Danielle Catan’s childhood experience as an immigrant, her professional working experience in global corporate organisations, and her master’s degree in educational psychology have contributed to her motivation to make a difference in immigrant children’s education.
Born in the Netherlands, raised in Mexico, and having lived, worked, and volunteered worldwide (e.g., Brazil, USA, DR Congo, Lebanon, and La Reunion) she is a world citizen passionate about the cross-border movements of people and their challenges. The global corporate organisations she worked for exposed her to diversity and the complexity of cultures. Her solid academic background in educational psychology supports her belief that aligning educational systems and globalisation can result in positive social change.
In her research Integrating Diverse Parental Involvement Perspectives: A Strategy to Strengthen the Teacher-Immigrant Parent Partnership in Educating Elementary School-Aged Children, she addresses a specific problem in education. She explains that because our world is becoming more diverse every day, schools need to move away from traditional parental involvement definitions and practices and adjust them in line with population changes. Catan argues the importance of broadening teachers’ parental involvement concept and integrating diverse perspectives that better fits a teacher-immigrant parent partnership.
“Parental involvement (PI) can vary across cultures, and when immigrant parents move to a new country, their PI perspectives may differ from those of local teachers. My research aims to address the problem of teachers’ lack of awareness regarding different PI perspectives and its impact on the partnership between teachers and immigrant parents in educating elementary school-aged children. The paper specifically focuses on immigrants who fall under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ migrant definition, and the studies cited in the paper include immigrant participants with diverse demographic characteristics.
The current narrow definition of PI focused on school-related activities and lacking cultural sensitivity, creates challenges for immigrant parents who have different backgrounds and face various obstacles. This narrow definition is also identified as a primary reason for teachers’ lack of awareness of different PI perspectives. The proposed solution to the challenges described in the paper is to conduct research to inform policy updates and encourage a more inclusive definition of PI. My research also highlights the importance of teachers being aware of immigrant parents’ perspectives to avoid marginalisation and promote collaboration. Embracing cultural diversity in education can positively impact children’s learning and contribute to social change,” says Catan.
Danielle Catan is based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and works in the education field of sustainable entrepreneurship for children and young people. As Danielle Catan has generously chosen to publish her research paper on the CI platform, we encourage all interested in the subject matter to share their opinions on the research and topic either by writing to us at ci@sietareu.org and/or reaching out to Danielle Catan on her LinkedIn page.
Also, as we will continue to share with you the research papers and documents that authors submit to us to enable others to learn about interesting findings and research happening in the fields of intercultural communication and development, we are inviting you to participate in the discussions and/or send us your articles and research papers.
Images courtesy of Danielle Catan