Immigration, Motherhood and Parental Involvement: Narratives of Communal Agency in the Face of Power Asymmetry

by Lilian Cibils, Shirley R. Steinberg (Editor)

Overview

Immigration, Motherhood and Parental Involvement is based on the vivid accounts of seven Latina immigrant women of how they learned to navigate the school system in the rural southwest of the United States. Their stories are presented within several contexts, the socio-political conditions of immigration overarching them all. The process of acquiring a new socio-cultural script offers a common frame to the narratives, which illustrate the central role of the community in finding spaces for agency in circumstances of vulnerability. As a contribution to educational theory, this book explores the official discourse of parental involvement within the broader context of social policy by pointing to a common underlying ideal parent norm across areas of policy related to family and women. It also revisits the concept of parental involvement through contrasting ideologies of motherhood, as it applies the concept of participation parity in everyday institutional interactions as a fundamental measure of social justice. Immigration, Motherhood and Parental Involvement offers deep insight into the institutionalized patterns of formal inclusion/informal exclusion in the relationship of schools with Latina immigrant mothers, even within the best intended programs. Its focus on the persistent need for the implementation of culturally and linguistically sensitive approaches to home-school relations makes this a must-read for undergraduate and graduate courses in teacher education, education leadership and sociology of education. Teachers, administrators and policymakers committed to moving away from the prevalent view of mothers as people who mainly need to be educated also need to read this book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781433130885
Publisher:	Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
Publication date:	01/18/2017
Series:	Counterpoints: Studies in Criticality , #439
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.91(w) x 8.86(h) x (d)

About the Author

Lilian Cibils is Assistant Professor of TESOL/Bilingual Education at New Mexico State University. Her research interests include home-school relations, immigrant parent involvement and qualitative inquiry in multilingual contexts.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Part I The Study and Its Contexts

Introduction 3

Chapter 1 The Big Picture: Immigration, Vulnerability and Marginalization 7

Chapter 2 A Situated Theory of Justice: The Significance of Structure, Process and Agency 19

Chapter 3 Seven Women: Seven Stories 35

Part II Narratives and Counter Narratives of Parental Involvement

Chapter 4 The Discourse of Parental Involvement and the Ideologies of Motherhood 53

Chapter 5 Polyphony: Master and Counter Stories 79

Part III Formal Inclusion/ Informal Exclusion

Chapter 6 Belonging and the New Cultural Script 133

Chapter 7 Linguistic Resources: Centrality, Contingency and Invisibility 149

Chapter 8 Mediated Interactions: Translation, Interpretation and Power Asymmetry 167

Part IV From Vulnerability to Communal Agency: Finding, Developing and Becoming Resources

Chapter 9 Critical Linguistic Agency 189

Chapter 10 Immigration as a Gendered Experience: The Crucial Resource of Physical Mobility 213

Chapter 11 Becoming a Resource: The Articulation of Agency and Structure 241

Conclusion 267

Epilogue: Educational Motherwork Beyond Grade School 273

Index 283