Teachers' Perspectives Regarding English Learner Bilingual Latinx Students' Sense of Belonging in Rural Wisconsin

• In Event: Critical Perspectives and Conceptualizations of Rurality and Demographic Change: Serving Minoritized Populations in Rural School-Communities

Abstract

The Latinx population has become the fastest-growing racial/ethnic group in Wisconsin, accounting for 46% of the total population growth in the state (Sugarman & Geary, 2018). This has resulted in many Latinx students classified as English Learners (ELs) attending rural schools (Sugarman & Geary, 2018). Yet, rural school teachers are rarely trained in culturally/linguistically sustaining pedagogies (Parsley & Barton, 2015) and tend not to speak their students’ native languages (Coady, 2020). Moreover, characterizations of rural areas as white and non-diverse (Love & Loh, 2020) have erased how Latinx communities transform and assert their identities in rural contexts (Morita-Mullaney et al., 2019).

Building upon literature on sense of belonging (de Jong et al., 2020; Walton & Cohen, 2007) and rural education (Coady, 2020), we explored teachers’ perceptions regarding their Latinx EL students’ sense of belonging in rural Wisconsin. Following de Jong and colleagues’ work (2020), we focused on four dimensions of belonging (1) agency: the degree to which students feel empowered to participate; (2) inclusion: how the physical and social environments are inclusive or exclusive spaces for minoritized individuals; (3) place: students' attachment to place and their sense of familiarity with the environment; and (4) relationships: the quality of interactions between teachers and students as well as peer interactions.

We employed a mix-methods approach gathering data through a cross-sectional web survey and two semi-structured interviews with three teachers and eight Latinx EL students. Interviews were transcribed, and a set of open codes (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) was developed based on all instances in which teachers or students mentioned aspects related to the dimensions of sense of belonging. Then, we developed conceptual categories aligned with open codes and identified emerging themes in an iterative process.

Our findings showed that agency was enacted by Latinx EL students and noticed by teachers in actions that reflected pride in being bilingual, overcoming barriers in school, and being able to pursue various career paths. Regarding inclusion, opportunities for students to use Spanish emerged as an important theme in addition to experiences of prejudice and discrimination suffered by Latinx families. Place attachment was described in discussions of events celebrating their rural community's cultural diversity. Finally, teacher-student relationships positively impacted Latinx students’ sense of belonging to school and the community. Although Latinx EL students reported feeling accepted at school and in the larger community, we found that students did not know how to define their Latinidad growing up in a rural context.

Our work has implications for factors that need to be addressed in rural schools with changing demographics. Our study highlights the need to create spaces in which (1) ELs can use all of their linguistic repertoires; (2) rural teachers can expand their understanding of systemic barriers through additional engagement with parents and the Latinx community; and (3) community members discuss system-level inequities impacting Latinx communities. We encourage sense of belonging researchers to examine the complexities of this concept by not only focusing on belonging to a community but also on how minoritized communities impact how sense of belonging is defined.

Authors

• Diego Xavier Roman, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Lisa M. Barker, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Patrick Robinson, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Kaycee Rogers, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Cynthia T Baeza, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Claudia Triana, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author