A Mother's Influence: How First-Generation Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Teacher Candidates Find Motivation and Support to Attend College

• In Event: Conduits of Change: Centering Midwest Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Teacher Candidates' Voices to Transform Teacher Education Programs

Abstract

Purpose and Objectives:
The purpose and objectives of this study are the same as Case Study #1. The context of this study is a teacher education program in a rural town in the central part of the state at the smallest campus within a state university system. One of the faculty members conducting the research identifies as a BIPOC woman teacher educator, and the other as a white woman teacher educator.

Perspective(s)/Theoretical Framework:
The theoretical frameworks are the same as that of Case #1 at the flagship campus within a state university system. The research team decided upon the frameworks that would be undergirding this study which are critical race theory (CRT) and Latina/Latino critical race theory (LatCrit).

Methods and Data Sources:
Using an exploratory case study approach (Yin, 2013), the researchers followed a similar process to the previous case study. They conducted in-depth individual and focus group interviews with ten BIPOC teacher candidates from the rural town area campus over a four-month period. To analyze the data, the research team met online to do an initial open coding of interview and focus group transcriptions, and then thematic coding across data sources (Saldaña, 2013).

Results:
From the ten participants at this campus, the researchers have determined several factors that have contributed to their journeys toward becoming a teacher. These factors include: a strong motivational influence from their mothers or mother figures, positive interactions with older siblings or friends helping them to navigate the college experience, and a lack of diversity of their teachers in K-12. Similar to the participants in the first case study, these participants experienced various types of microaggressions in different contexts within the college communities. However, many of these participants indicated that they could see small changes occurring across campus that are helping to give them a better sense of belonging to the community.

Scholarly Significance:
Student autonomy and motivation are significantly influenced by their parents (Mitchall & Jaeger, 2018), which is evident for the participants in this study whose mothers played a role in motivating them to attend college as a first-gen student. Previous research concludes that parents’ education is one of the most important factors in attending college and completing a degree (Choy, 2001; Nuñez & Cuccaro-Alamin, 1998). The preliminary findings from this study indicate that, while this is still a determining factor, current BIPOC teacher candidates are combining the autonomy and motivation gained from their parents with their interest in becoming a BIPOC teacher who looks like their students. The desire to be a positive motivating factor for their own students is the impetus for most of the ten participants in this study to prepare themselves for a career in education.

Authors

• Rebecca M. Nelson, University of Nebraska - Kearney
  Presenting Author

• Chandra C. Diaz, University of Nebraska - Kearney
  Presenting Author