Why can’t immigrant parents and their children’s teachers talk to each other?

CIDEC Seminar Jan. 30, 2013

What is the problem?• Canada received 52,868 immigrants children

of 0-14 years in 2011 (cic.gc.ca, 2013)

• Immigrant children fail, drop-out, are suspended, streamed into non-academic courses, and diagnosed with learning disabilities in disproportionate numbers

(Anisef et al, 2008; Glick & Hohmann-Marriott, 2007)

What do we already know?

• Parent-teacher relationships make a crucial difference to children’s academic and social integration in schools

(e.g. Englund et. al 2004; Lawson, 2003)

• Racial, cultural and socio-economic differences between teachers and parents are a factor in this relationship (e.g. Dei, 2006; Turney & Kao, 2009)

What are the demographics?

• Most teachers in North America are White, middle-class women who have not had sustained close contact with immigrant families, or sufficient preparation for working with them (Bernhard, 2010; Graue, 2005)

• Recent immigrants to Canada have come mostly from former European colonies (Statistics Canada, 2010)

What did we try to find out?

• Why and how do these differences shape this relationship?

• What do immigrant parents and their children’s teachers think about each other?

• What do they expect from each other?• How do they communicate?• What may help to improve their relationships?

What theoretical frameworks did we draw upon?

• Socio-cultural theories:• Historical, socio-political, cultural contexts are

important in learning & teaching(Lim & Renshaw, 2001; Suárez-Orozco, 2001)

• Post-colonial perspectives: • Legacies of colonialism continue to shape relations

between nation-states• Colonizers and the colonized have internalized

images of themselves and the Other(Hage, 2000; Porter, 2009)

Frameworks…• Communities of practice

• Norms about academic and social conduct in Canadian schools shaped by Anglo-American traditions. Immigrants are often unaware of these norms.(Crozier, 2000)

• Ethic of care• A relationship rather than a role• A substantial knowledge of the other (Noddings, 2002, 2005)

How did we conduct the inquiry?

• A qualitative approach to elicit perceptions, expectations, and communication patterns

• University & school board ethics approvals• Five schools (two secondary and three

elementary) in high immigration neighbourhoods• 29 teachers (including some administrators / ESL

teachers)• Six groups of parents (32) who spoke Arabic,

Creole, Mandarin, Russian, Somali, and Urdu

• Loosely structured interview guide• Video-taped focus group sessions in first

languages conducted by bi-lingual graduate students / community-based researchers

• Transcribed and translated by the above• Analytical codes guided by questions, web

diagrams, hierarchical categorization & memos

Teachers’ views about immigrant parents

• Acknowledgment of limited contact but tendency to generalize:• “It’s a guessing game because you patch it together”• “And just speaking with some parents, I know about

the community”

• General comments about immigrant parents• Work for long hours in low-income, low-status jobs• Live in cramped apartments• Very ambitious for their children• Always respectful in their interactions with teachers

Perceptions about specific groups

• Mandarin: Overly ambitious, hard working, children didn’t know how to share materials or teachers’ attention

• Urdu: Conservative, from war-torn rural environments, oppressive gender relations

• Somali: refugees, academically poorly prepared

• Creole: Split families, harsh discipline, high drop-out rate

Immigrant parents’ views about teachers

• Acknowledgment of individual acts of sensitivity & generosity but also readily generalized• Have low expectations of immigrant children• Prejudiced against them because of race,

ethnicity, religion, and presumed low educational and socio-economic status

Immigrant parents’ views

“…the person is respected because you know the rules, culture and habits, and you have more resources …if a person does not speak the language or does not understand the system, and is Black, the children and their parents will not be respected in the school”

“I just want to tell the teachers here, please don’t look down on our culture. Don’t look at someone wearing a veil and degrade her. Learn more. We are people who have an excellent history..”

Teachers’ perceptions about location of expertise

• Teachers: • “We are in a position to decide by, sort of,

controlling the flow of information”• “[They] ask us to do what in our perception is

their job around parenting”• “They want their children to be successful…they

just don’t know how to do it.”• “They need to protect themselves, or they want

to pretend or show you that they know, okay, they are not from nowhere, they have a background, they just need reassurance…”

Parents’ perceptions about location of expertise

“But teachers at school must have a role, not only to teacher subjects.. That students don’t raise their voice, don’t take things that don’t belong to them, teach them some morals and manners”

“[Because of ‘the magic teacher’] all of a sudden her English improved a lot and she became much more eloquent.

“We had such trust in the system, trust in teachers, trust in people who take the child and are responsible for his future…”

In summary …• Teachers see immigrant parents through lens

of deficits

• Immigrant parents show high levels of dependency on teachers

• Differences in beliefs and practices acknowledged but no expectation of reciprocal accommodation or negotiation

• Asymmetrical relations due to historical and current imbalances in power and privilege, as well as institutional cultures

Why should teachers care?

• Professional ethic of care – moral ideal of self as a teacher

“As teacher, I am, first, one-caring” (Noddings, 2005, p.176)

What can teachers do?• Acknowledge :

• Power differential due to historical and current socio-cultural, economic and political locations

• Few implicitly shared bodies of knowledge

• Question assumptions about individual, group, and universal characteristics of immigrant parents

• Learn the details about a small number of immigrant families at a time (see Ali, Corson & Frankel, 2008)

How can teachers do this?

• In formal settings:• Jointly identify, examine, and challenge

assumptions about each other, locating these in historical and current power imbalances

• Build consensus about content and forms of communication that are both desirable and feasible

• In informal settings:• Listen to each other’s life stories• Engage in joint activities the teacher is not

necessarily the expert (e.g. sports, arts and crafts, languages, cooking etc.)

Acknowledgments• Thanks to Antoinette Gagné for her leadership

of the project from which the data were collected, her graduate students for their contributions to the data-collection and analysis, and Canadian Heritage for funding the project.

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Contact InformationMehrunnisa Ahmad Ali

Ryerson University

maali@ryerson.ca

For a slightly different version of this work check out

Ali, M. (2012) The shadow of colonialism on relations between immigrant parents and their children’s teachers. Alberta

Journal of Education 53 (2) 198-215