Negotiating Commitments and Challenges With Reciprocity in Research With Social Studies Teachers and Latina/o Newcomer Youth

• In Event: Continuing the Conversation: Enacting Participatory and Social Justice-Oriented Methodologies in Working With Youth and Teachers

Abstract

Objectives
This paper critically examines the methodologies used in a study on social studies teachers’ pedagogy for Latino/a newcomer youth by reflecting on the commitments to and challenges with reciprocity on research with teachers and youth. The larger research study examined how teachers conceptualized and implemented social studies education for newcomer Latino/a youth.
Theoretical Framework
In examining four secondary social studies teachers’ conceptualizations and implementation of social studies pedagogy for Latino/a newcomer youth, I constructed a theoretical framework of culturally and linguistically relevant citizenship education (CLRCE) for Latino/a newcomer youth. This framework includes overlapping and intersecting elements of culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1994), linguistically responsive teaching (Lucas & Villegas, 2010), and notions of active and engaged citizenship (CIRCLE, 2003; Flores & Benmayor, 1997; Ladson-Billings, 2004). A framework for CLRCE emerges from the teachers’ orientations (or attitudes and beliefs), knowledge, and skills (or ideas and actions) for implementing social studies education that focuses on students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds “as a vehicle for learning” (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p. 161) and promotes active and engaged citizenship for Latino/a newcomer youth.
Modes of Inquiry/Data Sources
I employed a multi-site collective case study design (Stake, 1995), observing, interviewing, and gathering artifacts in four U.S. and Global History classrooms in various newcomer schools.
Preliminary Results
The purpose of this research is grounded in the notions of culturally sensitive research (Tillman, 2002), which recognizes ethnicity and culture as fundamental to the research process. Tillman (2002) emphasized the need to acknowledge a culture’s “varied historical and contemporary experiences” (p.3) such as language, unique experiences and relationships with others, and positive contributions, and to place this knowledge at the center of the research inquiry. Moreover, as Tillman discussed, I sought to uncover and discover the multiple realities of the community’s experiences, which included an investigation and analysis of the root of various social, political, and economic injustices experienced by the researched community.
I desire to forefront teachers and students’ experiences in a way that the youth and their teachers would be proud of showcasing and want to share, but are also open to my analysis and are aware that it is constructed through who I am and my multiple and shifting identities. I want what they say, do, and how they interact to be analyzed in those particular moments. For readers to understand the context of these moments and how it is impossible to replicate them, but important to acknowledge, highlight, and take from them a way to grow and learn using one’s own experiences and understandings as a spring board toward creating their own small, large, exciting, or difficult moments.
Significance
This study has the potential to contribute to the growing literature on how teachers conceptualize and implement social studies pedagogy for newcomer youth, employ culturally and linguistically relevant citizenship education for newcomer students, and understand what these pedagogies look like in an urban newcomer high school context.

Author

• Ashley Taylor Jaffee, James Madison University