Sarai Estefania Coba-Rodriguez
Assistant Professor
Research Interests
- Research Area #1: School Readiness & Family Engagement
- Dr. Sarai Coba-Rodriguez's research focuses on school readiness and family involvement among low-income Latino and African-American families and preschool teachers, including their beliefs and practices that promote young children’s successful transition to kindergarten. Challenging notions of dysfunction and deficit, she uses a family resilience approach that emphasizes families’ strengths and cultural resources, as well as families’ agency in promoting their children’s education. Through the use of qualitative research methods (i.e., in-depth interviewing, photo elicitation interviewing, participant observation, and naturalistic observation), Dr. Coba-Rodriguez aims to present a more complex, dynamic, and resilient picture of low-income, racially-diverse families with young children.
- Research Area #2: Families' Experiences with their child's preschool expulsion
- Using a family resilience framework and ecological lens, this mixed-method study aims to understand families' experiences with their child’s exclusions and transitions following the passage of IL 100-0105. Specifically, we aim to determine 1) the extent to which families experience the
- planned transition process included in the legislation; (2) whether and how transition and exclusion practices vary by geographic region, program, family, and child characteristics; (3) how families make new care arrangements and (4) the extent to which those arrangements compare with regards to access, affordability, and quality to the original excluding programs.
At a Glance
- Title Assistant Professor
- College College of Education
- Department Educational Psychology
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