We Serve Them All: Social Capital and Resilience of Teachers in a Dual-Language Program

• In Event: 58.036 - Social Capital and Resilience: Transforming Practice to Achieve the Promise of Equal Educational Opportunity

Abstract

Objectives
This research explores the social capital teachers deploy in a two-way dual-language immersion program in building resilience against the adversity in their daily practice. Newly implemented in 2014 with preschool through first grade, the program shares building and principal with the regular elementary school, but also has its own director. Friction has developed both inside the school and out in the community with opponents of the program. The authors examine how teachers address these challenges, asking what social capital do teachers draw on in building resilience to retain their identity and preserve the distinctiveness of the program?

Theoretical Framework
Dual-language immersion has been considered an effective approach to culturally responsive teaching for more than ten years (Thomas & Collier, 2003). Nevertheless, there are few dual-language schools in the state, all in the major cities, despite the large Spanish-speaking population in the countryside. This program is thus unique, as are the challenges.

To understand the challenges and coping strategies of the teachers, the researchers adopt the framework of social capital and resilience drawn from qualitative political science (Aldrich 2012) and social-ecological systems (Ledogar & Fleming, 2008). Aldrich suggests a direct relationship between social capital and community resilience in the face of disaster. Similarly, Ledogar and Fleming (2008) suggest social capital as a supporting asset of resilience, differentiating individual from community social capital. With this framework, the researchers explore the social capital teachers draw upon to maintain the integrity and distinctness of the program (the “resilience of what”) and to retain the cultural identity of the teachers and students (the “resilience of whom”).

Methods
This case study (Stake, 1995) is situated in an elementary dual language program in a rural school district in Wisconsin with 47% Latino students, covering preschool through first grade. Six out of the eight teachers were cases in this study.

Data
Interviews with the teachers, triangulated with district policy documents, curriculum materials, and interviews with school administrators were used for discourse analysis (Gee, 2010) using grounded theory methods of open coding and memoing (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).

Results
The teachers’ challenges include lack of curriculum materials, limited prior teaching experience, and hostility from opponents of the program. They use their own cultural backgrounds and professional knowledge as individual social capital to establish themselves as experts in the program and deal with opposition to the program. Advocacy by community members, and strong support from the superintendent and director, make the program itself an element in the teachers’ cultural identity, maintaining the distinctiveness of a program initiated to serve the diverse community. This commitment, as the program director likes to say, “Black, white, or brown—we serve them all” has been central to the teachers’ resilience.

Significance
This research provides both a theoretical lens and data-grounded results to understand the challenges teachers face in innovative program implementation. The results provide teachers and school administrators strategies to help participants in program implementation build strength to retain both their identity and the integrity of the program in the face of adversity.

Authors

• Katrina Liu, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Jorge Luis Inzunza, Delavan Darien School District