“I just don’t know what to do!” Teacher preparedness for multilingual students of immigrant and refugee background

• In Event: Policy Approaches to Inclusive Education by Governments and Schools

Proposal

Abstract:
Educating newcomer students of all backgrounds in the US poses ongoing challenges for teachers. A few education programs directly address the needs of newcomer refugee and immigrant background students. Moreover, immigrant students who identify as Black are often underserved. Through narrative inquiry, we learn from three teachers about their experiences working with African Immigrant and Refugee Background students. Our conversations with teachers revealed gaps in teacher preparation and teachers’ efforts in addressing the needs multilingual newcomer students. Teachers' positionality and agency were identified as important enablers. We discuss recommendations for practice as informed by teacher voices.

Relevance:
Many general education teachers do not feel prepared to teach multilingual students in their mainstream classrooms let alone students from AIR backgrounds (Oikonomidoy, et al., 2019; Goodwin, 2017). Lack of teacher preparedness to work with immigrant students has led to continued formation of biases towards these groups by teachers. Research has shown prevalence of presumptions of abilities, intelligence, often based on language proficiency levels, culture, and often times racial identities. Goodwin (2007) noted, “There is a silence surrounding the preparation of new teachers to work with immigrant children, (or Multilingual) students that they will no doubt encounter in the classrooms.” (Goodwin, p. 433). This study addresses the identified silence by disclosing (in part) the state of education for immigrant populations, and beliefs and attitudes towards immigrant background students that have consequential effects on students’ schooling and success.

Research Questions:
1. How well do teachers feel prepared to work with newcomer students of immigrant backgrounds (African, language, culture?)
2. What can teachers do to create welcoming spaces in their classrooms for immigrant and refugee background students?
3. What are some challenges that teachers face in attending to the needs of African newcomer students?

Theory/Context:
Teacher agency:
In their seminal work on teacher agency, Rogers and Wetzel (2013) propose that agency is “the capacity of people to act purposefully and reflectively on their world” (p. 63). We view agency as a motivational construct that is the product of the interaction between values, self-efficacy, self-concept, and attributions (Wigfield et al., 2006). Agency in turn is mediated and informed by the social and material conditions that teachers perceive as they contemplate action (Lasky, 2005). This approach balances individual beliefs and motivations with (real or perceived) barriers and supports in schools. In this study we discuss teachers’ agentive roles in their teaching practice.
Positioning theory:
To understand teacher preparedness to work with immigrant populations and their experiences, we use positioning theory (Davies & Harre, 1999). Positioning theory challenges views of identity as fixed by claiming that individuals occupy multiple identities (Harre´ & Slocum, 2003) and enhances our understanding of how individual’s position in society impacts their construction of their world. The argument here is that an individual's position impacts the way they see the world; meaning making is influenced by individuals' identities and lived experiences.

Inquiry: Narrative Inquiry
This study uses narrative inquiry to explore teachers’ reported preparedness to work with AIR students and their experiences in the Midwest. Clandinin and Rosiek (2007) describe narrative as an “approach to the study of human lives conceived as a way of honoring lived experience as a source of important knowledge and understanding” (p. 42). Narratives afford individuals the opportunity to make sense of their lived experiences through stories (Oloo, 2016). This study utilizes stories as vehicle for telling and retelling and making sense of lived experiences of the three participants. Connelly and Clandinin (2006) identified three commonplaces in the narrative inquiry space: temporality or the notion that human experience is in a continuous process of negotiation and change; sociality or the personal and social conditions, as well as relationship between researchers and participants that form the context for the participants’ stories; and place or the physical location(s) from which stories emerge. We complemented the narratives with a thematic analysis attempting to uncover the overarching ideas emerging from the narratives.

Setting and Participants
This study was conducted in a Midwestern city that has been receiving students of refugee and immigrant backgrounds from Africa and other regions over the years. The city is characterized by increased linguistic and cultural diversity in the city and schools. We recruited the study participants through a listerv of teachers in the district who work with African immigrant-origin families using purposeful and criteria-based sampling. This is part of an ongoing study.

Data Sources
We used semi-structured interview as conversations guided by open-ended research questions. We entered into the research relationship with the participants with the view of “tap(ping) into the tacit knowledge available to the insiders and to learn from them rather than to study them” (Berger, 2016, p. 476). We engaged with each participant in two sessions of one-on-one dialogic conversations that lasted between 60 to 90 minutes via zoom.

Findings
Analysis of three narrative accounts yielded the following themes: Gaps in teacher training; Gaps in in-service PD, Teacher agency and impacts of teacher positionality. Please note that the narratives that exemplify these findings are redacted due to length requirements.

Contribution:
Understanding the ways that teacher preparation and teacher actions contribute to the success of newcomers to the US can lead to better teacher preparation. There is a need to develop teacher education courses that address the needs of newcomer students; courses that are informed by the global events, so as to remain relevant to the current needs and skills that are required in schools. Support for the students and their families must be more nuanced, based on listening to their stories and expressed needs. Additionally, developers of multicultural programs need to pay attention to changing demographics in schools. In line with culturally sustaining pedagogies, Ladson-Billings (2000) recommends situated pedagogies “This work asks teacher educators to think more carefully about the relationship of teacher preparation to the communities in which they are located and the school populations that their graduates are likely to serve.” (p. 210)

Authors

• Lydiah Kananu Kiramba, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

• Guy Trainin, University of Nebraska Lincoln