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K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

Reaching Latinos through social studies

Teachers can help immigrant students feel more comfortable in the classroom by basing social studies lessons on students' own knowledge and backgrounds.

By Paul Fitchett

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Bridging Spanish language barriers in Southern schools
These articles provide background on Latino immigrants in North Carolina, administrative challenges in binational education, and strategies through which teachers can build on what Latino students bring to their classrooms to create a learning environment that meets the needs of all students.
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As an experienced educator, you have probably noticed that the faces looking up at you in the classroom are decidedly different from the faces ten years ago. Throughout the Southern United States, the demographics of public schools are changing. One of the largest of these new minority groups comes from south of the Rio Grande. They arrive from Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, Brazil, Haiti, and several other Central and South American nations. Collectively, these peoples are grouped into the category of Latino/Latina. Adapting to the culture and educational atmosphere of the United States is extremely difficult for Latino school children. Consequently, the statistic for Latino dropouts is considerably higher compared to other ethnic groups.
The field of social studies provides an opportunity for reaching Latino youth. One of the main tenets of social studies is to present students with the knowledge and skills to become productive and informed citizens. Through ethnically adaptive instructional techniques, teachers can address cultural differences while simultaneously developing civic-minded youth.

A shifting demographic

The Southeastern United States has experienced the most significant growth in Latino population; a 308% increase from 1990 to 2000. The most notable increases occurred in North Carolina where the percentage change was 394 percent (76,726 to 378,963) (Pew Hispanic Report, 2005). The Pew Center estimates that Latino school age children (5–17 years) increased 322 percent throughout the region. By the 2007-2008, they will compromise approximately 10 percent of the children in schools.

What strategies should educators use to assimilate Latino children in the classroom? In the early twentieth century, school leaders advocated rapid assimilative strategies to eliminate ethnic ties to the homeland and to develop a homogenized American student. Within social studies, this consisted of a predominately pro-Western curriculum that portrayed non-white culture as sub-human and barbaric (Willinsky, 1998).

Today, the United States is part of the vast globalization movement that is changing economic and cultural standards. Isolationist, myopic historical curriculum will not reach students of color. In modern America, rapid assimilative education can have negative effects on Latino youth (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001). Students adopt negative traits of the majority culture at the expense of their ethnic heritage, or they simply reject assimilation and refuse to accept the norms of society. In either case, these students tend to drop out of school, thereby decreasing their employment opportunities and increasing their susceptibility to deviant behavior.

Instead of rapid assimilation, successful educators adopt selective assimilation techniques; thus honoring the home culture while simultaneously introducing principles of American democracy and citizenship to immigrant students (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001). By preserving the student’s ethnic identity, teachers foster interest and experience less resistance from the learner. Within the discipline of social studies, culturally inclusive educators design instruction that bears less resemblance to tokenized multiculturalism and more likeness to transformative multiculturalism.

Shifting the multicultural perspective

In most social studies courses, Eurocentric ideology still dominates the cultural perspective of the curriculum. Typically, non-Western people, places, and events are introduced in the context of their encounter with Europeans. To make up for these discrepancies, textbooks and curriculum provide students with multi-ethnic heroes who have contributed to the greater society. This additive approach to multiculturalism is commonly referred to as the “heroes and contributions” curriculum (Cornbleth and Waugh, 1995). It calls upon culturally neutral examples that complement the majority culture; often including a cultural “icon” or hero that does not pose a threat to Western values. Simon Bolivar, Gabrielle Garcia Marquez, and Rigoberta Menchứ are often cited contributors to Latin American history. However, these heroes are portrayed as snapshots within the larger context of a Western dominated curriculum. For the Latino students, this disconnection from their ethnic heritage has negative repercussions. Indirectly, students are compelled to devalue their own cultural identity for the sake of the majority.

To include Latino students in the social studies discussion, educators have to adopt new strategies for incorporating diverse peoples. A more radical alternative is a transformative curriculum (Cornbleth and Waugh, 1995). Unlike the additive approach, transformative curriculum challenges the student to think critically about the relationships between different peoples. Through mutual appreciation and dialogue, learners build understandings about the inter-relatedness of their lives and histories. The transformation encourages learners to openly criticize policies, practices, and institutions that stifle self-identity. Harkening to the praxis of Paulo Freire (1970), transformative curriculum incites active change from the learners. Students become engaged participants in their own educational journey. Moreover, critical discussions of race and class hegemony are encouraged. Pedagogically, action research, service learning projects, and personal reflection are tools for students to delve deeper into the curriculum. The broader theme in transformative education is to teach students the importance of advocacy. As component of a democratic society, advocacy and social justice are foundations of the American culture. If social studies is the study of society, then a public education in the United States has an obligation to teach young learners this important skill.

From theory to practice

A transformative curriculum encourages teachers to utilize practices that empower student identity in order to facilitate change. To instigate this change, educators should employ critical pedagogical practices that inspire higher-level thinking and dialogue on issues of race and ethnicity. Unfortunately, in the traditional social studies setting, cultural differences are de-emphasized. The discipline presents a subject matter that celebrates mankind’s universal camaraderie. This false dogma fails to explore the peculiarities of race in order to maintain complacence in the classroom. To transform, the class must critically address these differences and their perceptions.

Culturally relevant teaching is one approach of critical pedagogy. It favors instruction appropriate to ethnic background of the learners (Ladson-Billings, 1995). Moreover, it espouses three tenets:

  • Students experience success.
  • Develop cultural awareness.
  • Learn to think critically about surroundings.

Culturally relevant instruction promotes students as change agents. Learners are encouraged to question the hegemonic race and class system in the United States. With agency, the teacher persuades the students to speak out, make a difference, and institute real change. Unlike the typical public high school that isolates itself from the greater community, relevant teaching depends on parents and local leaders to take part in the project. For Latino students, the possibilities with such instruction are limitless. Moreover, it encourages these immigrants to view their surroundings rationally, not as passive by-standers. Issues of exploitation, discrimination, and acculturation toward Latinos and other minorities present an opportunity for critical analysis in the contemporary social studies.

Luis Moll suggests that educators reach beyond the institutional boundaries of the school for curriculum inclusion. The ethnic communities, parents, and domestic experiences of the child contribute to the learner’s self-concept. Moll refers to these “funds of knowledge” as an important resource for developing relevant pedagogy in the classroom (Moll et al., 1992; Moll & Arnot-Hopffer, 2005). To embrace the world of the private, public education must extend into the ethnic enclaves that sustain the school. Teachers should visit the homes of students, interview the parents, and develop an appreciation for the uniqueness of their students. Using a qualitative, ethnographic research methodology, they can analyze social norms and cognitive schemas associated within different cultures. Moreover, teachers can identify conceptual differences across ethnicities (Epstein, 2001).

By incorporating “fieldwork” into their practice, educators develop social studies instruction that respects students of color and reinforces self-identity. The majority of teachers remain white, middle class. It is not reasonable to assume that these educators have the cultural-savvy to empathize with a foreign-born Latino population. To ensure success and accessibility for these students, teacher should be equipped with the skills to meet their varying needs. By leaving the institutional boundaries of school and seeking community relevance, educator have the opportunity to shape instruction within the social context of their students’ lives.

A model for change

Envision a rural high school in Eastern North Carolina. A civics and economics teacher has a class of primarily first and second-generation Latino students. At the beginning of the semester, the instructor visits the homes of his students. Over the course of interviews with parents, brothers, sisters, and other family members, he discovers that a large number of his students’ relatives work at the local chicken processing plant. Moreover, his qualitative research shows that a majority of these Latino families are living on a minimum wage.

Through ethnography, the teacher has found a potential “fund of knowledge” from which to draw pertinent instruction. Using his data, the instructor designs a unit around the concept of labor relations and human rights. He invites parents of the children to come into the classroom to discuss working conditions within the factory. Then, students are encouraged to interview parents, community leaders, and factory management to further discuss wages, conditions, and collective organizing within the factory. In the classroom, the teacher acts as a facilitator; helping the students with their research. Moreover, he supplements their fieldwork with relevant readings of job conditions within the United States compared to Latin America, federal labor laws, and op-ed pieces from major publications and periodicals.

The project turns toward action research as students decide to make English and Spanish-speaking pamphlets that advocate workers’ rights and illustrate federal labor laws. Then, the students disseminate the brochures to their relatives, friends and colleagues. As a culminating activity, students write editorial pieces to their local paper, discussing their findings, opinions, and plans for further action.

Under the current standards-based system, the previous unit would be difficult to implement. The teacher did not address specific goals and objectives as mandated by the department of public instruction. Yet, within its plan, students engaged important federal labor laws, honed their writing skills, and actively took part in a grass-roots labor movement. Most importantly, these students were exposed to a personal curriculum that related directly to their private lives through culturally relevant pedagogy. Transforming the curriculum, the students became stakeholders in their educational development. Through the instructional design, the students became willing and informed participants in the democratic process, and that is the ultimate goal of the social studies discipline.

Conclusion

The current standards-based reform movement will not dissipate any time soon. However, educators have a responsibility to teach a growing Latino population to the best of their ability regardless of an objectified course of study. To reach these students, teachers must incorporate instruction that ties community and ethnic strands with the institution of schooling. Within the field of social studies, citizenship and an understanding of democratic principles are major themes. Through the implementation of a transformative approach, educators have the pedagogical tools to devise curriculum relevant to our pluralistic classrooms while incorporating a notion of civic responsibility. To develop a critical consciousness in the social studies classroom, the gap between theory and practice has to be bridged. Experiencial instructional techniques such as action research, collaborative learning, and advocacy stimulate learners to think critically. Most significantly, social studies educators who embrace the theoretical concepts of transformative multiculturalism and selective assimilation celebrate diversity while simultaneously challenging students to develop inquiry-based learning strategies.

References

Cornbleth, Catherine. & Waugh, Dexter. (1995). The Great Speckled Bird. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Epstein, Terrie. (2001). Racial Identity and Young People’s Perspectives on Social Education. Theory Into Practice, 40 (1), 42–47.

Freire, Paulo. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.

Gabriel García Márquez: Biography. From Nobelprize.org.

Ladson-Billings, Gloria. (1995). But That’s Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. Theory Into Practice, 34 (3), 159-165.

Moll, Luis C. et al. (1992). Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approach to Connect Homes and Classrooms. Theory Into Practice, 31 (2), 132–140.

Moll, Luis C. & Arnot-Hopffer, Elizabeth. (2005). Sociocultural Competence in Teacher Education. Journal of Teacher Education, 56 (3), 242–247.

Pew Hispanic Center. (2005). The New Latino South: The Context and Consequences of Rapid Population Growth. Retrieved September 4, 2005 from www.pewhispanic.org.

Portes, Alejandro & Rumbaut, Rubén G. (2001). Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.

Rigoberta Menchú Tum: Biography. From Nobelprize.org.