Elizabeth McGhee Hassrick
Research Associate (Assistant Professor)
MA Education
MA Sociology
PhD Sociology
Phone: (773)997-0762
Email: mchass
Homepage: http://home.uchicago.edu/~mchass/
CV: Curriculum Vita
How do the social networks of parents shape the opportunities of
children in organizational settings? I investigate how parents learn
about their child’s everyday educational experiences through their
interactions with other parents. My findings suggest that micro social
systems arise in school settings where parents share information about
their child’s everyday educational experiences with one another.
Parent leaders emerge from these micro social systems and shape the
alignment between school and home contexts. Also, parents situated in
these networks collectively watch the everyday activities of teachers,
shaping informal levels of accountability inside of schools. Social
surveillance resources, however, were not equally distributed among
parents across social class. I triangulate between several different
methods to investigate these micro interactions over time, including
qualitative analysis, social network analysis and survival analysis.
My current research compares parents’ network dynamics in schools with
those found in health care organizations, which are also important
sites of social disparity for children. In particular, my colleagues
and I are examining how parents situated in different organizational
settings learn about their child’s autism treatments through their
social networks. In the future, I hope to develop social network
interventions that help parents, clinicians and teachers gain access
to critical everyday information to better manage children’s
educational and health trajectories.
Master's Title
Organizational Inequalities: The Social Production of Parent Surveillance Pressures in Urban SchoolsResearch Interests
Social Organization/Formal/Complex, Education, Race/Ethnic/Minority Relations, Culture, Social ClassSelected Publications
Elizabeth McGhee Hassrick, Stephen Raudenbush and Lisa Rosen. The Ambitious Elementary School: Its Conception, Design and Contribution to Educational Equity.(Book Manuscript under contract with the University of Chicago Press)
McGhee Hassrick, Elizabeth and Barbara Schneider. 2009. "Parent Surveillance: A Question of Social Class" American Journal of Education.115, 2:195-225.
McGhee Hassrick, Elizabeth. 2011. "Controlled Disruptions: How Ethnic Organizations Shape Symbolic Identities" Cultural Sociology.
McGhee Hassrick, Elizabeth. 'Professional Schools" In The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. G. Ritzer Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
