Case Studies of Expectation Climate at Two Bilingual Education Schools
Robert J. Johnson
University of Houston-Downtown
Abstract
The purpose of this inquiry was to examine expectation climate at two schools where bilingual education was an approach to educating language minority students. Using purposive sampling based on criteria of similar student demographics but with contrasting settings, two schools were selected for the inquiry. Case studies were prepared of each school based on qualitative data collected, such as interviews, videotapes of instruction, and teacher responses from a self-report instrument.
Comparing and contrasting the data from the two schools revealed that: (a) different standards (enrichment versus basic education) affected the type of expectations each group of teachers had for their students; (b) beliefs about the value of student native language influenced the type of expectations held for students (a higher valorization for Spanish reduced the perception that student acquisition of English was problematical); (c) the values and beliefs regarding curriculum as well as district and state expectations impacted the respective climates of the two schools differently; and (d) the use of the accelerated school model appeared to influence the kind of expectations one school faculty held for students. The data inferred the importance of viewing expectations as two-dimensional: standards and belief in student capability. A model of the socio-political dynamics of the expectation climate observed at the two schools is provided.
Despite extensive research on teacher expectations, few studies have focused their attention on teachers working in bilingual education settings. Among experimental approaches to studying expectation effects, none dealt with teachers in bilingual settings. In the literature where effective bilingual education was the topic, teacher expectation was one of the correlates studied and/or discussed (Carter & Chatfield, 1986; Garcia, 1988; Tikunoff, 1983) and from this a few useful generalizations emerged. In addition, a few naturalistic classroom studies (Carrasco, 1981; Goldenburg, 1992; Villegas, 1983) elucidated a few of the dynamics occurring in bilingual classrooms. Several researchers of teacher expectation (Brophy, 1983; Edmonds, 1984; Finn, 1971) also considered the possibility that the differential treatment model of expectancy effects (e.g., the interaction of expectation by individual teachers with individual students) (Cooper, 1979) may be less predictive of student performance than institutional expectations and their effect on teachers and entire groups of students.
Hence, expectation has not been systematically studied in bilingual education schools, particularly in terms of the potential impact on teachers' expectations by environmental factors such as school, district, state, community politics, and/or the prevailing school-level view of native language instruction and assessments. Rowan, Bossert, and Dwyer (1983) criticized much of the effective school research for using measures that had built-in biases that created disadvantages, at least in terms of attaining "effective" designation, for schools with high numbers of minority students (especially limited English proficient, or LEP, students). In addition, they were critical of the dearth of valid explanation of how the identified factors interacted.
It was the intent of this inquiry to describe and compare attributes, beliefs, and practices of bilingual and mainstream teachers of two bilingual education schools and to assess the interaction of the school and district environment on their beliefs and practices. A variety of data gathering approaches was used to construct a comprehensive case study of each school. The two schools were then compared and contrasted to view the trends that were most explanatory of observed level of expectations. The inquiry provided the following research questions as a guide:
1. What were the attributes of bilingual and mainstream teachers at the participating schools? The inquiry sought to describe teacher demographics, proficiency in Spanish, and country/region of origin.
2. What were the characteristics of the participating schools? The inquiry examined how each school community was responding to current challenges, the school community's interaction with the district and its stakeholders, the leadership dynamics, its goals for the year, and how it approached those goals, its policies, its climate, and the degree to which bilingual education was integrated into the overall school operation.
3. What were the beliefs of the bilingual and mainstream teachers at the participating schools? The inquiry focused on the beliefs of teachers regarding teaching approaches, the use of students' native language in instruction, their beliefs about their students, including predicted future performance, and the strengths and weaknesses of their students.
4. What were the practices of the bilingual and mainstream teachers? The inquiry sought to understand the teaching practices of the teachers and the language use practices in their classroom. These broad questions were then analyzed to ascertain their impact on the observed expectation climate for each school and, ultimately, across the two contexts.
School Selection
The two schools in this inquiry were selected from a sample frame of elementary schools from districts in Texas that met the following criteria as recorded by the Academic Excellence Indicator System Report (Texas Education Agency, 1993): (a) student populations of at least 40% limited English proficient (LEP), (b) 65% low socioeconomic status, and (c) 80% minority. The schools also must have had evidence of a bilingual education program. The schools were selected using purposive sampling (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).
The two schools described in this inquiry, Valle del Sol Elementary (a rural school in the valley region of south Texas) and Levin Elementary (an urban accelerated school), were visited in the winter and spring of the 1993-94 school year. The school names are pseudonyms. At Valle del Sol, 25 of the school's 48 teachers participated in at least one aspect of the research; at Levin, 13 of the 18 teachers participated. Approximately two-thirds of all participating teachers at each school were bilingual teachers.
Data Collection
A variety of approaches to gathering data were implemented in conducting the inquiry. Documents (bilingual plan, curriculum documents, campus plans, etc.) were examined; focus group interviews (Morgan, 1990) with teachers were conducted; semi-structured interviews were done with teachers who did not participate in the focus groups and with principals, bilingual coordinators, and other district personnel; non-participant observations of classroom teaching (both short classroom observations with field notes taken and 90-minute videotaped observations at different points in the inquiry) were performed. A 117-item instrument with both open- and closed-response items designed specifically for this research, named the Bilingual School Climate and Instructional Methodology Inventory (BSCIMI), was given to faculty at each of the schools. Qualitative research criteria developed by Lincoln and Guba (1985) were followed for the interviews, observations, and review of documents.
There were four theoretical perspectives that became important during the analysis stage of the inquiry. Levin (1991), and the theoretical foundations of accelerated schools became important in better understanding the findings of Levin Elementary, the accelerated school studied in this inquiry. In addition, the opportunity to assess the processes and the outcomes of accelerated schools emerged as well. Cummin's framework of intervention (Cummins, 1989) became an important model for examining the multilevel aspects of bilingual schools and determining whether his framework might be useful in understanding the dynamics encountered in the case studies, particularly in delineating the impact of an additive versus subtractive intercultural orientation found in the two schools' case studies. Persell (1977) provided a theoretical framework that explained the impact of societal biases on the expectations of teachers. Finally, Bordieu's concept of cultural capital (Bordieu, 1977) became useful in developing the model that explained the expectation climates found at the two schools.
Procedure
This inquiry was conceived as involving six stages, the first five of which involved site selection and data collection for each case study, and the sixth of which involved the final stage of analysis after all case studies had been completed.
Analysis
Analysis was an ongoing process beginning with the second stage of the inquiry through the sixth stage. The research questions guided the data collection process and served as the framework for the acrosssites questions to be contained in the interview guides. However, the interpretive focus centered on expectation as it was manifested in all aspects of the inquiry. The BSCIMI analysis consisted of descriptive statistical analysis of the quantifiable aspects of the instrument, and the openended questions were analyzed through inductive data analysis (Goetz & LeCompte, 1981) and modified by Lincoln and Guba (1985), as were the interview data. Inductive data analysis was also used to achieve data reduction, the development of working typologies and hypotheses, and the modifying and refining of hypotheses as each case study progressed. Teachers' interview results influenced the questions asked of the principal, bilingual coordinator, and other administrative personnel. This stage of data analysis was particularly important in the grounded theory for each school in relation to its expectation climate. Audio tape transcripts were made of the focus group interview(s) and were analyzed not only for content but also for communication patterns and for statements that further clarified the teachers' underlying beliefs and perception. The analysis of the videotapes was for the purpose of observing the methodological approaches used by the teacher as compared to the selfreport practices from the BSCIMI, the interactional patterns with students as well as between students, the degree and quality of student engagement in the lesson, the level of difficulty for the students, and degree and manner that English and Spanish were used in class. The constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) was used at each stage of the inquiry in integrating the categories and their properties, delimiting the emerging theory, and eventually delineating a working theory for the individual school.
Essentially, this section of the paper will summarize each of the principle findings related to each of the four research questions asked: (a) attributes of mainstream and bilingual teachers at the two schools, (b) characteristics of the two schools, (c) beliefs of mainstream and bilingual teachers, and (d) teaching practices of the two types of teachers.
Attributes of Teachers
The bilingual teachers at the two schools were similar in many of the attribute categories. There was one difference that was surprising: Valle del Sol, which resided on the U.S.-Mexico border, did not have a single bilingual teacher born in a country outside of the United States, whereas four of the 12 bilingual teachers at Levin were born in Latin American countries. Perhaps, as a result, Levin bilingual teachers were more likely than the Valle del Sol bilingual teachers to rate their writing ability in Spanish as excellent.
The mainstream teachers at the two schools, however, were not very similar. Valle del Sol mainstream teachers were more likely than Levin mainstream teachers to report their ethnicity as Hispanic (50% to 0%), higher levels of Spanish proficiency, and that they grew up in a bilingual home. On the surface, the mainstream and bilingual teachers at Valle del Sol had far greater commonalities than did the two groups at Levin. Yet, as will be seen, the Levin teachers possessed much greater similarity in philosophy than was observed at Valle del Sol. The attributes of the teachers did not appear to have an explanatory role in the two schools' observed expectation climates.
Characteristics of the two schools
Valle del Sol and Levin elementaries were found to have structured their bilingual programs differently in terms of official use of Spanish for instruction (Valle del Sol discontinued the official role for Spanish midway through second grade; Levin continued Spanish content instruction through sixth grade), and the use of homogeneous grouping of bilingual and mainstream students (Valle del Sol formally from third to fifth grade; Levin informally in their Fiesta Friday and enrichment classes).
Apart from acknowledgment of the whole language philosophy in the respective curricula, the characteristics of the curriculum of the two schools were quite different as well. The differences between the two schools resided in the following aspects:
1. Flexibility (Valle del Sol had a strict skillsbased scope and sequence; Levin used district curriculum guides as needed, but often relied on teacher developed units and nontextbook materials);
2. Curriculum focus (Valle del Sol on basic skills; Levin on enrichment);
3. Interest (Valle del Sol more traditional; Levin more hands on with choices for students);
4. Student evaluation (Valle del Sol used the traditional report card; Levin used a report card with developmental scales consistent with their philosophy of developmentally appropriate practices); and
5. Support by teachers (some Valle del Sol teachers complained about contradictions and lack of flexibility in their curriculum; there were no curriculumrelated complaints stated by Levin teachers).
The size of the districts had a big impact on how the two schools viewed the expectations of the districts. Valle del Sol teachers felt the expectations of their small rural district in specific ways (by the leadership, curriculum, etc.), whereas Levin teachers had considerable difficulty stating the expectations of their very large urban district. Valle del Sol's teachers consequently identified several positive contributions of their district to the school's expectation climate (infusion of technology, heterogeneous grouping, and the professionalism of the new superintendent) as well as negative effects (overemphasis on test results, contradictions between testing orientation and the use of portfolio assessment, and the perceived unwillingness to challenge the Texas Education Agency). The Levin teachers' main focus of both the positive and negative effects was support: the risktaking initial support for innovation (positive) and the notable silence of the district in sustaining the support over time (negative). Despite the many differences, though, the two schools had remarkably similar pass rates on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS).
The leadership dynamics appeared different as well with Valle del Sol's leadership coming from three sometimes conflicting sources (principal, superintendent, and bilingual/language arts coordinator) and Levin's focused on its collaborative team of principal, teachers, and community.
Beliefs of teachers at Valle del Sol and Levin
The trends regarding how useful the teachers at the two schools found achievement tests, oral language proficiency tests, and TAAS tests in both English and Spanish were fairly distinct:
1. Bilingual teachers at both schools were likely to rate Spanish versions of the measures as more useful than their mainstream peers;
2. Bilingual teachers at Valle del Sol were likely to rate the Spanish versions of measures as less useful than the English versions, while their Levin counterparts showed the opposite trend;
3. Valle del Sol's bilingual and mainstream teachers differed in their ratings of the measures based on version (English and Spanish), whereas the Levin bilingual and mainstream teachers differed in their ratings based on the overall importance of the measures for assessment (mainstream teachers felt tests were less useful than did bilingual teachers).
The perception of teachers at the two schools regarding the abilities of their students was also quite distinct and appeared to be much influenced by their curricular emphases. For example, teachers at Valle del Sol found lack of English proficiency as a reason why their students might fail or barely get by (particularly mainstream teachers), as a weakness of their top students (particularly bilingual teachers), and as a weakness of their bottom students (both groups equally). Levin teachers never once noted limited English of their students as a problem. Valle del Sol teachers noted lack of motivation (particularly bilingual teachers) as a reason for failure and as a weakness of their bottom students (particularly bilingual teachers), another characteristic never mentioned by Levin teachers. In addition, Valle del Sol teachers mentioned home environment or parental support as a strength of the top students and a weakness of the bottom students while home environment was never mentioned by Levin teachers. Meanwhile, Levin teachers noted lack of developmental readiness (they practiced developmentally appropriate practices) as a reason for failure, and good thinking skills as a strength of the top students; Valle del Sol only mentioned good thinking skills as a strength of their bottom students. The frequency of listed items by Valle del Sol teachers and Levin teachers suggest that the Levin teachers had an easier time listing both strengths and weaknesses of their students than did the Valle del Sol teachers with theirs.
In the category of expectation for student performance, there were three clear trends in the data:
1. Mainstream teachers at both schools were more likely than their bilingual peers to predict lower rates of failure (see Table 1) and higher rates of mastery (see Table 2) and to consider their students "a little better" than students in other classes;
2. Mainstream and bilingual teachers at Levin were more likely than their counterparts at Valle del Sol to predict lower rates of failure (Table 1) and higher rates of mastery (see Table 2), whereas Valle del Sol teachers were more likely than their Levin counterparts to rate their students "a little better" than students in other classes at the same grade level;
3. Teachers at the two schools had different views of mastery. It should be noted that the lower scores of bilingual teachers regarding the comparison of their students at same grade level does not suggest that they thought their students less capable academically (almost all said they were the same) but rather that the mainstream teachers, especially those at Valle del Sol, perceived their students as better.
Table 1
Percentages of Teachers at Valle del Sol and Levin Who Predicted
the Number of Students Who Would Fail
Table 2
Percentages of Teachers at Valle del Sol and Levin Who Predicted
the Number of Students Who Would Master What They Taught
*Indicates that not all teachers responded to item
When analyzing teacher efficacy, the bilingual and mainstream teachers at Levin were much more likely to disagree than their counterparts at Valle del Sol that a student's environment is a significant determinant of a student's motivation and performance (see Table 3). Regarding the ability of the teachers to reach difficult and unmotivated students, both groups of teachers at Levin were more likely to agree with their abilities to reach difficult students than their counterparts at Valle del Sol (see Table 4). There was little discrepancy between bilingual and mainstream teachers on this item at the two schools.
Table 3
Teacher Response to BSCIMI Statement, "When it comes right
down to it, a teacher can't do much because most of a student's motivation
and performance depend on his/her environment"
Table 4
Teacher Response to BSCIMI Statement, "If I really try hard,
I can get through to even the most difficult or unmotivated student"
*Indicates that not all teachers responded to item
When considering the valorization of Spanish, both groups of teachers at Levin were more likely than their counterparts at Valle del Sol to "create" bilingual programs with higher levels of Spanish for the six grade levels listed (see Table 5). The differences between the beliefs of the mainstream teachers at the two schools were absolutely dramatic, with Levin mainstream teachers very supportive of native language instruction.
When reporting beliefs about the effectiveness of the bilingual program at their respective schools, the majority of both bilingual and mainstream teachers at Valle del Sol did not believe their program was effective compared to Levin's teachers who agreed at high rates that their bilingual program was effective. Valle del Sol's bilingual teachers were more likely to believe their bilingual program was effective, whereas Levin's bilingual teachers were less likely than their mainstream peers to believe in their bilingual program's effectiveness. Clearly, there was considerably less discrepancy in beliefs of the two groups of teachers about the efficacy of the bilingual program at Levin than at Valle del Sol.
Table 5
Percentage of Teachers Who Recommended 50% or More Instructional
Time in Spanish per Grade Level of Students
*Indicates that not all teachers responded to item
Practices of Teachers
The practice of using alternative forms of assessment when students' English proficiency is an obstacle was much more likely to be done by bilingual teachers than by their mainstream peers at both schools with both groups of teachers at Levin reporting use of alternative assessments more frequently than their counterparts at Valle del Sol.
Observational data suggested that the questioning strategies of teachers at Levin were designed more to extend answers and promote critical thinking than was apparent at Valle del Sol, whose teachers seldom used questions beyond recall and comprehension. In addition, questioning by students appeared to be more procedural at Valle del Sol while at Levin, student questions seemed more for purposes of concept clarification and seeking further answers.
Analysis of language use practices revealed that both groups of teachers at Levin were more likely than their counterparts at Valle del Sol to report that they permit Spanish use in the class even when the class is being taught in English (see Table 6).
Table 6
Percentage of Teachers Who Permit Use of Spanish
Understandably, bilingual teachers at both schools were more likely to report permitting Spanish use than their mainstream peers. When examining specific practices of bilingual teachers, the following trends were noted:
1. At Valle del Sol, 60% of K-2 teachers reported using English when scheduled to teach in Spanish, a practice that none of their K-2 counterparts at Levin reported (see Table 7);
2. The great majority of bilingual teachers from both grade groups at Valle del Sol reported making content less difficult when teaching in English, a practice that none of the Levin bilingual teachers agreed to (see Table 8).
Table 7
Bilingual Teacher Responses to BSCIMI Statement, "I often
use English in classes I'm supposed to teach in Spanish in order to
increase my students' knowledge of English"
Table 8
Percentage of Bilingual Teachers Who Report That They Often Find
Ways to Make Lessons Less Diffucult When Teaching in English
*Indicates that not all teachers responded to item
Finally, observation data revealed that language arts practices were nearly equal in quality at the two schools, but content instruction at Levin appeared to emphasize higher level thinking more strongly than at Valle del Sol.
Figure 1. Socio-political model of expectation climate.
Figure 1 provides a visual schemata of the inferred ways the various factors appeared to exist in expectation climates of both schools. In this model, expectation was viewed as bi-dimensional and consisting of: (a) the standards that seemed to be prevalent at each of the campuses, and (b) a view of students' abilities, which may or may not be affected by the standards at the respective schools. The interaction between standards and beliefs in student ability were mediated by the beliefs of teachers in the teachability of students and their own ability to reach students effectively. Subsumed as part of the standards were the predominant values at each school concerning curriculum and the valorization of students' culture and language. The predominant values at each school had an important impact on how students' strengths and weaknesses were perceived. If student strengths were marginalized by the resulting values, then the perception of student ability would tend to be low—featuring student weaknesses in the curriculum would give teachers the idea that students were weaker than they might be in reality. On the other hand, if students' strengths were featured, then the cultural capital students bring to school resulted in a more accurate and balanced view of student capabilities. A statement made by the principal of the third school studied, but not included in this inquiry, brings out the importance of working from student strengths: "If you only focus on the weaknesses of students, then the strengths, over time, become weaknesses as well."
Relationship of This Study to the Expectation and Bilingual Education Literature
There were two unique findings of this study that add to the existing literature on expectation: (a) expectation is multidimensional in its formation, and (b) determining causality of expectation climate at schools on a crosscontextual basis for the purposes of generalization may be fruitless since, as was found at these two schools, the direction of causality may vary considerably from school to school. The literature on bilingual education has strongly suggested that providing much more emphasis on instruction through the medium of the native language than is commonly practiced in the United States is very important to the eventual acquisition of academiclevel English and the future school performance of language minority students. This study provides an additional rationale for pursuing a strong native language component in bilingual education. It may have a significant impact on the expectations that are developed by teachers and other school personnel toward their language minority students.
In addition, the findings would suggest that the counterhegemonic theories provided by Cummins (1989) and Levin (1991) may be valid approaches for schools with a large language minority school population, not only in improving student performance but also in creating school environments where expectations are likely to be much higher than generally exist in such schools. Levin Elementary, in the early stages of transforming its school, showed a strong intercultural orientation in three of the four educator role definitions (in the fourth, community participation, the data neither confirmed nor denied existence of this orientation). The powerful influence of the accelerated school philosophy at Levin resulted in teachers who were less influenced by the dominant ideology and were more critical of traditional practices in working with minority students. The "unity of purpose" efforts at Levin resulted in a more unified philosophy than what was found at Valle del Sol.
Implications for Practice
First, there are several implications for practice that are important. This inquiry suggests that the common practice of sloganeering ("all children can learn," etc.) may have little impact on the actual expectations that teachers may hold for their students. There are also many interactions with student performance, school values, curriculum, leadership, standards, etc., for a single intervention such as slogans to have much usefulness in changing expectations. This inquiry may also provide an explanation for why the TESA (Teacher Expectations for Student Achievement) training may have had little long-term impact on teachers in the study by Gottfredson, Marciniak, Birdseye, and Gottfredson (1991). The training was done exclusively with teachers, and it focused on attitudes without changing or restructuring the school. Teachers were shown in the early stages of their teaching after the training to be utilizing the ideas, but eventually they reverted to previous practices. Trying to change attitudes of individual teachers without comprehensive schoollevel reform may not get the desired results. The overall school climate is probably a much stronger mediator of expectations than the literature has recognized in the past. Unless teachers have a very strong sense of selfefficacy and a strong, consistent, reflective philosophy, it is unlikely that they will persist in resisting the cultural flow of the school (at least openly).
Although the implication of this research is that trying to change expectations in order to improve the overall performance of students might not be advisable, there is a role that a focus on expectations can play. During efforts to transform school practices, discussion of the expectations teachers have for their students may be productively dialogued as a way of unearthing inappropriate assumptions about students and their families and holding them up for critical inspection. Such inquiry could yield aspects of curriculum, methodology, and school culture that may need to change in order to accomplish overall school change and lead to more appropriate expectations in the process.
Implications for Research
Research on schools that this inquiry referred to as "bilingual schools"—places where minority communities are numerically, if not politically, dominant—may present some action research opportunities where transformation is a distinct possibility due to the homogeneity of the minority community and the near absence of a white power structure to serve as a major obstacle to change (see Lipman, 1997, for a description of how white middle and upperclass parents seeking continued privilege in an integrated school contributed to the scuttling of any significant restructuring). Learning more about such schools—commonly found in many rural areas along the U.S.Mexico border and within the boundaries of large urban areas—could be quite productive and revealing.
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This manuscript is based on a dissertation completed at Texas A&M University in 1997 and awarded 1st place in the outstanding dissertations competition sponsored by the National Association for Bilingual Education in 1998.
This inquiry was a highly detailed (two volumes) descriptive study that relied on "thick description" to lay out the case studies. In addition, there were 144 chart essays (tables with trends in data noted below the table). Obviously, the dissertation itself contained far more information than I had space to provide here. If readers want to have a more in-depth understanding of each school, as well as a more detailed comparison, then may should consult the dissertation for that information.