(Mis)communication Between Parents and Teachers in the Education of Emergent Bilinguals

• In Event: 60.040 - Relationships Between Schools and Immigrant Families: Addressing Junctures and Disjunctures

Abstract

Objectives

Barriers to parental and family engagement in the schooling of emergent bilinguals include notions of parental involvement that disenfranchise minorities, lack of a shared language between school personnel and parents, and disjunctures between home and school cultures (Delgado-Gaitan, 1992; López & Stoelting, 2010; Nakagawa, 2000; Valdés, 1996). To overcome these barriers research supports the importance of two-way communication between parents and teachers (Arias & Morillo-Campbell, 2008; Coady, Cruz-Davis, & Flores, 2009). This paper provides a contextualized analysis of the differing perceptions parents and teachers have of each other, their children, and their respective roles and responsibilities in educating the child. These perceptions have important implications for parent-teacher communication and how schools accommodate diverse students.

Theoretical perspectives

Differences in the values, practices, and norms noted between home and school cultures are framed in this paper by an assets-based view of immigrant families and children. According to a sociocultural approach to learning, these “differences” are resources to be understood and leveraged (Lewis, Enciso, & Moje, 2007) not individual traits to be assimilated into the dominant culture. This view allows for examining differences in their cultural and historical contexts and the imbalanced power relations by which schools validate or marginalize family practices (Hawkins & Graue, 2008; Souto-Manning & Swick, 2006).

Methods

The impetus of this multi-site ethnographic research undertaken in a mid-sized midwestern city is to understand the relationship between school-based and home-based influences on language and literacy engagement of Spanish-English emergent bilinguals schooled in two 4th grade classrooms (one bilingual, one English-medium). In this paper, two representative but contrasting cases of students are selected and analyzed jointly (Stake, 1994) to better understand how relationships and communication between parents and teachers impact children’s schooling.

Data sources

Data include semi-structured interviews with children, parents, and teachers as well as classroom observations and home visits. Analysis was conducted using iterative coding to identify salient themes (Saldaña, 2009) and discourse analysis to further ascertain and reflect on participant’s intended meanings (Gee, 2011). Triangulated analysis of multiple data sources (Denzin, 1978) allowed for detection of overlap and divergence in parents’ and teachers’ perceptions.

Findings

In the case of one focal student from the English-medium class, the teachers were unaware of the language barriers that limited his parents’ understanding and participation in common school practices, homework in particular. In the case of one focal student from the bilingual class, even though the parents and teachers share the same language, their communication did not result in improved parent-teacher relations or an agreed-upon course of action for supporting the child. This study highlights the multiple levels on which language and assumed cultural knowledge influence communication and consequently relationships between parents, teachers, and children.

Scholarly significance

This paper adds nuance to the much-needed work documenting how parents and children perceive of and respond to the demands placed on them by school. Implications for promoting communication and positive relations between families of diverse learners and schools are discussed.

Author

• Alissa Anne Blair, University of Wisconsin - Madison