March 10: Dafney Blanca Dabach

UC Berkeley

The Intersection of Institutional Constraints, Teacher Preference, and Repertoire :

Implications for Immigrant EL Youth’s Access to Content

 

4 pm

Cubberly 114

pizza and drinks provided

 

Scholarly work in the field of Immigration Studies has not sufficiently examined teachers’ work with immigrant youth nor the ways in which teachers operate within distinct institutional tracks intended for English learner (EL) students. This talk presents data from the Teacher Adaptation Study (2007-2009) which investigated how teachers adapted their practice to immigrant-origin EL youth in secondary content settings commonly known as “sheltered” or SDAIE classrooms. Using qualitative interviews, focal observations, surveys, and case studies, this research presents an account of 20 social studies, mathematics, and science teachers who simultaneously taught in general education and sheltered tracks across 7 urban California comprehensive secondary schools, including: how teachers were placed in EL content courses, their preferences for such courses, and how social studies teachers in particular adapted between their general education and EL content-area classrooms. Findings show that institutional constraints combined with teachers’ differential preferences and repertoires resulted in uneven access to content for youth in sheltered secondary contexts. These findings raise questions about the nature of academic opportunities for immigrant-origin students who are identified as EL and placed within secondary sheltered tracks .

Dafney Blanca Dabach, Ph.D., has investigated critical issues in immigrant schooling for many years, including through her work with the Harvard Immigration Project and California Tomorrow. Her latest project, the Teacher Adaptation Study, was funded by the UC Linguistic Minority Institute, UC ACCORD, and the Center for Latino Policy Research. She currently teaches at Mills College and UC Berkeley.