Day, J (2025-2026). The Experiences of School Bilingual Liaisons Collaborating with Families of Students with Disabilities. Spencer Foundation ($50,000) Role: Principal Investigator

The mostly monolingual teacher workforce reports encountering cultural and linguistic barriers when collaborating with multilingual families of students with disabilities (SWDs). The outcome is that multilingual families report high levels of dissatisfaction which lead to a decrease in their school participation (Fish, 2008) and negatively impacts student outcomes (Smith et al., 2019). However, some schools employ bilingual family specialists (BFS), PK-12 school personnel who serve as bilingual/bicultural parent liaisons within the school community. They are bilingual themselves and work closely with other school staff including teachers, administrators, students and parents, and professionals within the community. Yet, little is known regarding BFS experiences collaborating with multilingual families of SWDs within schools. Therefore, we propose to conduct a qualitative study that (a) leverages critical theories, and (b) employs an emerging research-based equity protocol, The Diversity Tree. Our study will examine the experiences of BFS collaborating with multilingual families of SWDs and their family-school partnership strategies within special education.  Projected findings will be used to (1) share the importance of the BFS role needed in other school districts, and (2) help prepare preservice teachers to effectively collaborate with multilingual families in special education.