“You Can’t Vote, Right?” Questions From an Immigrant-Origin English Learner U.S. Civics Class During the Obama Campaign

• In Event: Negotiating Conflict and Belonging: Ethnographic Perspectives on Citizenship Education From the United States and Europe

Abstract

Issues of citizenship, nation-state, and U.S. government are given an official space within the social studies curriculum in the twelfth grade (CDE, 2011), as nearly-adult students are presumed to be making the shift toward voting. How do teachers take up issues of voting in civics classrooms when their students may not necessarily have the same citizenship rights as they do? Based in sociological frameworks of immigrant integration (Portes & Rumbaut, 2006) and immigrant political incorporation (Bloemraad, 2006; Marrow, 2009), as well as citizenship education (Banks, 2008, 2004; Bixby & Pace, 2008; Kahn & Middaugh, 2010), the purpose of this paper is to raise questions about the intersections of voting, citizenship education, and immigrant youth in US secondary schools by examining a focal episode within a twelfth-grade civics classroom.
This paper draws from the Teacher Adaptation Study (Author, 2009) which followed the same teachers across distinct institutional tracks—one intended for general education students, the other intended for immigrant-origin students who were designated “English learners” (ELs). The sample was comprised of 20 social studies, mathematics, and science teachers from seven California schools that had EL populations ranging from 12-30% and who met the following criteria: a) teachers who taught both “mainstream” and “EL” versions of the same content, b) were credentialed, and, c) had at least one year of experience in public schools. (IRB consent was obtained for all participants.) Of 7 social studies teachers who were interviewed and observed, “Ms. Mueller” was the sole teacher teaching US Government and Economics during the 2008 Obama campaign. Observations entailed written fieldnotes (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995) as well as digital audio records in two 55-minute classes (one “mainstream,” one “EL” designated) on the day following Obama’s presidential nomination (6/3/2008). Within the EL course, a focal episode emerged where issues of citizenship and voting rights came sharply into relief.
The focal episode revealed that the teacher assumed that students in her EL civics class were non-citizens who were ineligible to vote, as compared to students in her “college bound” civics course, whom she assumed were eligible to vote. While both sets of students were predominantly Asian, the key difference was their language proficiency. This suggests that limited language proficiency served as a proxy for citizenship status. Furthermore, this also had instructional implications. The teacher struggled pedagogically with how to address issues of voting with students whom she presumed were non-citizens. The episode raised a number of questions, including: How can educators approach civic education for youth while acknowledging the discrepancy of rights that exist for undocumented people in inclusive ways?
With a new set of elections on the horizon in 2012, social studies teachers may increasingly be discussing voting. And yet, how they do so may manifest in either more inclusive or exclusive ways. Ultimately this paper raises questions about the nature of how to make diverse classrooms more democratic, for all.

Author

• Dafney Blanca Dabach, University of Washington - Seattle