Brief Description:

The Composing Stories Project (CSP) is a critical ethnography that employs participatory action research methods to understand a community of single parent, first-generation, low-income college students and their children who are disrupting the intergenerational cycle of poverty. Although participants in the study have experienced domestic violence, poverty, homelessness, and other challenges that make educational attainment difficult, these parents are in the middle of a significant shift in circumstances because they reside at Family Scholar House (FSH), a non-profit organization in Louisville, KY, whose motto is "changing lives, families, and communities through education."

The work of the CSP is designed to gather and analyze digital stories from parents who are investing in higher education to improve life circumstances for their families, thereby changing the "meta-story" that can be told about families like theirs. Unique to the CSP is a research design that considers parents as co-researchers and members of a research team of literacy faculty (Drs. Whitmore and Chisholm) and graduate students. The research intends to answer the questions: What are the sociocultural and historical factors that shape the community and place of Family Scholar House? What effect does taking on a researcher identity have on parents’ lives? How do varied forms of capital mediate the trajectory of parents as they pursue higher education?

Presentations:

Parents as researchers and storytellers: The Composing Stories Project. 17th Roundtable of The International Network on School, Family, and Community Partnerships, Philadelphia, PA
Presenters: Kathryn Whitmore, James Chisholm, Janey Andris

Gates and doors: Composing the stories of Family Scholar House. International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Champaign/Urbana, IL
Presenters: Kathryn Whitmore and James Chisholm

Parents as researchers and storytellers: The Composing Stories Project. National Council of Teachers of English Assembly for Research, Elmhurst, IL.
Presenters: Kathryn Whitmore, James Chisholm, Janey Andris, Mikakka Overstreet

Challenging expectations about literacy learning in urban communities: Early findings from the Composing Stories Project. Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities, Louisville, KY
Presenters: James Chisholm and Kathryn Whitmore