent 

challenges around appropriate parent involvement 

within special education, which is one of the very 

reasons why organizations like IN*SOURCE exist.  

 

The broad mutual interest established with 

Cristina was fed by the thorough vetting of her 

requests for access to families we’ve worked with and 

endorsement of the FAF project by our organization. 

Trust was extended both ways during this process, and 

while I was most aware of and concerned about 

Cristina’s intentions and process with her study, it was 

also apparent that she was investing valuable time and 

energy. As Cristina’s commitment to these principles 

became increasingly evident, my desire to see her work 

thrive grew. While she was not a parent to children 

with dis/abilities, she was clearly in this for the long 

haul, and we wanted Cristina centrally involved in our 

organization’s work beyond the FAF project. Cristina 

provided letters of support for the interpreter program 

mentioned above and concurrently Cristina joined 

IN*SOURCE’s board of directors.   

CREATING MUTUAL GOALS 

 In this section, we begin by providing context 

for Family as Faculty’s (FAF’s) first iteration (2016 – 

2017) to demonstrate the careful decisions made to 

guarantee that the partnership between Cristina, 

representing her university, and Joel, representing 

IN*SOURCE, remained mutually beneficial. We also 

give specifics of the project to provide more 

background about ways FAF has been conceptualized 

to include parents as co-educators in university 

courses. We draw attention to Figure 4 which 

delineates Cristina’s and Joel’s initial goals they created 

individually as they each thought about FAF and its 

intended outcomes. Then, we describe how these 

individual goals became shared ones that eventually 

drove and continue driving other FAF projects.  

Before the first Family as Faculty project began 

in fall 2016, Cristina, as stated earlier, contacted 

IN*SOURCE and made a strong connection with Joel 

and the executive director. Cristina shared her FAF 

draft proposal with them. In it, were initial goals and 

intended outcomes she had created based on existing 

FAF educational literature. She wrote these for a small, 

internal grant she was applying for and was eventually 

awarded. She had initially contacted IN*SOURCE 

during the application process because she was 

interested in partnering with a parent-to-parent 

community organization to implement the FAF study. 

The goals she wrote were centered on data collection 

procedures used to measure changes in both pre-

For us, the commitment to partnership revolves 
around an authentic dedication to facilitating 

opportunities through which parent and family 
members can step into their leadership as 

experts of their children. This process of seeing 
oneself as a leader and expert may not occur 

overnight; it may not even occur in one 
semester. 



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60 

 

service teachers and parent co-educators over a 16-

week period (See Figure 4).  

Figure 4 

Family as Faculty: Creating Mutual Goals & Their Intended Outcomes 

1. Cristina’s Initial Goals Intended Outcomes 
a) To change pre-service special 
education teachers’ views of 
families of children with 
disabilities from deficit- to 
asset-based. 

To demonstrate a change in pre-
service teachers’ dispositions 
using a pre- and post-beliefs’ 
survey and journal reflections. 

b) To position family members 
of children with disabilities as 
leaders and co-educators in a 
special education course on 
families. 

For parent co-educators to plan, 
organize, and teach specific 
classes in the course on families 
with the hope that they would 
experience a greater sense of self-
efficacy and empowerment. 

2. Joel’s Initial Goals Intended Outcomes 
a) To assist parents in 
understanding their educational 
rights. 

For parent co-educators to learn 
more about their rights under 
the special education law by 
teaching future special education 
teachers. 

b) To give parents information 
about the special education 
process. 

In line with (a), for parent co-
educators to be able to articulate 
how processes described in state 
special education law pertain to 
their specific experiences. 

c) To help parents and schools 
work together and develop 
positive relationships. 

Through FAF, parents, in 
speaking with future special 
educators, will practice effective 
communication and 
interpersonal skills centered on 
parent/family-teacher 
collaboration. 

d) To assist parents in becoming 
better advocates for their 
children. 

Through FAF, parents will use 
their voice to tell their stories 
and feel more confident in their 
agency. 

3. Mutual Goals Created Intended Outcomes 
a) To structure opportunities for 
parents/family members to step 
into leadership roles in higher 
education settings. 

Through FAF, parents/family 
members will plan, organize, and 
teach classes on specific topics in 
a university special education 
course. 

b) To organize specific activities 
through FAF for future special 
education teachers to develop 
an awareness of family rights 
and advocacy. 

Classes led by parent co-
educators will focus on topics of 
family rights and advocacy as 
presented through lived 
experience, case studies, and 
activities grounded in special 
education law. 

c) For Cristina and Joel to 
maintain on-going structured 
commitments to support each 
other’s projects and 
organizations. 

Cristina demonstrates support by 
becoming a board member of 
IN*SOURCE. Joel commits to 
writing continuous letters of 
support. Both work together on 
grants, conference presentations, 
and manuscripts. 

 

These goals and their intended outcomes 

impacted 22 pre-service teachers who were mostly 

white, middle-class, females and 8 parent participants. 

Of these eight, there were 7 females and 1 male. Of the 

females, there were 2 Latinas (1 from Nicaragua and 1 

from Mexico) and one African American. In this first 

FAF project, the parents attended co-planning sessions 

in which they chose and organized content. Content 

centered on special education topics linked to course 

standards included, but were not limited to: 

collaboration, inclusive practices, disproportionality, 

ableism, medical treatments, communication with 

school administrators and teachers, and culture and 

language barriers. The course was structured so 

parents could present in pairs or triads. Four classes of 

2 hour 40 minute periods in the 16-week course were 

dedicated to these parent-led class sessions. Parent as 

co-educators taught pre-service special education 

teachers specific course content from their insider lens 

and expertise of their child.  

Before the implementation of the first FAF 

project, however, Joel asked Cristina questions about 

some of the parent presenters who were also parent 

advocates/trainers for IN*SOURCE. He wanted to 

ensure that the parent presenters were supported by 

IN*SOURCE in direct and tangible ways. For example, 

he provided specific parent presenters with printed 

copies of the state education law to use in FAF parent-

led discussions for the pre-service teachers. He also 

gave access to specific PowerPoints parents could use 

to ground their information in law and policy. Through 

multiple conversations, Joel made clear some of 

IN*SOURCE’s main goals that he hoped to see 



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61 

 

addressed through the FAF projects (See Figure 4). 

Cristina found these goals to be very important from 

an educator perspective. Over several conversations 

with Joel, she described how these goals could also be 

written for pre-service teachers and other educators. 

Future teachers, like parents, needed to know 

information about the special education process and 

how to work collaboratively with others to develop 

positive relationships. With these goals in mind, 

Cristina and Joel discussed ways their individual goals 

and intended outcomes could merge to create mutual 

ones. Mutual goals, for Cristina and Joel, meant an 

intentional integration of conceptual understandings 

and concrete outcomes that would benefit each of 

them in relation to their professional commitments. 

They developed three. The first two were structured 

through FAF parent/family-led sessions that focused 

on special education topics parents chose to teach. The 

last mutual goal was Cristina’s and Joel’s commitment 

to one another which entailed several ways that each of 

them would be supportive and accountable to each 

other’s organization or projects (See Figure 4).  

MAKING SUSTAINABLE COMMITMENTS 

In community-engaged partnerships, 

sustainability is crucial in maintaining long-term 

commitments through which mutually established 

goals can be realized. Though short-term goals are 

necessary for taking first steps toward accomplishing 

concrete, timely actions, long-term goals require 

honoring processes that may take an extended period 

of time. For us, the commitment to partnership 

revolves around an authentic dedication to facilitating 

opportunities through which parent and family 

members can step into their leadership as experts of 

their children. This process of seeing oneself as a 

leader and expert may not occur overnight; it may not 

even occur in one semester. For this reason, we think 

of Family as Faculty as a 5- or 10-year project in which 

there are many iterations. Even though certain funding 

mechanisms are structured to provide monies for 1-

year increments, Cristina, in particular, conceptualizes 

each year as one part of a larger whole through which 

parents and family members progress toward 

leadership in higher educational spaces. Sustainability 

in the context of FAF means working with and learning 

from parents year after year as co-educators who 

enrich the overall project.  

Sustainable, mutually founded commitments 

have been at the heart of our partnership. Here we take 

a moment to discuss the ways we have been 

consistently supportive of one another’s projects. 

Specific questions that we have asked ourselves over 

the past three years are shared in Figure 5 to assist 

others who are interested in establishing long-term 

commitments with community or university partners. 

Figure 5:  
Sustainable Commitments: What Questions to Ask 
 
1. Have mutual goals been established, operationalized, and formalized 
(in some manner)?  
 
2. Do these mutual goals have timelines attached? Are these timelines 
realistic? Are they fair to all stakeholders?  
 
3. Has there been a discussion around what an enduring partnership 
around these goals may look like?  
 
4. Do these mutual goals state who is responsible for implementing and 
carrying them out? Are the responsibilities equitably distributed?  
 
5. Has there been a conversation around accountability? What does 
accountability mean for each person? What does accountability mean 
for implementation of and follow through of mutual goals?  
 



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6. Is there some type of memorandum of understanding (MOU) 
between you and your partner? Is it easily accessible? Is the language 
clear?   
 
7. Does the MOU reflect a shared vision and mutual goals?  
 
8. What structures or mechanisms have been put in place to ensure 
mutual goals are realized?  
 
9. Where do meetings about accountability, long-term commitments, 
and mutual goals take place? How does location impact enduring 
partnerships?  
 
10. Is there room for the commitments to evolve and transform as the 
project grows or changes?  

 

In the academic year 2017 – 2018, Joel became 

the Executive Director of IN*SOURCE. In his new 

leadership role, he has written comprehensive letters 

of support for Cristina. Cristina has been awarded 

several community-engaged grants and fellowships 

due in part to IN*SOURCE’s demonstrated 

commitment to the FAF projects. Further IN*SOURCE 

has given in-kind matches to these grants consisting of 

administrative and staff support, material resources, 

and transportation costs. Continued funding has 

allowed Cristina to expand FAF and to continue 

working with parents affiliated with IN*SOURCE. In 

fall 2017 graduate students, parents of children with 

dis/abilities, and community stakeholders affiliated 

with local parent-to-parent organizations collaborated 

together to organize and host an Inclusion Conference 

for over 130 participants. IN*SOURCE was prominently 

featured in conference panels and family-led 

discussions.  

 The 2018 - 2019 FAF project that is currently 

underway consists of multiple stakeholder groups 

including: a) IN*SOURCE and a local parent-to-parent 

organization; b) undergraduate pre-service special 

education teachers; c) graduate in-service teachers and 

educators; d) undergraduate students acting as 

interpreters/translators from the Latino Studies 

Department; e) parent educators from previous FAF 

projects; and f) 18 Latinx family members of children 

with Down Syndrome and Autism. Extensive support 

from IN*SOURCE has been necessary in securing 

funding and specific structural supports needed to 

implement this complex study involving over 70 

stakeholders. One main purpose of this third iteration 

of FAF is to support Latinx families through ongoing 

family-driven workshops. Latinx parent participants 

are either Spanish/English bilingual or monolingual 

Spanish speakers learning English as a new language. 

This year’s project focuses on family-driven mini-

action plans through which these parents, with the 

support of students, create short- and long-term goals 

to address challenges their children with dis/abilities 

are experiencing in schools. IN*SOURCE, under Joel’s 

leadership, has connected Cristina to several bilingual 

parent advocates who are instrumental to the overall 

planning and implementation of this project. 

 In turn, Cristina has demonstrated specific 

commitments to IN*SOURCE described in the next 

section that contribute to the organization’s overall 

stability and sustainability. For example, she has given 

extensive time and energy to IN*SOURCE’s 

organization to ensure its long-term, fiscal solvency by 

writing letters of support, co-writing grants with Joel, 

and connecting IN*SOURCE with university-based 

centers to enhance its reputation as an equity-centered 

organization. Further, she has established and 

maintained strong relationships with IN*SOURCE’s 



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board members and staff and continues to co-teach 

with parents affiliated directly with this organization.  

ATTENDING TO 

RECIPROCITY 

Reciprocity is 

an intentional choice 

and act between 

stakeholders of 

giving time, energy, 

and resources to the 

other while receiving 

a proportionate 

“return” of service. 

Reciprocity, to us, 

should not be 

measured and 

scrutinized solely in 

strict, quantitative 

terms. For example, if 

we give 6 hours of 

volunteer time to our partner we should not expect 

them to return an exact equivalent as measured in the 

same form. From the outside, this input/output 

mechanism of measuring effort may appear “equal” 

but, in practice, it can feel forced and disingenuous. 

We conceptualize this “mechanism” as a fulcrum as 

shown in Figure 6, whereby a balanced partnership can 

only be maintained if the effort exerted is equivalent to 

the load or responsibility carried.  

Reciprocity in a community partnership should 

be a dynamic process in which negotiation between 

stakeholders is conducted respectfully, whereby 

mutually defined and beneficial goals are the center of 

all discussions. Perhaps the equivalent “effort” of 6 

hours shows up in a different manner, for example, in 

providing “free” 

recruitment for the 

partner’s project at a 

state conference. 

Time, energy, and 

resources should be 

given and received 

within a continuous 

flow that makes 

sense to the 

everyday activities 

and choices being 

made to sustain a 

healthy and 

equitable 

partnership. 

Additionally, intent, 

integrity, and accountability are core, underlying 

elements of reciprocity that drive meaningful and 

authentic relationships. Simply stated, if we, as 

community partners, can say with 100% confidence 

that “we have each other’s backs” and “we can count on 

one another” then we know internally that the 

relationships are sustainable and balanced.  

Reciprocity to Parents in FAF 

In all FAF projects, Cristina has been able to 

provide monetary compensation to parent participants 

to demonstrate she values their expertise as 

professionals who are contributing to the overall FAF 

research. When Cristina shared the initial FAF 



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proposal with Joel in 2016, one of the points of 

conversation was payment and its distribution. 

Cristina explained that paying the parent co-educators 

was an important gesture to show she deeply respected 

their knowledge, time, and curricular and instructional 

contributions. Cristina was adamant that, in spite of 

certain parents assuring her that they “didn’t need the 

money in order to participate,” she wanted to show she 

recognized the importance of their participation in the 

course. Paying them for their expert input and time 

was an act of reciprocity. Moreover, the parents trusted 

Cristina with their lived experiences. They willingly 

shared their stories with pre-service special education 

teachers. In turn, Cristina demonstrated to parents 

that their expertise was just as, if not more, important. 

She did this by replacing “traditional” course content 

with parents’ first-hand narratives. Joel was 

appreciative of these actions and stated how important 

it was to value parents’ contributions as experts of their 

children in FAF projects.  

Reciprocity in Partnerships 

Specific to our partnership, there have been 

several moments we want to highlight that are tangible 

acts of reciprocity. During the first iteration of the FAF 

project after Joel had sent out the email to assist 

Cristina in recruiting parents, he asked her for a letter 

of support for a grant he was writing for a language 

interpreter program mentioned earlier. This program 

was designed to prepare special education interpreters 

to “build cultural bridges” within their schools to 

better facilitate special education case conferences 

with schools and families. Cristina felt qualified to 

recommend this program because of her bilingual 

special education background. Fortuitously, 

IN*SOURCE was awarded funding to implement this 

program. In line with reciprocity being given and 

received “within a continuous flow that makes sense,” 

(Joel, email correspondence) we benefited from 

assisting one another in meeting individual goals that 

contributed to supporting families in our respective 

projects.  

Another act of “reciprocity” was Cristina’s 

board member application submission to IN*SOURCE. 

She wrote a comprehensive cover letter detailing the 

ways she could contribute directly to ADVOCATE’s 

mission: “to provide parents, families, individuals & 

service providers in the state of Indiana the 

information & training necessary to help assure 

effective educational programs & appropriate services 

for individuals with disabilities.” The former Executive 

Director and the IN*SOURCE Board of Directors voted 

on and accepted her application. Since 2016, Cristina 

has been serving on IN*SOURCE’s board and, since 

2017, has acted as Secretary. 

Finally, we presented together at a regional 

conference held in Las Vegas for parent training and 

information centers interested in unique opportunities 

for partnerships to benefit families. Our presentation 

focused on the FAF project and our collaboration as 

university-community member partners. In addition, 

we recently wrote and submitted a Department of 

Education Grant for a Statewide Family Engagement 

Center. Though we were not awarded this grant, we 

collaborated with several other stakeholders including 

a federally-funded, Equity Assistance Center.  



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ADDRESSING POWER DYNAMICS 

 In this section, it is helpful to refer to Figures 2 

and 6 to understand the balance and distribution of 

power in university-community partnerships. Here 

Cristina and Joel extend their understandings of 

mutual respect and reciprocity by bringing up specific 

issues related to power. For Cristina, the discussion is 

focused on tensions emerging from community-

engaged work originating from dominant, Eurocentric 

university structures and applied to community 

settings. Joel speaks to the inherent dichotomy of 

“running a business” versus helping families. However, 

he centers his narrative on ways that power can be 

shared in order to attend to both the business of 

IN*SOURCE and its mission, the latter being focused 

on parent advocacy.  

Cristina  

Power dynamics must be accounted for in all 

community-engaged relationships, specifically 

university-community partnerships. Though I cannot 

speak for all service-learning or community-based 

projects originating out of universities, I can describe 

my own evolving understandings of power as I reflect 

on the ways I’ve needed to problematize the 

university’s role in my own FAF projects. There are 

major tensions in my work with families as I integrate 

community-engaged activities within a “service-

learning” course. Here, service-learning is defined as, 

“An instructional approach that is credit bearing and 

linking curriculum goals with intentional learning 

within the community” (Delano-Oriaran, 2015, p. 38). 

By intentionally situating FAF approaches in my 

courses, I become accountable to university constructs 

that limit the amount of time allotted for FAF projects. 

In other words: Is it really possible to do authentic 

community-engaged projects with families and students 

when I only have 16-week chunks of time to build and 

develop relationships?  

Another tension is constructing genuine ways 

to assess students. Because of university norms, I need 

to evaluate students’ performance and learning 

through grades. In community-engaged work, 

“grading” students on the process of building 

important student-family partnerships seems contrary 

to the purpose of my work. I want relationships to 

develop authentically. When students “do community-

engaged work” to demonstrate course expectations to 

“get the good grade” then the energy they bring to 

their “engagement” is rooted in obligation rather than 

in genuine acts of caring, consideration, empathy, 

respect, and trust. Conversely, when students are open 

to learning about and from community partners as a 

means to expand their own understandings and to fully 

embrace the collaboration process through dialogic 

interactions, then, I believe, authentic beginnings for 

engagement are possible.  

As an instructor who intentionally situates FAF 

approaches as pedagogical tools for learning, I need to 

be extremely aware of uneven power dynamics 

(Cummins, 2009). Embedded within these dynamics 

between students and community stakeholders is the 

potentiality for “service” to be done for communities 

perceived in be in need of help or “damaged” in some 

way (Koster, Baccar, & Lemelin, 2012; Tuck, 2009). 

Knowing that traditional service-learning is an 

institutional practice historically connected to 



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66 

 

dominant Eurocentric values is an important part of 

conscious awareness in engaging with communities 

(Leeuw, S. D., Cameron, E. S., & Greenwood, M. L., 

2012). When service-learning projects are not centered 

in social justice and equity, they become extensions of 

Eurocentric, colonizing practices (Mitchell, 2008, 

2014). If equity and social justice are not considered in 

community-engaged work originating in or from the 

university then “the work” can potentially harm the 

community stakeholders for whom it was designed. 

Even with pure intention to expose my 

students to community-engaged work co-constructed 

with stakeholders, I know these experiences designed 

for university-level courses may not be enough to 

disrupt deficit-driven beliefs of parents and families. 

Further, what keeps me up at night is thinking about 

whether or not working within university course 

parameters allows for true reciprocity with community 

stakeholders.  Is the work I am doing truly beneficial 

for the parents, families and community partners with 

whom I collaborate? Even when I intentionally 

institute measures to center stakeholders’ voices in my 

work, is the work equitable on all levels or do some 

individuals feel excluded or marginalized?  Though I 

embed several opportunities to collect data from 

stakeholders in my FAF studies about how and if they 

believe they are benefiting from the FAF projects, 

sometimes I wonder if these opportunities reach deep 

enough to unearth the complexities of their answers. 

Joel 

While IN*SOURCE is a 501c3, for many 

practical purposes we are a business. We have 

employees, a website and a 1-800 number, operate with 

contracts and invoices, have hours of operation, 

company laptops, reimbursement protocols, and so on. 

While IN*SOURCE is concerned with efficiency and 

fiscal sustainability, we do not turn dollars into 

products or services in order to make a profit. Rather, 

we turn dollars into products and services in order to 

help families. Any mutually beneficial relationship 

needs to account for that governing purpose. Grant 

and contract stipulations also inform what mutual 

benefit means to IN*SOURCE. Tellingly grant and 

contract funded work is often referred to as a “project” 

and often functions as a mediating expression of all 

that might be done toward fulfilling IN*SOURCE’s 

mission and what there are resources to do. Realizing a 

mutually beneficial partnership may help get to project 

deliverables more efficiently, which from the 

“business” aspect of being a nonprofit is, of course, 

helpful. All the better, however, if a mutually realized 

benefit can do what you do not have any business or 

project capacity for yet is fully aligned with mission. 

While the FAF did help with project deliverables, the 

latter is what FAF really represented for IN*SOURCE.  

CONCLUSIONS: WHAT’S NEXT?  

At the heart of our work is the understanding 

that families of children with dis/abilities are strong 

advocates for their children who deserve respect and 

integrity from educational professionals in decisions 

impacting their child. We interpret Section 

300.300(a)(2)(iii) of the  Individuals with Disabilities 

Education and Improvement Act (IDEIA) to mean that 

parents are equal stakeholders and should be given 

every opportunity to voice their concerns, contribute 



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67 

 

to their child’s specific school-related goals and 

objectives, be actively and seriously listened to for their 

unique insights, and have equitable access to power 

structures that inform their child’s academic and 

educational trajectory.  

Through our 

mutually respectful 

partnership, we are 

creating innovative 

pathways for families to 

participate as leaders and 

knowledge-makers in 

special education teacher 

preparation courses. We 

understand that in 

partnership our work 

with families is enhanced 

as we consider options 

that we had not 

conceived of before or 

were unable to enact 

without one another’s 

support. As we look to the future, we are interested in 

expanding Family as Faculty and other programs that 

center families’ voice in educational spaces. We are 

committed to opening more doors for historically 

minoritized families to engage in and influence 

programs at the local and state level, in the classrooms, 

and at higher education institutions. In practice, this 

engagement means listening to families from diverse 

cultural, linguistic, racial and ethnic backgrounds and 

collaborating with them to shape future iterations of 

programs like FAF. By doing so we hope to genuinely 

address areas these families have identified and want 

to pursue that, ultimately, will benefit their children 

and others with dis/abilities.  

FURTHER EXPLORATIONS 

While we describe a 

successful instance of a 

mutually respectful university-

community partnership, we 

believe further research and 

exploration of this topic is 

warranted within the field of 

special education and beyond. 

The underlying values of 

equity including mutual 

respect, reciprocity, and 

sustainability inform this 

partnership, are relevant to 

other fields of study, and need 

to be more fully realized 

within special education. In 

Figure 7 we provide some 

concrete examples of how we 

are thinking about applying these values to our future 

collaborative work as well as how these values may be 

considered in others’ community-engaged projects.  

Future inquiries might also interact with the 

substantial mutual benefit for both partners in that the 

approach by Cristina was iterative but not 

transactional and focused but not brief. Simply, a 

mutually respectful approach toward a community 

partner takes time but pays off, and indeed this and 

other successful university-community partnerships 



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68 

 

undergirded by equity ideas must make pragmatic 

sense in order to persist. What other insights can be 

gleaned by examining the intersection of equity and 

practicality? And how can this examination inform and 

transform spaces for genuine, sustainable 

partnerships? 

 

Students and parents work together to build the tallest, free-standing 
structure with the materials provided. 

 

Students and parents are working together on mini-action plans 
centered on family-driven goals. 

 

  



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http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/jctp/vol2/iss2/6

	Abstract
	Forming a mutually respectful university-community partnership through a “family as Faculty” project
	References

