My research investigates processes of substantive school integration, meaning the processes through which families of different backgrounds come to feel welcomed, heard, and enfranchised in schools. Given the history of race, ethnic, national, and religious based inequalities in schools, how do everyday patterns of behavior and interaction as well as school policies shape how students and parents feel in integrated schools? In my dissertation I studied three schools that were intentional about school integration, meaning it was part of the school mission to serve students of different backgrounds and this mission was partly the reason why families attended the school. In my next research project I plan to compare schools that are intentionally integrated to schools that are circumstantially integrated to see whether and how intensions towards integration shape how students and families experience the school.  

Weaved through my other projects is the theme of parent-school relationships. Specifically, I am interested in the role that parents play in shaping school policy and in the factors that create beneficial parent-school relationships for parents of different backgrounds. In my dissertation, I studied how parental leadership shape integration processes in the schools. I now explore parent-school relationships in two new projects. In the first, together with Professor Dorit Tubin, we study parent-teacher dyads in the Israeli context of home-room teachers to understand the structural, organizational, and interactional components of beneficial parent-teacher relationships. With Yariv Feniger, we conduct research on middle school ‘excellence’ programs to understand the ways in which Israeli parents engage in opportunity hoarding in different contexts. In both studies I aim to elaborate existing sociological models that focus on parents’ demographic positions to include other dimensions such as emotions and interaction style into the sociological analysis of inequality.