Educators' Perspectives Regarding the Role of Schools in Meeting the Needs of Elementary Homeless Students

Background: Schools are commissioned to ensure that all children receive an equitable and quality education – special and general education alike. Elementary homeless students outside the special education umbrella are often not given the kind of support and attention needed to ensure a quality and equitable education. Schools often do not exhibit practices that are responsive to the experiences and needs of this group of students in elementary school. Purpose: This study investigated educators’ perspectives regarding the role schools play in meeting the needs of their elementary homeless students. It examined practices implemented by the school compared to practices necessary to ensuring quality education for elementary homeless students. Question: What are educators’ perspectives regarding the role of schools in meeting the needs of elementary homeless students? Methods: This study adopted the qualitative case study approach as it investigated a socio-educational phenomenon involving the experiences and perspectives of educators. To ensure credibility, data for this study were collected through two 45-minute individual semi-structured interviews with five participants and the researcher’s interim journal entries. Participants were educators of demographic variety recruited through convenience and purposeful sampling from a Title I elementary public school in a lower-class socioeconomic community with a diverse population. The first interview was used for coding of themes, and the second was used to enhance and extend responses, complete member checks, and ask additional questions for follow-up information. Interview transcripts were reviewed by each participating educator for accuracy. The interim notes were from the researcher’s reflective journal and were used for tracking and coding salient themes that have come up throughout the research. Data were analyzed through hand-coding by the researcher for variables, categories, and emerging themes. Findings: Following the analysis of data, the study found 1) ...