The Future of Education

Jordan Roberts, Alessandro Rosborough, Juan Freire, Jennifer Wimmer  

Brigham Young University, United States of America, ([email protected], 

[email protected], [email protected], [email protected])

The text of the abstract should be minimum 170 words and maximum 450 words (including keywords and references). The abstract should only consist of one paragraph.

Emergent bilinguals (EBs) represent the fastest-growing population in U.S. public schools (Tarasawa & Waggoner, 2015), and this growth includes EB parents as well. This qualitative study analyzes emergent bilingual (English learner) parents' perspectives of their child’s teachers and school. Many educators and EB parents face linguistic or cultural barriers when engaging with each other, leaving parents feeling excluded. EB parents are often excluded from their students’ classrooms because of their English learner status (Delgado-Gaitan, 1991). Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and Freire’s critical theory were used in this study to critically view EB parent engagement perspectives and practices. Data was collected through a focus group and interviews and data was analyzed using discourse analysis for themes of power. Findings revealed practices that made emergent bilingual parents feel included in their child’s education and school while valuing their language and culture. I chose these methods based on Creswell & Creswell’s research on using focus groups and interviews to gain more information from participants and allow the researcher to guide the kind of questions that are asked (2018). These findings show how consequential it is for educators to build relationships with emergent bilingual parents and demonstrate ways educators can involve them in their child’s education. My aim for this study is to positively affect teacher engagement with EB parents and inspire other teachers and EB parents to do the same. I hope that by having such an objective, the common mindset can shift between teachers and EB parents from an “us” and “them” perspective when working with EB parents to a united “us” in supporting children’s education (Chavez-Reyes, 2010).