Transforming Schooling Outcomes for Immigrant-origin Students in Rural California: A Critical Placed-Based Approach to Farmworker History

• In Event: Transnational Migration, Refugees, and Education: Case Studies from Across the Globe

Proposal

Although critical players within the powerful agricultural economy and history of California’s Central Valley, immigrant-origin Latinxs and Filipinos are nevertheless the communities most vulnerable to poverty, poor health, and low schooling outcomes in the region. This paper provides a portrait of the challenges and promise of schooling in rural California through documentation of a multi-year critical “place-based” project by which Latinx and Filipino high school and community college students learn of the region’s legendary Farmworker’s movement through oral history methodology. Our research reports findings from survey, semi-structured interview, and work samples completed by student participants in the project; describes the involvement of a local four-year state university’s Department of Teacher Education and local junior college’s History Department in developing the curriculum and preparing teachers; and puts forth implications for the development of effective culturally responsive practices for migrant communities in the United States.

Two theoretical approaches were used to guide our research: 1) Critical Pedagogy of Place (Gruenewald, 2003) expands upon previous notions of place-based education (as solely the utilization of the outdoors in student instruction) to include the study of local history and sociocultural context as a way to engage marginalized students of color in recognizing and critiquing the construction of inequality so as to take future ameliorative action. Such an approach draws upon and is responsive to student home culture and “funds of knowledge” in line with 2) Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (Paris, 2011) and other constructs in the “Resource Pedagogy” tradition (Gay, 2002; Ladson-Billings, 1995; González & Moll, 1995).

Our study employs a mixed-method approach and draws upon three main data sources:1) a survey (N=49) of student participants in the program to provide demographic data and perceptions of program impact on history/social studies engagement and perspectives, cultural identity, aspirations, and language use; 2) semi-structured interviews (N=12) with an intersectional cross-section of students according to gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and previous achievement in history/social studies. The interviews explored student meaning-making as to how program participation transformed, if at all, their engagement and perspectives of local history, cultural identity, future aspirations, and views of their linguistic repertoires; and 3) Student writing assignments from the program were used to assess growth in historical thinking and writing.

Through analysis of surveys, interview data, and student writing assignments, we find that student participants attain great gains within historical thinking and writing skills; enhanced awareness of their bi-literacy abilities; and a positive sense of bicultural identity and their family’s historical contributions often lacking amongst youth in rural California.

As educational policy in California and other U.S. states embraces a rebirth of bilingual education and ethnic studies curricula within this era of superdiversity, development of culturally and linguistically responsive approaches to rich content-area instruction is paramount. Our study provides one modest account of the potential of training teachers to implement critical place-based approaches—and the role that universities can play in this transformation--within a traditionally underserved region of the most populous U.S. state.

Author

• Adam Sawyer, California State - Bakersfield