Students Understand and Enact Their "Learner Profile" at Spanish and French Elementary Immersion Schools

• In Event: Interrogating the Climate of Diverse, Multilingual Schools: Views From Students, Parents, Teachers, and Administrators

Abstract

Objectives
Many studies have assessed the relationship of school climate to student achievement, behavior, and graduation (Social and Character Development Research Consortium, 2010). Other work has qualitatively explored educators’ implementation of school climate or behavior policies (e.g., Other & Author, 2013). But few studies ask young students what they think, especially diverse students in bilingual programs. As part of a larger study documenting the development of new Spanish and French Immersion Elementary Schools (SIES and FIES, pseudonyms), this project asked: How do third- and fourth-grade students assess their school’s climate policies? Specifically, how did SIES and FIES students understand—and profess to enact—the “Learner Profile” characteristics posted throughout their schools?

Theoretical Frameworks
Taking a sociocultural, bottom-up (Hornberger, 1996), interpretive approach (Spillane, 2000; Yanow, 2000), this study highlights the necessity of examining the various, individual meanings attributed to policy. This is critical, because during policies’ implementation, texts and discourse(s) are locally contested, and in turn, policies can change; they are created by local actors (Ball, 2006). In education, key actors include teachers, parents, local tax-payers, and students (Author, 2010).

Methods and Data
This study draws from a longitudinal, mixed-method project about the development of language immersion schools in the Midwest. Such schools teach at least 50% of students’ content material in a second language (Tedick & Wesely, 2015). At FEIS and SEIS, mainly monolingual English-speaking youth (~50% African-American, 30% White, 15% Hispanic) studied in French or Spanish, respectively. As “International Baccalaureate” (IB) schools, they encouraged students to exhibit 10 “Learner Profile” characteristics, which were posted (as a ‘policy’) in French and Spanish throughout the schools. A survey of third- and fourth-graders (n=128) evaluated school climate at FIES and SIES. It included open-ended questions about the Learner Profile characteristics, e.g., “How did you act at school yesterday?” These qualitative answers were analyzed using a constructivist approach to grounded theory (Charmaz, 2010).

Results and Significance
Nearly all students marked that they were one of these Profile characteristics: Thinkers (18%), Good Communicators (23%), Open-minded (18%), Caring (19%), or Risk-takers (12%). Only 1-4% marked the other categories: Inquirer, Principled, Balanced, or Reflective. Few described specific stories about their actions. Instead, students’ explained answers in general terms, mostly in English: “I care about others. I think before my actions. I take risks.”

IB schools are designed upon the idea of “inquiry”—students constructing questions to guide learning—yet only 1% of students marked that they acted as inquirers. Principled, balanced, and reflective are all key characteristics that the schools wanted to instill, to develop intercultural competence in their diverse students—a key goal of immersion schools (Wesley, 2012)—yet few students marked these attributes. Analyses will consider whether young students had difficulty writing about these more abstract conditions. Developmentally, students may have been unready, and linguistically, students may have felt unable. It is critical that students understand what they’re being asked to do; future school climate research focused on the institutional environment should take into account students’ sense-making of school rules/norms.

Authors

• Rhodesia McMillian, University of Missouri - Columbia

• Lisa M. Dorner, University of Missouri - Columbia