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L110.1 Reese, L., & Gallimore, R. (in press). Immigrant Latinos Cultural Model of Literacy Development: An Alternative Perspective on Home-School Discontinuities. American Journal of Education. Abstract
Since the 1960s, discontinuities between home and school cultures have been common explanations of the disproportionate underachievement of some groups in American schools (Cazden1986). Although few deny that such discontinuities occur or question their potential impact, some issues continue to be debated. One critique suggests one source of within-group variations may be parents and childrens need, willingness, and ability to adjust to new circumstances (Chandler, Argyris, Barnes, Goodman & Snow1986). At least some adaptive changes, perhaps taken for non-academic reasons, may diminish or enhance home-school discontinuities. In either case, the possibility of changes in home-school discontinuities would be expectable and could have implications for educational policy and programming. To examine these issues, this paper employs data from a 12-year longitudinal study of immigrant Latino families and their children (Gallimore & Reese in press; Goldenberg, Gallimore, Reese & Garnier 1998; Reese, Garnier, Gallimore & Goldenberg 1999). Previous work with this sample suggested the hypothesis that parents use of textual material with their children at home was guided by widely shared, implicit notionscultural schema or models--about how and under what conditions literacy develops (Reese, Goldenberg, Loucky & Gallimore 1995). This paper reports a followup study of the cultural model hypothesis and has two general aims: (1) to describe immigrant Latinos cultural model of literacy, its origin, and changes in the model associated with immigration and experiences with U. S. schools; and (2) to present a more nuanced perspective on home-school discontinuities that allows for within-group variation and dynamic change across time.
The immigrant Latino parents in our samples share a common view of literacy development that affects their structuring of everyday activities for children. Influenced by shared experiences in their native societies, the parents conceive of reading as something that is learned, through repeated practice, after a child begins school or formal instruction. This model is stable and enduring, and over the 10+ years of contact with parents it was a predictable, ubiquitous refrain expressed in many interviews and conversations. The origin of this cultural model appears to be a common heritage, namely the experience of the grandparent generation most of whom were born and reared in small rural ranchos, in which little formal schooling, grinding poverty, and few occupational opportunities outside of agriculture were the norm. Like other cultural schema, the literacy development model, rooted in the past and brought by these immigrants to the host country, is a continuous source of meaning and guidance (LeVine & White l986). Despite an enduring, shared model of early literacy development which we heard expressed so often, variability and nuance were also evident. The model is not a cultural strait-jacket that constrains parents to a limited set of beliefs and practices. There was no evidence they regarded the model as an inviolate code that foreclosed change and adaptation. Though manifestly proud of their cultural heritage (Reese et al 1995a; Gallimore & Reese in press), parents did not seem to regard it as a static system, but rather as one flexible enough to not only survive but adapt to novel circumstances. In this view, families are powerful agents of adaptation, not merely transmitters of a uniform, homogenous cultural pattern. One of tools of their agency is stable yet flexible cultural models. The beliefs and practices encoded in the parents literacy development model had begun to change both before they left their natal societies and after they arrived in the U.S. Among the most notable changes were responses to what families encountered in U. S. public schools through their interactions with American teachers. Although we observed no wholesale changes, there were marginal adaptations to existing belief and practice. For the parents these changes were merely sensible, functional and adaptive responses to new circumstances, a common social phenomenon that increases the chances of survival and prosperity (Edgerton 1992; Weisner 1984). There was no evidence that parents regarded changes in their literacy development model as a abandonment of traditional values they carried with them from their homelands. If reading early to children meant a better chance of academic success, no matter the novelty of such action, most parents comfortably complied with teachers suggestions or assignments. However, this was not the case when parents perceived schools to be sanctioning too much youth autonomy that threatened cherished moral beliefs, for example schools encouraging students to report child abuse which parents regarded as potentially undermining their authority (Gallimore & Reese in press). Finally, the children in our sample, exposed to different ways of experiencing text at school and through school interventions at home, are likely to develop beliefs and behave with their own children in different ways than those with which their parents were raised. Their cultural models will be both new and old, changed and familiar. When these children, now adolescents, become parents, we expect to find evidence of both continuity and discontinuity in cultural models not only with their relatives who stayed in Mexico or Central America, but also with their immigrant parents who came to live and work in the U.S.
These findings remind us how important it is to "unpackage" cultural variables (Whiting 1976) such as the concept of home-school discontinuity. When we do, we discover home-school interaction constitute a terrain in which continuities coexist with discontinuities, and in which the scope and impact of both can vary. This contrasts with the emphasis in many discontinuity explanations on home-school differences (Goldenberg & Gallimore 1995). Yet, as this report re-confirms, there are not only continuities and discontinuities between homes and schools when they come in contact, but over time, as both adapt to the other, new continuities and discontinuities can arise. In addition, just as "the home" is inappropriately glossed as a monolithic antithesis to school beliefs and practices, neither can "the school" be treated as invariant, constant, and homogeneous. Linguistic and cultural differences between students and teachers are not only the source, but also the result, of conflict and student failure (Erickson 1988). In some school settings, conflict escalates and differences became more pronounced, resulting in what Bateson (1972) termed schismogenesis. In other classrooms, cultural and linguistic differences decline over time and conflict decreases. In these settings, flexibility on the part of teachers and parents, no matter the initial cultural differences, can lead to benefit for children. For example, using data from our sample of immigrant parents, Goldenberg and Arzubiaga (1994) found that teachers who achieved greater parent satisfaction and enhanced student achievement initiated more efforts to involve parents in children's academic learning, by assigning homework or through messages or phone calls. These teachers received higher ratings of parent satisfaction with both the academic content of their child's classroom and with the extent to which they felt involved in their children's schooling. In addition, the more teachers attempted to involve parents in children's learning, the higher were children's end-of-year literacy scores (Goldenberg and Arzubiaga 1994). We have argued here that parents cultural beliefs and deep underlying assumptions about literacy and learning guide their practices surrounding literacy development with their children, but they do not fully determine early literacy practices with children. Cultural models of literacy and learning, rooted in the parents historical and cultural backgrounds, initially predispose parents to respond to childrens early reading and writing attempts in ways that may put their children at a disadvantage in schools which assume children enter kindergarten with certain kinds of early literacy experiences. However, parental goals and beliefs, while influenced by traditional values, are flexibly deployed, and there are signs of adaptation to the American school expectations and to the realities of the economic system. But teachers simply telling parents to read to their children, when parents cultural models of literacy differ from those of teachers, is not likely to be highly effective, because the suggestion does not fit with parental schemas of how literacy develops in young children. Neither are "one-shot" parent training sessions in which parents are told how to read effectively with children. However, when teachers make explicit demands for home reading as part of a regular homework program, this has the effect not only of promoting the desired behaviors on the part of families but, in the process, contributing to changes in ways of viewing literacy development on the part of some parents. This openness to teacher overtures and the willingness to adapt their practices are in keeping with the values and beliefs the parents expressed in the course of our longitudinal study. They want their child's school experience to be academically challenging, and on occasion commented that U.S. schools are less demanding than those in their native countries. While parents did not initially share the teachers view that reading aloud to young children was helpful in terms of their subsequent literacy development, they did follow through on teacher suggestions and requirements to read at home, and appreciated the effects that this newly appropriated activity had produced. Wise practitioners, who are sensitive to cultural continuity and change as well as to cultural discontinuities and who reach out to parents, will find parents reaching back. |
