Author(s): Newcomer, Sarah N.
Published: April 2018 in Journal of Latinos & Education
URL to article
Research Focus Area: Asset-based best practices for serving Black and Latinx teens
Abstract:
Culturally responsive and authentically caring pedagogy is vitally important to academic success for Latinx students. This type of teaching is based on reciprocal relationships between students and teachers, and incorporates students’ funds of knowledge. This qualitative case study brings the voices of Latinx students to the forefront by examining how their teachers help create “funds of caring” for the students by cultivating authentically caring relationships, and by highlighting what these relationships mean for the students. Findings show that teachers can make school a meaningful and positive experience for Latinx youth by interacting with students in authentically caring ways.
Research Question(s):
How do the Latinx junior high (seventh and eighth grade) students in the study describe their interactions and relationships with their teachers? How are culturally responsive and authentically caring relationships built and sustained between these Latinx students and their teachers?
Methods:
Ethnography
Setting:
- This study was set in a bilingual school in Arizona.
- Desert Breeze Elementary has over 750 students in grades k-8
- Sixty-five percent of the student population is emergent bilingual, most speaking Spanish as their first language
- 90% of the students are Latinx. Of this 90%, many students have emigrated from Mexico or represent the first generation in their family born in the US.
- Eighty-seven percent are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.
- four dual-language classes are offered, serving approximately 120 students in grades 5-8
Key Findings:
The students talked about various ways that the teachers made them feel cared for:
- Expressing care, concern, and love for students: Teachers talked with the students and encouraged the students to share feelings, both about academic subjects and their personal lives.
- A key idea expressed by many of the students was that their relationships with their teachers (and classmates) felt “like a family.”
- Teachers said to students directly that they love them.
- Teachers encouraged their students to teach one another about what they were learning.
- Teachers gave students positive messages with things like daily affirmations.
- Supporting students with academics: Teachers spent substantial time helping students with homework and preparing for high school and college.
- By talking to them about college and advising them on how to prepare and what classes to take, teachers provide important information that many students do not have access to at home, since many may be the first in their family to go on to college.
- The students talked about how, if they were not doing well in their classwork, their teachers would sit and talk with them.
- Being understanding of student experiences: Teachers demonstrated their ability to understand the students, particularly in relation to the students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
- Students appreciated how their teachers understood their experiences as Latinx youth, as immigrants, and as bilingual students who had learned English as a second language in school.
- The teachers were actively engaged in building “funds of caring” for their students, which contributed to emotional, social, and academic resources for the students.
Implications:
- Teachers should work toward building “funds of caring” for their students.
- Teachers should strive to foster authentically caring relationship with students.
- Teachers should work to address issues of inequity among students.
- Teachers are encouraged to provide emotional resources for their students, by doing things such as inviting students to share their feelings and personal problems.
- Teachers can provide social resources to students by modeling behaviors like empathy and listening skills.
- Teachers should strive to embue students with academic resources, which may be thought of as the skills and proclivities needed for being successful in school. These include study habits; strengthened academic skills, such as in reading, writing, and math; greater understanding of how to navigate high school and college; and heightened academic confidence.
Limitations:
- This study follows only two teachers in, therefore one must be cautious about applying broad strokes generalizations.