Multiple Perspectives on the Schooling of Mexican Indigenous Students in the U.S.: Issues for Future Research

Abstract

The authors—a researcher in Latino educational issues and a sociologist specializing in migration—collaborated to more fully understand and explain the schooling circumstances of Mexican indigenous students. After elaborating a conceptual framework of transationalism, the researchers present three types of results: (a) critical understandings about Mexican-origin migration for U.S. educators, (b) themes from a series of interviews with Mexican indigenous families and U.S. and Mexican educators, and (c) teacher research on the complex question of the language of instruction for Mexican indigenous students. The authors contend that once educators understand each country's role in U.S.–Mexican migration, conceptions of unsuccessful migrants are dispelled, and they can move to a focus on optimizing students' opportunities for success. Also, results from the family and school personnel interviews revealed a pattern of both challenges, such as extreme discrimination against Mexican indigenous students, and strengths, such as recognition of the cultural and linguistic strengths that Mexican indigenous students bring to school. The findings resulting from this interdisciplinary collaboration, along with initial results from teacher research showing promise for multilingual instruction for Mexican indigenous students, generated identification of issues for future research with a severely understudied population of multilingual students in U.S. schools.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This article was supported in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of English Language Acquisition: The California Bi-National Teacher Education Project. All opinions herein, however, are those of the authors and not the granting institution.