Abstract
This chapter examines the factors that contribute to a sense of school belonging for immigrant and immigrant-origin youth. Through a review of the education research on critical care, the authors propose a framework informed by cariño conscientizado—critically conscious and authentic care—as central to reconceptualizing notions of school belonging. Research studies on teacher–student and peer relationships, student agency, and organizing are reviewed to identify how they function to disrupt structural factors that maintain educational inequities. Belonging as a concept is problematized through a re-envisioning of curriculum, pedagogy, and school–community relationships as a means to reduce inequality for immigrant and immigrant-origin youth and children.
Inequality of educational experiences for immigrant youth and children of immigrants continues to be shaped by educational policies, programs, and practices that devalue students’ knowledge and position them at the margins. This marginalization occurs largely due to prevailing ideologies of cultural deficit, the superiority of English, and meritocracy, the notion that one’s success is determined solely by one’s effort (Bartolomé, 2008b; Darder, Baltodano, & Torres, 2003; N. Flores & Rosa, 2015; Freire, 1970). Educational reform movements that center on accountability have contributed to the narrowing of perceptions of knowledge within schools (Zacher Pandya, 2011). The emphasis on standardization and high-stakes measurement of learning creates conceptions of learning that fail to acknowledge the linguistic complexity of bilingual language practices and the language-brokering skills that many immigrant-origin youth possess (Orellana, 2001). In this review, we argue that a lens informed by critical authentic care enables education researchers and practitioners to identify ideologies and structural barriers that maintain unequal access to education for immigrant-origin youth (Patel, 2013) and deter the enactment of culturally sustaining environments (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014). We highlight studies that show the factors that enable students to build on the cultural and linguistic knowledge that they possess and construct a sense of belonging in schools.
Over the past several decades, there has been a growing body of research that has explored what it means for students to have a sense of school belonging and how that contributes to well-being (Kia-Keating & Ellis, 2007) and engagement with academic content in ways that produce positive outcomes for students (R. González & Padilla, 1997). Studies on a sense of school belonging have drawn primarily on quantitative methods to examine belonging as an internal process and identify its relationship to academic motivation (Goodenow & Grady, 1993) and self-efficacy (Bandura, 2000; Lewis et al., 2012). Few studies have explored the significance of school belonging for immigrant and immigrant-origin youth and children (Kia-Keating & Ellis, 2007). We build on these findings and define a sense of school belonging as both an individual feeling of being a valued member of a learning community and as a relational construct (Drolet & Arcand, 2013). Levitt and Schiller (2004) working from a social field perspective differentiate between ways of being and ways of belonging. Ways of being denote the interactions individuals have with others and participation within institutions that may or may not reflect their identities. Ways of belonging are reflected in the involvement with others and in activities within institutions in ways that communicate or contribute to a shared identity (Levitt & Schiller, 2004). We see school-based relationships and student agentive engagement within the school community as mechanisms that provide pathways for belonging in schools.
Given the persistence of inequities in educational access that position immigrant and immigrant-origin youth as outsiders and nonmembers, in this review we examine education research to understand the complexity of school belonging for this population and the significance it holds for learning and identity development. Studies have identified how the racialization and marginalization that Latinx 1 youth experience contributes to feelings of not belonging within U.S. society (Flores-González, Aranda, & Vaquera, 2014). For immigrant youth who are undocumented and migrate as young children, feeling a sense of connection or belonging in school settings is tenuous (R. G. Gonzales, Heredia, & Negrón-Gonzales, 2015) as belonging is inherently linked to citizenship (Abu El-Haj & Bonet, 2011) and those without citizenship in the United States are positioned as not belonging (Negrón-Gonzales, 2014).
We seek to understand from the existing research what a sense of school belonging means for reducing school inequality for immigrant youth and children of immigrants. The primary questions guiding this review are the following: What are the mediating factors that support a sense of school belonging for immigrant-origin youth? What is the relationship between critical care and school belonging? In what ways can the mechanisms associated with school belonging reduce educational inequality for immigrant-origin children and youth? Drawing on a theoretical framework of critical pedagogy we answer these questions by first providing a review of studies that examine critical care and school belonging. We then explore research on the mechanisms that promote belonging: participation, agency, and engagement of students from historically marginalized groups. Next we review research that explicates the politics of belonging through practices and policies that bring students and communities to the center of curriculum and pedagogy. We apply the findings and insights from the review of empirical studies to the educational experiences of immigrant and immigrant-origin children and youth.
As our main goal is to reimagine and reconceptualize the concepts of critical care and school belonging as a means of disrupting inequality for immigrant youth, we center our review on studies that address the structural conditions of schooling that undermine students’ lived notions of belonging. We recognize the importance of considering the uniqueness of each immigrant group, the multiple identities that youth possess such as gender, dis/ability, sexual orientation, as well as contexts that bring together students from various backgrounds; however, it is beyond the scope of this chapter to review the extant literature on specific immigrant groups or the intersectionality of immigrant youth identities.
In this chapter, we argue that what we define as cariño conscientizado—a pedagogy of critically conscious and authentic care is essential for reconceptualizing what it means to belong in school. In developing this term, we draw on the research on cariño (Prieto & Villenas, 2012; Rolón-Dow, 2005; Valdés, 1996; Valenzuela, 1999) and Freire’s (1970) notion of critical consciousness to stress the critical and humanizing perspective necessary to disrupt hegemonic and racist policies and identify the mechanisms that promote school belonging for immigrant-origin youth and children. Care in school-based relationships must be reimagined to challenge discriminatory practices that maintain inequality in U.S. schools. This entails recentering the focus of studies on the processes through which students, teachers, families, communities, and other stakeholders are engaged in struggles to redefine and redevelop the means by which they might belong in schools.
As part of our discussion, we develop a reconceptualization of belonging through a review of studies that examine the concept of critical care and cariño. We highlight the important role of agency and social capital in conceptualizing belonging as a means of countering the policies and practices that perpetuate inequality for immigrant youth. Moreover, we want to challenge and extend existing research, which has traditionally been rooted in notions of psychological well-being as it relates to both defining and measuring students’ feelings of belonging.
Our interest in understanding immigrant students’ sense of school belonging is grounded in the importance of furthering education research focused on challenging longstanding inequalities. In framing our review and discussion in this way, we are seeking to disrupt inequalities by advocating for a paradigm shift in education research as it pertains to the school curriculum and pedagogy, school–community relationships, and opportunities for children and youth from bilingual, bicultural, and immigrant communities.
Immigrant Youth in U.S. Schools
For many immigrant youth and children of immigrants, experiencing a sense of school belonging may play an essential role in their academic and linguistic perseverance (Souto-Manning, 2013). Immigrant-origin youth vary in their prior educational experiences (Portés & Rumbaut, 2014), proficiency in English, and adaptation to U.S. cultural norms. They also vary in terms of the degree of stress experienced as a result of the political context, separation from family, forced relocation, or trauma (Kia-Keating & Ellis, 2007; Patel, 2013). Feeling a connection or sense of membership to others within the school community may provide support for processing, managing, and making sense of their experiences, academic learning, and the devaluation of their knowledge and abilities.
Immigrant youth and children of immigrants and their parents may experience gaps in communication and relationships due to differences in language proficiency and the pressure to adapt to U.S. customs that youth experience (Rumbaut, 2005). Families may experience a shift in roles, whereas children function as “experts” (Suárez-Orozco, Marks, & Abo-Zena, 2015) for their parents due to the development of language skills that enable them to translate for family members (Martinez, McClure, & Eddy, 2009; Orellana, 2001; Prieto & Villenas, 2012), and act as cultural brokers (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001), due to their experiences navigating school and their communities. Some children and youth may feel a sense of pride in being an interpreter or cultural mediator for their adult family members; however, the skill level involved in language brokering may not be recognized within schools (Orellana, 2001).
While all youth experience the challenge of understanding themselves in new ways as they approach adolescence, this process is confounded for immigrant-origin youth who are forced to navigate multiple sets of expectations while developing their identities (R. G. Gonzales et al., 2015). In addition to expectations from their families, they may also adhere to religious principles and cultural practices that counter gender norms in the United States (Sarroub, 2001). Students entering middle and high schools face the added challenge of limited time before graduation to acquire the English language skills and content knowledge necessary to prepare them for college or the workforce. Educational programs that provide sustained instruction in students’ primary language have been proven to be effective for English language acquisition for emergent bilinguals (Rolstad, Mahoney, & Glass, 2005; Umansky & Reardon, 2014); however, due to restrictive language policies, the majority of immigrant-origin students will not have access to programs (García, 2014; Menken & Solorza, 2014) designed to meet their linguistic and cultural strengths and needs (Hopkins, Lowenhaupt, & Sweet, 2015; Nieto, 1998). In addition to a lack of instructional support in their home languages, their linguistic knowledge is likely to be positioned as a barrier to academic achievement.
Studies have identified differences between immigrant students and children of immigrants. Newcomer youth demonstrate a higher level of motivation to engage in school (Kao & Tienda, 2005; Suárez-Orozco, Pimentel, & Martin, 2009; Valenzuela, 1999) and connect with teachers (Peguero, Shekarkhar, Popp, & Koo, 2015). These areas of school motivation have been found to weaken or diminish after the second generation (Peguero & Bondy, 2011; Portés & Rumbaut, 2014), contributing to a decrease in academic attainment or success (Portés & Rumbaut, 2001; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 1995; Valenzuela, 1999). Although Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, and Todorova (2008) found that over time some newcomer students’ academic success improved, these differences across generations highlight the dehumanizing nature of schools that most likely contributes to decreases in motivation for second-generation students (Valenzuela, 1999).
The educational experiences and feelings of belonging of undocumented youth and children are inevitably rooted in the barriers to full participation in society that they encounter and the consistent contradiction of being immersed in ideologies of meritocracy and the American Dream in their schooling while being denied rights due to their citizenship (Negrón-Gonzales, 2014). Undocumented youth in mixed-status families experience additional layers of complexity regarding who belongs and are forced to navigate the responsibilities and emotions that go along with that (R. G. Gonzales et al., 2015). Many undocumented immigrants, youth, and their families live in a constant state of anxiety and stress stemming from the fear of being identified as undocumented due to the stigma it carries and risk posed by immigration raids.
Since the passing of Plyler v. Doe (1982), undocumented children and youth were granted the legal right to schooling in the United States, but this access to school was not a guarantee of equity or social mobility (R. G. Gonzales et al., 2015) and did not spare students from marginalization. Being tracked in overpopulated schools with limited resources created exclusionary contexts for undocumented students and blocked their access to curriculum and mentorship (R. G. Gonzales et al., 2015). R. G. Gonzales et al. (2015) found that students who gained entry to Advanced Placement or gifted classes experienced a sense of belonging and support, but for undocumented students who did not have the opportunity to develop positive relationships through courses such as these, school was an additional burden where they experienced a lack belonging.
The Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, a bill presented to congress in 2001 was designed to provide undocumented youth with access to citizenship if they met specific criteria (Beltrán, 2014). The bill addressed some of the barriers undocumented youth encounter through provisions for voting rights, in-state tuition, and financial aid eligibility (S. Flores, 2010; R. G. Gonzales et al., 2015). It was designed as a potential pathway to citizenship for children who demonstrated academic success and traits aligned with being “good” and “worthy” through academic success and service to the community (Beltrán, 2014).
While the bipartisan bill has not passed, over the past two decades, immigrant rights efforts have developed into an organized movement (Flores-González & Gutiérrez, 2010). Undocumented youth have contributed extensively to the DREAMer movement and due to their efforts, 10 states had in-state tuition laws by 2006, significantly increasing the number of undocumented higher education students in those states (S. Flores, 2010). While it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the organizational strategies that gave life to the movement, it is important to note that youth enacted their agency (Negrón-Gonzales, 2014) as a way to “re-articulate their exclusion as inclusion” (p. 265). DREAMers, many of whom had previously taken great care to never reveal their undocumented status, spoke out to the media and in congress, to fight for fair pathways to citizenship. Negrón-Gonzales (2014) found through her study of undocumented youth activists in California that while the youth were consistently forced to navigate their exclusion from full participation in society, their agency and courage serve as testimonies to their potential and the potential that lies within marginalized and contradictory spaces (for a discussion on participation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth, see Terriquez, 2015).
Social and Political Context
The criminalization of immigration adds to the complexity of the immigrant youth experience noted above. Regardless of the vast diversity among the immigrant population, the exclusionary focus of immigration policies and rhetoric extends to all marginalized groups (Pallares, 2014). Although studies have clearly indicated that immigrants are less likely to engage in criminal behavior, policies and rhetoric surrounding immigration position immigrants as criminals, particularly those who are undocumented (Ewing, Martínez, & Rumbaut, 2015),
The current political climate that has a presidential candidate calling for a ban on Muslims entering the United States and the construction of a wall to prevent immigration from Mexico, among other equally offensive and divisive statements, affects schools (Justice & Stanley, 2016). This anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric is not new (Olsen & Dowell, 1989; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2008); however, it continues to marginalize undocumented (Flores-González et al., 2014) and immigrant-origin youth (Nieto, 1998) as well as U.S. born minoritized students. In a recent nonrandomized survey of 500 teachers across the United States, conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center, teachers reported an increase in the use of hate language by students and a decrease in their capacity to respond to student anxieties (Costello, 2016). The survey results indicated that immigrant and U.S.-born students across racial and cultural groups expressed fear of future deportation under a Trump administration and despair due to their peers’ support for the discriminatory stances displayed in the presidential campaign and media (Costello, 2016).
This political context contributes to the stigmatization, and exclusion experienced by immigrant youth, particularly those who are undocumented or in mixed status families. R. G. Gonzales, Suárez-Orozco, and Dedios-Sanguineti (2013) write, “Developing a sense of belongingness, of meaning, and purpose—all processes that are prone to disruption in the coming of age undocumented—require particular attention and nurture” (p. 1191). In the following section, we discuss the ways that school policies and practices deter belonging. We then review studies on care to identify how critical authentic care can provide the attention and nurturing necessary to create inclusive school contexts that manifest belonging.
The Relationship Between Inequality and Lack of School Belonging
We draw from critical theories of education to examine the ways that schooling as an institution creates and maintains inequality for immigrant and immigrant-origin youth and children as well as students from historically marginalized communities. Freire (1998) posits that for education to be liberatory, the ideologies that shape instructional policies and practices must be identified and understood in relation to hegemony and maintenance of the status quo. Thus, the political nature of education must be kept at the forefront through conscientização—the development of a critical awareness regarding one’s reality in relation to power in society, which, in turn, enables praxis (Freire, 1970). Through conscientização and praxis teachers and learners actively counter dehumanizing practices and reposition lived experience to the center of school-based learning.
In examining the politics of school belonging for immigrant-origin youth, we build on Goodenow and Grady’s (1993) definition of belonging as “the extent to which [a student] feels personally accepted, respected, included and supported by others” (p. 61) in school contexts. Belonging is understood as a basic need (Maslow, 1970), feeling, and experience that is based on relationships with others; however, we acknowledge that a sense of belonging may not manifest in similar ways across contexts and cultures. Critical theories enable us to reconceptualize belonging through the concept of cariño conscientizado or critical and authentic care. Pedagogy rooted in critical care requires political and ideological clarity (Bartolomé, 2008b) and takes into account the situated nature of the expression and interpretation of caring behaviors. In the following section, these concepts are examined through studies of humanizing pedagogies that honor students’ wholeness, acknowledge the intersectionalities they embody, and recenter students’ lives in teaching and learning.
The relationship between school inequality and the lack of school belonging for students from historically marginalized groups has long been established (Antrop-González, 2006; Nieto, 1998; Valencia, 2002; Valenzuela, 1999). Throughout U.S. history, schools have been structured to systematically destroy students’ connections to their home cultures, languages, and familial funds of knowledge as a means of domination and control (Del Valle, 2003). The erasure of students’ languages and cultures was essential to the goal of assimilation through schooling through the 19th and much of the 20th century (Del Valle, 2003; Deyhle & Swisher, 1997; Moll & Ruiz, 2002; San Miguel, 2004; G. J. Sánchez, 2002; Valencia, 2002; Valencia & Solorzano, 1997). Wiley (2014) notes that while there have been periods in U.S. history where bilingualism was supported, it was under the guise of assimilation for immigrants from Europe and subordination for American Indians. The intolerance of languages and language varieties other than Standard English became part of the U.S. national identity after World War I (Gándara & Hopkins, 2010; Wiley, 2014). As Ferguson, Heath, and Hwang (1981) describe, “Whenever speakers of varieties of English or other languages have been viewed as politically, socially, or economically threatening, their language has become a focus for arguments in favor of both restrictions of their use and imposition of Standard English” (p. 10). Underlying this intolerance are monoglossic language ideologies that situate monolingualism as the standard within society (García, 2009).
Ideologies surrounding the superiority of English, cultural deficits and assimilation (Bartolomé, 2008b; Deyhle & Swisher, 1997; Giroux, 1983) are reflected in specific aspects of schooling such as policies regarding language use (García, 2009), tracking (Valenzuela, 1999), Eurocentric curriculum, and low expectations for student learning (Antrop-González, 2006) on the part of teachers and administrators. Schooling continues to be organized in a way that normalizes dominant ideologies such as meritocracy (Patel, 2013) and colorblind perceptions that place responsibility for academic achievement on students and their families (Bonilla-Silva, 2006; Valenzuela, 1999).
Students’ lack of school belonging is rooted in structural policies and practices that privilege Eurocentric values and norms while devaluing the cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) and knowledge students’ possess. School districts, in urban and culturally diverse contexts, as well rural new growth communities (Lichter, 2012) often lack teachers who reflect the cultures and languages of students (Quiñones, 2016; Valenzuela, 1999) and who are trained to meet students’ linguistic learning needs (Faltis, 2013; Téllez & Varghese, 2013). For school districts experiencing shifts in student populations, program implementation may be negatively affected by lack of time dedicated to disrupting underlying ideologies (DeNicolo, 2016). For example, immigrant youth attending schools with bilingual programs may benefit from instruction in their home language; however, if their teachers hold deficit perceptions regarding their knowledge and abilities, students and parents will not feel a part of the school. According to N. Flores and Rosa (2015), raciolinguistic ideologies position the linguistic knowledge of bilinguals as deficient and lacking. The authors state, “. . . from a raciolinguistic perspective, heritage language learners’ linguistic practices are devalued not because they fail to meet a particular linguistic standard but because they are spoken by racialized bodies and thus heard as illegitimate by the white listening subject” (p. 161). Lack of school belonging thus refers to the collective force of hegemonic ideologies, strategic actions, and unconscious perceptions and biases (Sabry & Bruna, 2007; Winn & Bezidah, 2012), that consistently devalue students’ histories, languages, and cultural knowledge (Nieto, 1998; Rolón-Dow, 2005), negatively affecting their developing identities (Isik-Erkan, 2015; Urrieta, Kolano, Jo, 2015; Valencia, 2002), their belief in themselves as learners, and their academic potential.
Examining Belonging Through Teacher–Student and Peer Relationships
To understand factors that contribute to a sense of school belonging for immigrant-origin youth and children, we look to the research on care theory and caring as it relates to students placed at the margins through school policies and practices. Central to notions of belonging to a community within school is the sense that one is seen, heard, and valued as evidenced through the actions, relationships, and experiences of connectedness with others. Similar to “belonging,” which is a term that encompasses a range of behaviors, scholars have cautioned that there is not a commonly shared or universal understanding of “caring” (Antrop-González & DeJesus, 2006; Cooper, 2009; McKamey, 2011; Valenzuela, 1999). In the paragraphs that follow, we discuss studies that have extended and built on Noddings’s (1984) conceptualization of caring and connections between theories of care and belonging in education.
For Noddings (1984), schools and schooling should be centered on caring, thus establishing a learning environment created on a foundation of regard and respect. Noddings (1992/2005) stressed the difference between aesthetic caring, the attention to the aspects of teaching that are perceived as objective such as instructional goals, and authentic caring. Authentic caring is rooted in relationships that attend to the individual and their needs. This does not occur by happenstance but through seeing oneself as “one-caring” (Noddings, 2013, p. 5), committed to engaging in teaching and learning with students and knowing them as unique individuals with interests and agency. Noddings (2013) expressed that schools should enact an ethic of care through meaningful dialogue between teachers and students, opportunities for students to engage in caring for and with others, and confirmation of students’ potential as learners.
Valenzuela’s (1999) pivotal text Subtractive Schooling expanded on previous studies of care theory through her in-depth exploration of how care or a lack thereof shaped the educational experiences of Mexican and Mexican American high school students. The study illustrated how teachers and students utilized distinct interpretations of care to make sense of one another’s behaviors and actions. The teachers’ perceptions of their students’ lack of care was based on external behaviors and rooted in deficit ideologies. Caring, for the students, was rooted in the concept of educación, which Valenzuela (1999) defined as, “the family’s role of inculcating in children a sense of moral, social, and personal responsibility and serves as the foundation for all other learning” (p. 23). While the Mexican immigrant youth and U.S.-born students in Valenzuela’s study had distinct experiences regarding the ways they were perceived by school staff, their perceptions of their teachers’ sense of commitment to their learning and disinterest in helping them were based on educación, which prioritizes a person’s well-being, use of good manners (Valdés, 1996), and what it means to be bien educado. Valenzuela noted that school staff, on the other hand, engaged in behaviors associated with aesthetic caring, prioritizing details within the learning environment, instead of authentic caring which was more aligned with educación.
Valenzuela found that immigrant youth drew on the strength of their identities as Mexicans alongside a deep appreciation for the opportunity to go to school. Due to this, their teachers viewed them as being more concerned about school than their Mexican American counterparts. Valenzuela cautioned however that the hopeful attitude and humility of the Mexican youth also contributed to a degree of invisibility. For all immigrant and children of immigrants to be fully seen in school, Valenzuela (1999) posited that authentic caring was needed. From an authentic caring stance, teachers take an active role to know their students, understand their resources, and engage in critical dialogue on topics that shape their experiences such as racism. This would allow for a repositioning of students’ repertoires of knowledge to the center of teaching and learning and recognition of the structural policies that racialize and marginalize students.
Critical Care
Rolón-Dow’s (2005) ethnographic study of nine Puerto Rican girls across their seventh- and eighth-grade years examined the ways that caring was understood and experienced by students and teachers. Complicating notions of caring through a critical race theory (CRT) and Latino critical race theory (LatCrit) lens, Rolón-Dow’s study highlighted how history, power, and colonialism were key to understanding school-based relationships and perspectives on caring
Rolón-Dow’s (2005) findings indicated ways that teachers’ perceptions of students and the community where the school was located influenced their interpretations of the educational value families held for school. School staff viewed students’ behavior as evidence of their parents’ lack of care for education. The physical condition of the school communicated to students a lack of care for their well-being on the part of school staff. There were instances where teachers’ perceptions were grounded in an understanding of the contexts of students’ lives outside of school and Rolón-Dow found that when this occurred both aesthetic and authentic forms of caring were present. She noted however that while there were teachers that provided students with temporary refuge from the structural racism they encountered, this was not sufficient to counter the pervasiveness of the deficit perspectives that permeated their experiences in school. This study illustrates the situated nature of care and the need for school staff to examine the underlying ideologies that inform their perceptions of students and families.
Antrop-González and DeJesus (2006) use the term “soft caring” (p. 411) to refer to caring that is rooted in colorblind and deficit ideologies. Building on the work of difference scholars, Valenzuela (1999) and Thompson (1998) in particular, the authors advocate for a theory of “critical care” (p. 413), complicating colorblind theories (Thompson, 1998) on caring through social and cultural capital. Critical care in the schools that were part of their study was identified as value for students’ cultural, linguistic community knowledge, and skills that enabled students’ to access their multiple identities in school. Through the use of decolonizing methodology, Antrop-González and DeJesus found that authentic caring countered the marginalization students had experienced in previous schools and involved truly seeing students as agentive contributors to their education. Students experienced critical care through personalismo (Santiago-Rivera, Arredondo, & Gallardo-Cooper, 2002), a collection of behaviors that resembled the closeness within immediate and extended families and established a sense of community that enabled them to function like a family. The scholars used the term “hard caring” (2006, p. 413) to refer to the high expectations and accessibility of the staff. Due to the staff’s awareness and understanding of the community, they identified ways to support students, such as staying in the building after school and ensuring that students had a way home. Teachers viewed all aspects of their students’ development as their responsibility and this was evident to students and their families.
Beauboeuf-Lafontant’s (2002) conceptualization of womanist caring is rooted in an understanding of the “cultural, historical, and political positionality of African American women, a group that has experienced slavery, segregation, sexism, and classism for most of its history in the United States” (p. 72). Drawing on Patricia Hill Collins’s (1991) work, womanist epistemology recognizes the pervasiveness of hegemony and views collectivity as essential to social justice. From this humanizing perspective, womanist epistemology is concerned with freedom for all. Beauboeuf-Lafontant applies this to understanding womanist caring in education. Womanist caring educators embody maternal roles through a sense of investment and urgency and deep commitment to the academic learning and socioemotional well-being of their students (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2002). This form of caring is a by-product of othermothering (Collins, 1991; Dixson, 2003; Foster, 1993)—the identification of kinship with students and engagement with their learning connected to the greater good of the community. Womanist care is also an enactment of political consciousness (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2002): Womanist teachers view teaching as a social and political commitment to fight for equity and equality for African Americans through attention and care for each child (Cooper, 2009). This commitment is rooted in an “ethic of risk” (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2002, p. 83), a spiritual sensibility that is grounded in realism about the fact that social injustices exist and that work toward social justice is ongoing, challenging, and driven by hope. Cooper (2009) found that womanist care in schools is also evident in the caring practices of African American mothers. Similar to the ways that womanist teachers embody a critical understanding of the political nature of school and racism, Cooper’s study identified the ways the mothers engaged in othermothering, supporting one another for the good of the community. The mothers in Cooper’s study challenged the deficit perceptions held by school staff regarding their lack of care for their children’s education. The mothers’ authentic caring was rooted in their identities and lived experiences and informed by their experiences with racism and dedication to advocate for their children.
Cariño
Prieto and Villenas (2012) define cariño as “authentic notions of caring” (p. 423) and view this form of caring as intricately connected to critical awareness and advocacy. For Prieto and Villenas, this type of praxis embodies a holistic view of students situated within social and historical contexts. Through examining their own testimonios, Prieto and Villenas (2012) identified “pedagogies of nepantla rooted in cariño” (p. 426). Cariño was central to their pedagogy as it enabled them to view their teacher education students from a humanizing perspective that positioned students’ biases as a reflection of hegemony. Prieto and Villenas (2012) viewed their students “not as individual racists, sexists, or nativists, but as cultural beings who are tapping into vast epistemological systems that support hierarchies of dominance” (p. 426). This highlights the ideological and political awareness that is central to cariño.
Similar to Rolón-Dow (2005) and Beauboeuf-Lafontant (2002), Bartolomé’s (2008a) study illustrated that political awareness regarding equity and ideology are an essential aspect of what she calls authentic cariño. The preschool teachers in her study were committed to respecting their students and creating contexts where the knowledge they learned from home was honored and accessed for learning, such as the use of students’ home language, Spanish. Cariño was expressed to students through Spanish, because the teachers recognized the language learning and academic benefits of students’ developing and maintaining their home language. The teachers in Bartolomé’s study stressed the need for monolingual educators to find ways to show their emergent bilingual students that they were important. They felt that through authentic care or cariño non-Latina/o English-speaking teachers could communicate respect to their Spanish-speaking students.
Freire (1998) referred to the words of poet Tiago de Melo, “armed love” (p. 40), to describe the courageous love that is required of teachers, rooted in advocacy and reflected in the persistence with which a teacher strives to know and teach their students. Teaching from a position of armed love is centered on humanity, involves the risk to speak out against inequities, and is expressed through dialogue. Valenzuela’s (1999) account of Mr. Sosa, the band director who spent hours each evening preparing food for his students, exemplifies this type of love. Through learning about his students’ lives, he realized a need they had and was able to fulfil his goal to connect with them. Authentic caring may require more than what can be done during school hours and can be taxing for teachers (Antrop-González, 2006). For this reason, cariño must be linked with a political consciousness that addresses caring at the school level through collaboration with students, families, and community members. Due to the history of schooling and structural racism, collective approaches to authentic care are necessary to disrupt inequities in policies and reconceptualize school belonging.
We draw on the studies above to reimagine critical care as a web of relationships and humanizing practices that make visible students’ strengths to disrupt oppressive policies and promote a sense of belonging. This is important for all youth but is essential for undocumented students as R. G. Gonzales et al. (2015) describe based on their study, The degree to which they felt included in school shaped the ways they understood and responded to their place in society. Indeed, this is not unique to undocumented students. But given the barriers they face to higher education (exclusion from financial aid, low-income families) and to the broader polity, they require integration into their schools at the level at which they can form trusting relationships with teachers and have access to resources that can help them navigate a truncated everyday life. (p. 328)
Informed by the Freireian (1998) concepts of armed love and conscientização (Freire, 1970), we argue that critical authentic care or cariño conscientizado—functions as a lens to identify the mechanisms for school belonging. We created the term cariño conscientizado joining the Spanish word cariño with conscientização in Portuguese to represent the scholarship on cariño and conscientização and to convey the critical awareness necessary to disrupt and challenge educational inequality. In the following section, we examine the ways that peer relationships and student agency function as mechanisms for the development of a sense of school belonging.
Peer Relationships and Student Psychosocial Well-Being
Furthering research on school belonging involves recognizing that while a positive network of friends and peers plays a role in assuring feelings of appreciation (Drolet & Arcand, 2013; Faircloth & Hamm, 2005) and access to classroom acceptance (Long, Bell, & Brown, 2004), this does not provide adequate shielding from the inequalities immigrant-origin youth and children encounter in schools. There is a crucial need for research that interrogates the structural conditions of schooling that undermine students’ genuine notions of belonging. We argue for a deepened understanding of the ways in which emergent bilinguals and immigrant-origin youth experience a sense of belonging in school as a means of informing policies and programs to counter the structural barriers that marginalize them.
Some of the research on belonging has been rooted in psychology-based approaches that focus on defining and measuring a sense of school belonging through peer relationships as they relate to students’ feelings of well-being. For example, Selman, Levitt, and Schultz (1997) reported that students’ peers offered important emotional supports that enhanced the development of psychosocial competencies in young children and early adolescence. Part of this beneficial emotional support that students received served to buffer feelings of loneliness and embarrassment, while also bolstering self-confidence and self-efficacy. Peers were frequently cited as providing important emotional sustenance during challenging times that supported the development of psychological and social well-being (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2009), as well as acceptance within a classroom community (S. Brown & Souto-Manning, 2007; Dyson, 1993).
Peer interactions affect students’ sense of acceptance (Long et al., 2004), by providing and offering tangible forms of support and guidance. Peers can moderate the effects of school-related violence and provide support and relief from anxiety (Gibson, Gándara, & Koyama, 2004). That said, while peers may contribute to students’ feelings of belonging in a classroom or school, peer interactions and friendship cannot be the sole mechanisms for belonging and inclusion. Since immigrant youth often attend highly segregated, low-resourced schools (Orfield, 1998), they may have limited access to networks of support, for learning the steps necessary to pursue higher education (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2009). Social support from peer relationships has also been recognized as connected to aspects of schooling associated with achievement.
Peer Support and Student Achievement
In addition to the role that peers play in cultivating an emotional sense of belonging and acceptance, studies show that peers provide tangible help with homework assignments, language translation, and orientation within a new school setting (Gibson, Bejínez, Flidalgo, & Rolón, 2004). For newly arrived immigrant students, the companionship of conational friends has been found to function as a resource for information on navigating school culture and norms (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2009).
Furthermore, peers have the ability to support academic engagement in concrete ways by clarifying readings or lectures and helping one another complete homework assignments—as Stanton-Salazar (2004) notes, this process of exchanging information not only has an immediate impact on the day-to-day aspects of navigating schooling but it also affects their longer term success such as exchanging information about Scholastic Aptitude Tests, helpful tutors, volunteer positions, and other college pathway knowledge. Moreover, by valuing certain academic outcomes and by modeling specific academic behaviors, peers establish the “norms” of academic engagement (Ogbu & Simons, 1998; Steinberg, Brown, & Dornbusch, 1996).
Agency, Social Capital, and Organization
The body of research that examines peer relationships through a conceptual lens drawing on psychosocial well-being provides worthwhile insights; however, more research is needed to understand school belonging aimed at disrupting inequalities. To encourage further research and analyses along these lines, we address studies that incorporate critical discussions of the ways that agency, social capital, and organizing for change influence peer relationships and school belonging.
Zine’s (2000, 2008) work highlights the significance of Muslim Student Associations for Muslim youth in Canadian schools. The student associations functioned as a space for students to acquire strategies for navigating the daily experiences of marginalization in school. This echoes research suggesting that organizations for Muslim youth support processes for positive identity formation and the negotiation of pressures stemming from being a religious minority within a secular society (Gilliat, 1997). Islamic student organizations provide Muslim students with a crucially important system of support, while at the same time offering notions of familiarity through the sponsorship of events and gatherings in accordance with Islamic conventions. As Zine (2000) notes, Muslim Student Associations provide social and religious support beneficial to Islamic subcultures within schools, while also serving the critically important function of both directly and indirectly challenging structural and institutional obstacles.
Traditionally, theories of resistance in education tend to focus on issues surrounding class and/or race (Dolby, Dimitriadis, & Willis, 2004) as a catalyst for solidifying student dissent and transforming it into collective action. Studies examining student organizations, youth participatory action research (YPAR) projects, and community-based extracurricular activities (Antrop-González, Vélez, & Garrett, 2008; Cammarota, 2016; Ginwright, Noguera, & Cammarota, 2006) demonstrate that student organizations and activities structure forms of resistance around racial/ethnic and religious identification as a site for both political and social action, as well as educational critique. It is through the formation of these grassroots student organizations that students from bi/multilingual, bi/multicultural, and immigrant communities are able to form bases for challenging Eurocentrism in public schooling. Moreover, the mobilization of strategies for formalized resistance involved developing foundations for collective political action and advocacy, empowering students to engage in struggles over the right to belong in schools.
Though formalized resistance, students can also directly challenge curriculum content and textbooks that present biased information such as an overtly hostile and intolerant perspective of Islam (Zine, 2008). Future research needs to take into consideration the importance of challenging structural conditions and institutionalized forms of discrimination in schools. Students’ psychological and social well-being is important, but for inroads to be made toward systematically addressing inequalities, more research is needed on the extent to which an increase in student sense of school belonging might be a secondary outcome associated with addressing root causes of oppression.
Disrupting Inequality Through Understanding the Politics of School Belonging
In this section, we seek to build on the research and arguments Abu El-Haj (2015) has put forth as it relates to the politics of belonging for Muslim transnational communities. This requires an understanding of students’ sense of belonging in school as something that is deeply political (Castles & Davidson, 2000; Levinson, 2005; Maira, 2009; Ríos-Rojas, 2011, 2014; P. Sánchez, 2007; Yuval-Davis, 2011). Such understandings of school belonging involve “not only constructions of boundaries but also the inclusion or exclusion of particular people, social categories, and groupings within these boundaries by those who have power to do this” (Yuval-Davis, as cited in Abu El-Haj, 2015, p. 5).
Collective involvement is central to the politics of belonging and differs from psychosocial constructions of belonging rooted in notions of well-being. Abu El-Haj (2015) emphasizes that being part of a collectivity, especially a collectivity based on nationality, “is never given, but instead is actively constructed through political projects” (p. 5). Consequently, it is critical to move beyond “analyses that focus on questions of achievement, acculturation, and assimilation” (Abu El-Haj & Bonet, 2011, p. 51), when discussing the education of immigrant-origin children and youth.
Schools are one of the primary institutions where immigrant-origin youth learn to develop a sense of belonging at a societal level (Abu El-Haj & Bonet, 2011). The dominant discourses of assimilation and integration, as Levinson (2005) states, “presuppose certain ‘desirable’ social characteristics, the prerequisites of political participation, which may or may not be deemed educable” (p. 334). These characteristics entail the misrecognition of culture and identity and function through acts of marginalization. Problematizing traditional conceptualizations of student sense of school belonging is aimed at challenging longstanding inequities. Therefore, our goal in this work is to expand such a framework of understanding and advocate for a paradigm shift in education research to explore the need for “robust accounts of the role that schools play in shaping the parameters of social membership and political participation” (Abu El-Haj & Bonet, 2011, p. 32). Additional inroads toward advocating for a politics of belonging framed in this manner can occur through the school curriculum and pedagogy, school-community partnerships, and critically conscious teachers of children and youth from immigrant communities.
Disrupting Inequality Through Curriculum and Pedagogy
We believe it is important to foreground our discussion in this section with a very brief mention of how we conceptualize our understanding of the curriculum. In one sense, the curriculum entails the process of sanctioning and transmitting official knowledge through the prescribed use of textbooks and curriculum materials (Apple, 2014). It is along these lines that the processes of sorting, selecting, organizing, and framing knowledge should be recognized as inherently ideological (Apple, 2004). And as such, the question of the curriculum has to do less with what knowledge and much more with whose knowledge is privileged. This conceptualization of the curriculum should also be recognized as encompassing both the official and hidden curriculum. Thus, curriculum refers to the content that is covered in a particular course or lesson as well as the instructional practices that are utilized to engage students with content and the decision making that places students in the course. Yosso (2002) stresses the need to view curriculum as encompassing the processes that shape instruction that are not made explicit such as the content selection, student placement, and rules of engagement. Looking at curriculum through a lens of cariño conscientizado means that we view curriculum as a process of environmental design that privileges and promotes ideologies surrounding belonging and inclusion. For example, items such as the posters with breakdowns of student performance on standardized tests or participation in extracurricular events are also part of the school curriculum. These types of displays send powerful messages to students about how they are (or are not) valued, in what ways they belong in school, how the institution of schooling positions them as both people and learners, and the kind of education they are viewed as deserving. For immigrant-origin youth, particularly those who are undocumented, curriculum more often communicates how they are not members of society and do not belong.
Despite greater attention in recent years to issues of power and identity in curriculum associated with analyses of race, culture, gender, and sexuality, more work needs to be done in this area so that immigrants, children of immigrants, and emergent bilingual students have greater opportunities to experience a sense of belonging in the schools they attend. A. L. Brown and Au (2014) draw from the theories of cultural memory and CRT to contextualize how the histories of race and curriculum are portrayed—noting that “the voices and curricular histories of communities of color in the United States are largely left out of the selective tradition associated with the narrative of the field’s foundations” (p. 358). Another aspect of this work entails advancing conceptions of multiculturalism insofar as efforts are undertaken which focus on the critique of both the inequities of the status quo and liberal ideology that fails to advance the cause of justice for people of color (Dixson & Rousseau, 2005). Crucially, it is worth noting that Ladson-Billings and Tate’s (1995) critique of multiculturalism, needs to be recognized as an effort to mobilize action as opposed to a dismissal of the need for more inclusive schooling.
Re-envisioning the curriculum—through a focus on bolstering students’ sense of belonging in school—involves linkages to instructional practices grounded in culturally relevant pedagogies (K. D. Brown, Brown, & Rothrock, 2015; Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2009, 2014), culturally sustaining pedagogies (Paris & Alim, 2014), ethnic studies curriculum (Dee & Penner, 2016; Halagao, 2010; Sleeter, 2011; Vasquez, 2005), and a recognition of teachers as cultural workers (Freire, 1998; Knoester & Yu, 2015). Ladson-Billings (2014) discusses her work with the hip-hop and spoken word program First Wave as an example of how culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012) allows for a fluid understanding of culture, and teaching practices that explicitly engage questions of equity and justice. Through this work, scholars and educators situate culturally relevant pedagogy as the place where the “beat drops” and then layer the multiple ways that this notion of pedagogy shifts, changes, adapts, recycles, and recreates instructional spaces to ensure that consistently marginalized students are repositioned into a place of normativity—that is, that they become subjects in the instructional process, not mere objects. (Ladson-Billings, 2014, p. 76)
Again, this requires that teachers and educators use culturally relevant pedagogies in linguistically and culturally appropriate ways (Nieto, 2010; Roy & Roxas, 2011), counter forms of discrimination in schools while simultaneously advocating for students (Niyozov & Pluim, 2009; Rahman, 2013), work collaboratively through informal networks and inquiry groups (Abu El-Haj, 2003), actively confront forms of marginalization through culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2010; Sleeter, 2012), and advocate for the values present in well-planned and well-taught ethnic studies curriculum (Sleeter, 2011).
It is with these points related to culturally relevant pedagogy in mind that we want to turn our discussion to conceptualizations of the curriculum that are explicitly connected to CRT. This work is not simply a matter of adding supplemental material to the existing curriculum, although doing so might be a valuable first step for some, but rather it is about reframing the curriculum around forms of resistance. For example, Yosso (2002) discusses the idea of a critical race curriculum as an approach to understanding curricular structures, processes, and discourses, informed by CRT—highlighting five tenets: the centrality and intersectionality of race and racism, the challenge to dominant ideology, the commitment to social justice, the value of experiential knowledge, and interdisciplinary perspectives.
While the process of establishing shifts in the curriculum is one piece of a structural project related to content and pedagogy, another part of this has to deal with epistemologies. S. M. Gonzales’s (2015) work in this area uses personal narrative to examine the role of las abuelitas, or grandmothers, as educators in Mexican, Mexican American, and Chicana/o culture—paying careful attention to how grandmothers used abuelita epistemologies to counteract the subtractive schooling processes in the United States, in order to resist the assimilative pressures, and thus positively affect student adjustment and success. San Pedro (2015) also explores the notion of epistemological shifts within the curriculum by examining a Native American literature classroom composed of a multitribal and multicultural urban student body, where students in this course engage in whole-class discussions focusing on contemporary and historical issues concerning Native American tribes and communities. Often these conversations focus on issues of oppression, colonization, and the unjust treatment of people of color. Significantly, the study challenges traditional ways silence has been interpreted as a deficiency within standard schooling, moving toward a view of silence as engaging, rich in identity construction, and filled with agency.
To truly belong in school, the experiences of immigrant-origin youth and children need to be placed at the center of the curriculum (Cammarota, 2011; Campano, Ghiso, & Welch, 2016; Chan, Phillion, & He, 2015; Li, 2006). Souto-Manning (2013) uses critical narrative analysis to look at how institutional discourses of school success in the United States shape the ways in which emergent bilingual and multilingual students of color come to make sense of their schooling experiences. She explores the ways in which young bilingual and multilingual students construct their own identities through narratives both within and across settings and highlights the need to create spaces in which language (mis)alignments are acknowledged, repositioned at the center of the curriculum, and positively reframed. DeNicolo, González, Morales, and Romani (2015) attempt to counter deficit notions of Latinx students, families, and communities by illuminating the powerful ways that students utilize various forms of community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005)—this entails challenging directly the racist assumptions about Spanish being of lesser value than English and Latinx students being less academically capable than their White, monolingual English-speaking counterparts.
Cammarota and Romero’s (2011) work discusses participatory action research (PAR) and YPAR as forms of curriculum for Latina/o high school students and how it assisted in facilitating greater investment in both their participation in social settings and their awareness of how to engage in forms of personal and social transformation. PAR and YPAR informs the pedagogical and epistemological aspects of the Social Justice Education Project curriculum, which serves the cultural, social, and intellectual needs of Latina/o students and allows them to “engage in Freire’s conception of culture and undertake a praxis that leads to a transformation of self and community” (Cammarota, 2011, pp. 840–841). One of the key takeaways from this work is the emphasis placed on providing multiple paths for connecting academic learning to the ways students use their cultural and linguistic knowledge outside of school and the potential for this to bolster students’ sense of school belonging and address larger issues of inequality.
The Cultural Politics of Belonging: Reimagining School–Community Relationships
In numerous regards, schools are considered the key institution through which children and youth from bilingual, multilingual, and immigrant communities come to understand and define their sense of belonging. School is also a site through which the cultural politics of power and hegemony play out in daily practice. Research examining the academic engagement and achievement of children and youth from these communities often use culture as an analytic lens to “explain differences in educational experiences, opportunities, and outcomes of ethnic and racial minority students” (Ngo, 2013, p. 959). At the same time that this work is being done, it is essential to be cautious about the fact that students, families, and communities can be problematically defined in terms of cultural deficits. Viewing ethnic and racial identities as subtractive is detrimental to the goals of supporting students’ academic success (Warikoo & Carter, 2009). Conceptualizing ethnicities, cultures, and identities as assets that are essential to students’ potential, orient students toward the goals of upward academic achievement. However, one of the substantial challenges to this involves countering the types of entrenched structural biases, forms of discriminations, and systematic mechanisms of oppression that continue to persist and that reflect the social, historical, and political context (Abu El-Haj & Bonet, 2011).
Having noted this, given the focus of this chapter, it is not possible to engage fully in extensive debates about the nuances and complexities surrounding notions of cultural politics. Instead, we are framing this review of research around both promoting and furthering a research agenda that is focused on challenging inequalities. As such, we have chosen to highlight a few studies in order to investigate how some are working to challenge the deficit constructions of children, families, and communities through the disruption of discriminatory practices in schools—specifically in terms of reimagining education in ways that establish more sustainable and responsive relationships between schools and communities.
A beginning point for challenging deficit notions of students, families, and communities entails embracing a critical care approach where diversity is an asset as opposed to an obstacle (Ayers, 2001) and that promotes drawing on local funds of knowledge (N. González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005). It is often the case that the cultural knowledge, skills, and abilities of individuals from socially marginalized communities often goes unrecognized and unacknowledged. Yosso (2005) identifies various forms of cultural wealth present in communities—aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial and resistant capital—and how they have the potential to be nurtured and utilized in schools in powerful ways stressing, They are not conceptualized for the purpose of finding new ways to co-opt or exploit the strengths of Communities of Color. Instead, community cultural wealth involves a commitment to conduct research, teach and develop schools that serve a larger purpose of struggling toward social and racial justice. (p. 82)
Another aspect related to school–community relationships insofar as the cultural politics of belonging has to deal with directly addressing policies for religious expression. Collet (2010) advocates for an understanding of schools as “sites of refuge”—meaning that schools are places where immigrants and refugee students should be able to express religious identities and religious expressions in the absence of discrimination or persecution. He argues for greater inclusion through the recognition of minority religions, given that they may involve group, and not only individualized expression. Thus, students should not only have equal opportunities to engage in silent prayer but also the right to observe religious holidays and participate in symbolic religious expressions (Noddings, 2005), such as the wearing of hijab by Muslim girls and the kirpan for Sikh boys. It is important to point out, in anticipation of potential resistance, that the acceptance of students’ cultures and religious beliefs is not the same as the endorsement of a particular religion by a public school.
To strengthen school–community relationships, it is important that stakeholders maintain a proactive and cooperative model for collaboration (Sabry & Bruna, 2007). As such, education for immigrant-origin students can take the form of a multifaceted interplay between students’ homes, community resources, school programs, and classroom practice to enrich the curricular experience for students (Schlein & Chan, 2010). Similarly, Abu El-Haj (2009) highlights some ways in which an Arab American community arts organization served as an important site for promoting youth civic participation and social activism—again, calling attention to the importance of communities as resources for educators. And as another example, Antrop-González (2006) notes how a small school, through its curriculum, was able to privilege the linguistic, cultural, and sociopolitical realities of its communities as a “sanctuary” for the students. This work echoes our earlier discussions in this chapter regarding student–teacher relationships, notions of critical care, in addition to the importance of affirming and incorporating students’ racial, cultural, and ethnic identities into the discourses of schooling.
Returning to our earlier point about directly confronting and challenging deficit constructions of certain children, families, and communities, Long, Souto-Manning, and Vasquez (2016) note that if such work is not undertaken, marginalized and oppressed groups are going to continue to experience forms of discrimination through inculcated cycles of systemic and structural inequity (Winn & Behizadeh, 2012). The perpetuation of ongoing inequalities is evident in the processes through which children of color, emergent bilinguals, and those living in poverty are labeled as deficient in any number of ways. Such labels more often than not follow students throughout their time in school—not only affecting students’ sense of worth or belonging but also becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy with regard to students’ immediate and long-term academic success.
It is here that a focus on the cultural politics of belonging through a strengthening of school–community relationships has the potential to interrupt inequitable practices. As we discussed earlier, culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies serve an important role in the enactment of the curriculum as it pertains to promoting students’ success and achievement (Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris, 2012). It is important to have school leaders who challenge the deficit views of children and families in order to “make the commitment to work with teachers to examine attitude, assumptions, practices, and policies [and] move beyond talking about educating every child to taking action for positive and transformative change” (Long et al., 2016, p. 18).
Stronger collaborations between and among local community grassroots organizations, school districts, university researchers, and the city municipalities to develop authentic curriculum projects, has the potential to facilitate change beyond immediate notions of classroom or school-based notions of belonging. As Valenzuela, Zamora, and Rubio (2015) document, a grassroots community revitalization curriculum project not only works to both value the cultural wealth of “participating students, parents, teachers, and local arts institutions” (p. 47) but also assists in the transformation of researchers and community leaders. Another example of how schools are taking an active role in responding to resources within local communities is occurring in New Zealand. Berryman, Glynn, Woller, and Reweti (2010) describe educational transformation to better reflect a Māori worldview through the use of culturally responsive pedagogies that seek to ensure Māori values are recognized and legitimized. Again, through the cooperative interplay between schools and communities, cultural consciousness can be supported in ways that foster a greater sense of school belonging. Ngo (2013) calls attention to forms of consciousness as a lens for analyzing immigrant education that highlights the deployment of culture as social critique and political strategy.
Supporting sense of school belonging for immigrant entails much more than their individual feelings of involvement or inclusion. Supporting students’ sense of belonging in ways that challenge and disrupt inequalities is very much about cariño conscientizado—critical and authentic care that enables school staff to tackle structural racism directly, through multifaceted approaches to see, learn, collaborate with and engage immigrant communities as democratic partners in supporting the education of all students.
Concluding Thoughts
Cariño conscientizado—a pedagogy of critical and authentic care, reconceptualizes what it means to belong in school for immigrant and immigrant-origin youth and children through the identification of mechanisms that promote school belonging. Relationships, curriculum, and pedagogical practices that engage immigrant students and their families as valued partners play central roles in disrupting inequality and creating opportunities for students to experience a sense of belonging in school. In working toward active and direct means for disrupting inequalities—particularly as it relates to forms of oppression and alienation experienced by immigrant and immigrant-origin youth and children—perhaps one of the most important areas where inroads toward addressing these problems might be made has to do with the education and preparation of teachers. To make genuine and authentic inroads toward supporting student sense of belonging, teacher education needs to recenter its focus on preparing teachers to work across languages, citizenship status, and immigration experiences in ways that not only create opportunities for teacher candidates to reflect and identify the prevalent myths they hold about immigrant communities but also require them to actively confront and struggle against them (Fránquiz, Salazar, & DeNicolo, 2011). The University of Arizona serves as one example of how colleges of education are responding to this need. The Department of Teaching, Learning & Sociocultural Studies developed a position statement expressing their commitment to hold themselves accountable to maintain an awareness regarding power, marginalization and equity, among many other factors that contribute to inequality at an individual and collective level. The Racial Literacy Roundtables at Teachers College (Sealy-Ruiz, 2013) are another example of current practices in teacher education that aim to disrupt inequality through critical awareness. The roundtables bring together community members, high school students, professors, and graduate students to engage in critical discussions on race, equity, and schooling.
Additional recommendations for this type of work entail greater partnerships between local communities and colleges of education. For example, as we discussed above, both PAR and YPAR offer possible means by which to provide rich opportunities for students to practice, engage, and/or develop authentic notions of personal, civic, and community/social activism. Furthermore, such endeavors also have potential to provide teacher candidates with worthwhile opportunities for reflection on the ways that school policies, programs, and practices marginalize and racialize immigrant youth in order to become critically conscious regarding their own identities, cultures, biases, and privilege (Valenzuela, 2016) and how these shape their instructional practices. Beginning this process during a teacher education program supports the development of dispositions in teacher candidates that will enable the enactment of cariño conscientizado—critical authentic care for immigrant and immigrant-origin students and their families (Bartolomé, 2008a; Freire, 1998; Mercado, 2016).
Teacher education is not simply training (Crowley & Apple, 2009). Teachers need to be recognized as generators of knowledge responsive to the diverse student populations they serve (Ladson-Billings, 1999; Goodwin, 2002; Goodwin et al., 2014) and advocates that position immigrant, refugee, and undocumented students as knowledge producers. While it should go without saying, such work involves active participation in struggles toward achieving justice for all students (Kumashiro, 2015; Zeichner, 2009), particularly within teacher education.
In order to foster schools as sites that are truly dedicated to notions of belonging and inclusion, education research must take up the challenge inherent in a lens informed by cariño conscientizado. There cannot be belonging within schools if the structural inequities that shape the education of immigrant-origin youth in the United States are not identified and dismantled. Exposing the ideologies that position immigrant-origin youth at the margins would make visible the policies and practices that devalue students’ linguistic abilities (N. Flores & Rosa, 2015; Patel, 2013) and uphold the myth of meritocracy (Freire, 1970). Through this level of consciousness, we can disrupt the discourses that maintain illusions of inclusion for immigrant-origin youth and contribute to a broadening of the conceptions of learning. Problematizing belonging pushes the field of education research to demonstrate the possibilities that exist for school belonging that are rooted in the meaningful, agentive, and transformative participation of immigrant and immigrant-origin children, youth, and families.