Teaching Current Immigration Issues: A Comparison of Secondary Immigrant and U.S.-Born Students

• In Event: Promoting Equity Through Dialogic Education: New Voices

Abstract

Objectives/Purposes: Immigration has always been a contentious part of US history (Portes & Rumbaut, 2014), and understanding of how immigration experiences and policies – both past and present – impact people of different backgrounds is critical to understanding who we are as a nation. Students at the secondary level have different levels of connection to national and local immigration issues, depending on their backgrounds. As individuals who are nearing or have already reached the voting age, their voices will matter in how the nation moves forward on these issues, even if they may not have a status that will allow them to vote. This study aims to uncover the differences in perspectives on immigration between U.S. born and immigrant teens as well as ways a holistic unit stretches their thinking. The following questions guide the study:
1. How do immigrant and U.S. born secondary students perceive key issues surrounding the current immigration debate?
What are the primary differences between these two groups?
What are the complexities that shape each group’s perspectives?
2. How do discourse practices in a comprehensive and multi-perspective unit on immigration impact students’ views?

Theoretical Framework: This paper draws on Freire’s (1970) work on dialogical and liberatory approaches to education. The following are key conceptual principles that undergird Freirean pedagogy: 1) The learning process begins with the lived experiences of learners; 2) Learners and educators participate equally in the learning process; and 3) Learning is developed through continuous dialogue between learners and educators. It is through dialogue that learners and educators can develop critical consciousness, begin to interrogate societal power relations, and ultimately work to change them.

Methods & Data Sources: This is a collective case study considered multiple cases to illustrate the commonalities and differences of a “phenomenon, population, or general condition” (Stake, 1998, p. 89). It centers two high school classrooms and the differing approaches to teaching immigration the teachers undertook. Three types of data were collected and analyzed: 1) student artifacts which highlight the types of work completed within the units, 2) focus groups and interviews with students and teachers, and 3) student questionnaires to elicit views on immigration policies from the units. The data was analyzed within groups for themes and then across groups for comparisons.

Results: The findings suggest that is it is not the background of the students that determines their views, but how they were taught to view a concept beyond their individual experiences. These cases emphasize the power of teaching about current immigration issues through multiple perspectives, dialogue, and multimodal experiences to facilitate deeper understanding, especially when compared to teaching grounded in preparing students for standardized testing.

Scholarly Significance: Immigration continues to be a polarizing issue that has divided the nation and resulted in discourse, policies and practices that dehumanize individuals seeking safety in a new land. Having a holistic approach to teaching current immigration to secondary students is imperative in a nation that will continue to grapple with how to move forward as an inclusive or exclusive setting for their newest Americans.

Authors

• Tatyana Kleyn, City College of New York - CUNY

• Dina A. Lopez, City College of New York - CUNY