Cristina Santamaria Graff
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Family as Faculty! A Project to Authentically Engage Parents, Students, and Community Partners in Meeting Common Goals
For over fifteen years, Professor Santamaria Graff's scholarship has focused on working with Latinx immigrant families of children with disabilities. "Family as Faculty!" is a healthcare approach to working with families of children with disabilities who, through this model, are positioned as leaders who share their expertise with those providing care to their children.
Adapted for education, and specifically for special education teacher preparation programs, "Family as Faculty!" is an innovative approach for family members to be co-instructors in university or college courses aimed to prepare future special education teachers. Latinx immigrant family members of children with Down Syndrome and Autism led preservice teachers in small group discussions about their child. These discussions were guided by hands-on activities we, as co-instructors, developed and led.
Professor Santamaria Graff's translation of research into beneficial health and educational outcomes for students with disabilities is another excellent example of how IUPUI's faculty members are TRANSLATING their RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.
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Item Journeys in Cultural Competency: Pre-Service U.S. Teachers in Mexico Study-Abroad Programs(Routledge, 2009) Santamaría, Lorri J.; Santamaría Graff, Cristina C.; Fletcher, Todd V.This study investigated pre-service and credentialed teachers at 2 universities in the Southwestern United States (N = 24), who participated in education-abroad programs in Mexico over 1 summer. This study examined the literature within a framework for developing cultural competence to describe and understand students' experiences. Following a discussion of research methodology, emergent themes are reported and discussed within the frameworks presented. The study concludes with a discussion of changes in teacher preparation programs required or recommended to improve academic achievement among English language learners of Mexican descent in U.S. schools.Item Latina Resilience in Higher Education: Contributing Factors Including Seasonal Farmworker Experiences(Sage, 2013) Santamaría Graff, Cristina; McCain, Terrence; Gomez-Vilchis, VeronicaMany Latina students overcome multiple obstacles to earn university degrees. Five married Latina women with children and seasonal farmworker backgrounds are the focus of this study which is analyzed through resiliency theory to understand factors contributing to their academic resilience. Variables connected to academic success are explored and include supportive familial networks, self-efficacy, and participants’ desires to instill the value of education in their children. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.Item Examining pre-service special education teachers’ biases and evolving understandings about families through a family as faculty approach(Taylor & Francis, 2020) Santamaría Graff, Cristina; Manlove, Josh; Stuckey, Shanna; Foley, MichelleThis paper centers on a participatory qualitative study in which 22 pre-service special education teachers (i.e., undergraduate students) experienced, wrote about, and reflected upon their perceptions of families of children with disabilities over a semester-long course built on a Family as Faculty (FAF) model adapted from the healthcare profession for special education, teacher education programs. The FAF approach used has been reconceptualized to include three essential understandings (E.U.s): a) families as experts, b) examining positionality, and c) analyzing power relations. In our iteration of FAF, parents of children with disabilities co-plan and teach specific classes within a teacher preparation course on families. The authors examine pre-service teacher responses to FAF-structured experiences. Though many pre-service teachers demonstrated growth in their understandings of family’s strengths and their participation in their child’s education, there were some who continued to view families through deficit lenses. Pre-service teachers’ reflections of families, though well-intended, often used cloaked language revealing underlying assumptions. FAF approaches that take a critical stance can unveil hidden assumptions and assist students with self-awareness and critical consciousness needed as foundations to transform individual and systemic biases.Item Resistance and Resilience as Resource: Families’ Participation in Urban School Reform(Teachers College Press, 2014) Santamaría Graff, Cristina C.This comprehensive book is grounded in the authentic experiences of educators who have done, and continue to do, the messy everyday work of transformative school reform. The work of these contributors, in conjunction with research done under the aegis of the National Institute of Urban School Improvement (NIUSI), demonstrates how schools and classrooms can move from a deficit model to a culturally responsive model that works for all learners. To strengthen relationships between research and practice, chapters are coauthored by a practitioner/researcher team and include a case study of an authentic urban reform situation. This volume will help practitioners, reformers, and researchers make use of emerging knowledge and culturally responsive pedagogy to implement reforms that are more congruent with the strengths and needs of urban education contexts.Item ‘Build That Wall!’: manufacturing the enemy, yet again(Taylor & Francis, 2017) Santamaría Graff, Cristina C.The 2016 presidential campaign and the election of Donald Trump has amplified divisive anti-immigrant sentiment and has further positioned ‘Mexicans as enemy.’ Trump’s ‘Build That Wall!’ declarative has stoked nativist ire through manufactured narratives that rarely, if ever, consider the United States government’s role in the increase of undocumented immigrants residing in our country. In this essay, the author connects the current administration’s anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican proposals to historical legislation that, cloaked under the guise of ‘national security’ or a return to ‘American values,’ has aimed to maintain White hegemony. Additionally, the author examines anti-Mexican narratives that aim to criminalize Mexican immigrants’ behaviors to justify imperialistic and unjust policies that further serve dominant-White political elites and their constituents.Item Calcifying Sorting and Segregating: Brown at 60(Allen Press, 2014) Santamaría Graff, Cristina; Kozleski, ElizabethThe 2007 Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. Supreme Court 5:4 decision suggests that the Court is divided in its interpretation of Brown and its intent in addressing racial segregation. Although Brown intended equal educational opportunities through desegregation practices, local attempts to achieve racial balance created microclimates for continued minoritization. The Parents Involved decision seems to have impacted Seattle's implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), suggesting seepage between limits on Brown and increasing disproportionality. Additionally, local school and housing policies collude with cultural practice to maintain a social and political order that continues to disadvantage students who belong to minoritized groups segmented by race, ethnicity, immigrant status, and language, often cloaked as a response to disability.Item Extending Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies for Racially, Linguistically, and Ability Diverse Learners(Sage, 2018) King Thorius, Kathleen A.; Santamaría Graff, CristinaThis article discusses a research-based reading intervention called peer-assisted learning strategies in reading (PALS) and includes practical suggestions for educators concerned with literacy as a tool to reposition and empower students of color, English learners, and students with disabilities in schools and society. Following a rationale informed by historical oppression related to learners’ race, language, and ability, the article describes PALS methodology along with specific extensions for incorporating students’ lived experiences, considering disability as an important element of student diversity, and focusing on students’ progress and cooperation beyond their reading problems and competition.Item Co-Investigation and Co-Education in ‘Family as Faculty’ Approaches: A Repositioning of Power(Taylor & Francis, 2021) Santamaría Graff, CristinaFamily as Faculty (FAF) approaches originate from family-centered healthcare models and have been adapted in special education teacher education programs to positively influence and impact pre-service special education teachers’ dispositional understandings of working and collaborating with parents/families. However, the majority of research centered on these approaches fails to address issues of equity, specifically uneven power relationships between teachers and families. This paper expands upon FAF approaches by integrating conceptual framings linked directly to critical pedagogy, such as co-investigation and co-education, as integral components in addressing power relations between future special education teachers and multiply marginalized families of children with disabilities. Deliberate repositioning of parents/families as co-investigators/co-educators within research and teacher education programs targets uneven power dynamics to further assist future teachers in critical self-reflection of their own power and privilege in relation to the students and families with whom they will work.Item How Do We Arm Ourselves with Love? Examining “Armed Love” Through Educators’ Critical Conversations in an Online Platform(Information Age Publishing, 2021) Santamaría Graff, CristinaSegments of society are drawing upon their faith and spirituality to develop strategies to mend social relationships and fragmented communities. The Contemporary Perspectives on Spirituality in Education book series will feature volumes geared towards understanding and exploring the role of spirituality in addressing challenge, conflict, and marginalization within education in the U.S. and internationally.Item The Unbearable Whiteness of Being(Brill, 2019) Santamaría Graff, CristinaThis paper explores the following questions: a) What does it mean to self-identify as a biracial Mexicana? How does this self-identity impact me and others as an educator and leader in higher education? b) How are pain and privilege embodied and enacted in the choices I have made or circumstances I have confronted in higher educational settings? In what ways is whiteness ‘unbearable’? c) How, as teacher educators, can we integrate multiraciality into our pedagogy to prepare future teachers to work with minoritized monoracial and multiracial students?
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