‘Good’ students and ‘involved’ mothers: Latin@ responses to normalization pressures in schools

Abstract

Drawing from two in‐depth qualitative studies, we used a sociocultural lens for a cross‐case analysis examining how Latin@s’ participation in schools is affected by ideological messages that subordinately position them in terms of their ethnicity, class, and immigrant status. We identified a range of dynamic responses to the school’s normalization pressures: (1) echando ganas [giving it their all] in school while labeled ‘at risk’, (2) living through school with perceived success, and (3) threatening the school’s normalization process. This paper emphasizes the need to create inclusive spaces that acknowledge, reward, and support the efforts and agency of students and parents that go beyond school‐prescribed normalization practices.

Keywords:

• Latinos
• students
• mothers
• public education
• normalization

Acknowledgments

The authorship of this paper is credited equally to both authors. Each contributed equivalent efforts toward its conceptualization, analysis, and writing. We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education for their substantive suggestions. In addition, we would like to thank Delila Omerbasic for her final editorial contributions and the participants of the Fall 2008, Department of Education, Culture, and Society Research Colloquium, University of Utah, who posed thought‐provoking questions and provided critical feedback on an earlier draft of this paper. The writing of this paper was partially supported by funding from the American Educational Research Association/Institute for Educational Sciences Postdoctoral Research fellowship.

Notes

1. Latin@ is utilized throughout this document as a gender neutral substitute for the terms Latino/Latina. The majority of the participants from these studies are of Mexican origin. However, we have chosen to use the term Latin@ when we speak of the whole group, because some participants have other national origins.

2. Collective social memory is a concept described by González (2001). It represents each household’s own particular history of lived experiences in dealing with issues of race, class, and minority status.