Supportive adult relationships and the academic engagement of Latin American immigrant youth

Abstract

The central aim of this study was to explore the academic engagement trajectories of a sample of recently arrived immigrant students from Latin America. Using an analytic framework that can dynamically model time-sensitive fluctuations (HLM; [Raudenbush, S. W., & Bryk, A. S. (2002). Hierarchicical Linear Models: Applications and Data Analysis Methods (2nd Edition ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications]), we explored how initial engagement, gender, and support from caring adults at school shaped youths' engagement over time. Students reported a range of engagement trajectories, with gender and support emerging as important predictors of youths' engagement trajectories. Additionally, perceptions of support fluctuated from year to year, and these fluctuations were linked to youths' academic engagement. The findings point to associations between support perceptions and engagement, including links between students' current academic motivation and effort and their current connections with adults. Taken together, the findings present a nuanced portrait of academic engagement and suggest how relationships at school might facilitate positive academic adjustment among Latin American immigrant students over time. Implications for future research, public policy, and practice are discussed.

Introduction

Latin American immigrant youth are the fastest growing sector of the U.S. youth population, increasing by 57% over the past decade (U.S. Census, 2000). The country's demographic shifts are mirrored in American classrooms, where there has been a dramatic influx of Latino students. Indeed, one-fifth of children in the U.S. are growing up in immigrant families, and 62% of these children are Latino (Hernandez, 2004). Although many Latino immigrants enter their schools engaged in learning and optimistic about their futures, their academic adjustment is precarious and vulnerable to change (Kao and Tienda, 1998, Portes and Rumbaut, 2001, Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco, 2001). Indeed, while newcomer immigrant youth enjoy an initial advantage relative to their non-immigrant counterparts, length of residence in the U.S. has been associated with declines in students' academic achievement and aspirations (Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2001).

Latin American origin immigrant youth and native-born Latino students are at risk for academic disengagement, which can result in failing grades, multiple absences, and eventually dropping out (Catterall, 1998, Fry, 2003, McMillan, 1997, Rumbaut, 1994, Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco, 2001, Suárez-Orozco et al., 2007, Velez, 1989, Vernez and Abrahamse, 1996, White and Kaufman, 1997, Census, U.S., 2000). Although many immigrants face harmful stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination, the ‘negative social mirror’ (Suárez-Orozco, 1987) that Latino immigrant youth encounter may be especially corrosive to academic engagement. Unlike some immigrant youth who may be classified as “model minorities” or whose fair skin allows them to “pass,” Latino immigrant youth may be perceived as “illegals” lacking rights to “American” privileges including education (Portes, 2000, Suárez-Orozco, 2000). Prejudice and discrimination occurring outside of school-in the job market, workplace, and community-may also interfere with academic motivation and persistence. Latin American immigrant youth may find it more difficult to find Latino role models whose accomplishments (i.e. citizenship, hard work, and education) have been rewarded by equal treatment (Portes, 2000). With a decreasing sense of hope, Latin American immigrant youth may become less motivated to achieve and may withdraw emotionally and behaviorally from school (Coll et al., 1996, Ogbu, 1991, Portes, 1999; Suárez-Orozco, 2005; Vernez & Abrahamse, 1996). Academic disengagement is particularly worrisome in light of the central importance of academic success to youths' adaptation in post-industrial nations (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001).

Of course, not all Latin American immigrant youth fall prey to disengagement and school failure. Some remain actively involved or even increase their engagement over time. Others demonstrate fluctuating levels of engagement throughout their education. Indeed, students' academic engagement and disengagement is sensitive to contextual factors, including interpersonal connections forged at school. Supportive relationships with teachers and other school adults in particular have been found to contribute to the academic success of Latin American immigrant youth (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2007). In this study, we focus on the role of such support in predicting first generation Latin American immigrant students' engagement in school over a three-year period. To accommodate for variation in engagement and support at both the group-and individual-levels, we incorporate modeling techniques that assess the effects of support on engagement as both change over time.

Connections with caring teachers and adults at school can be an important protective factor in the lives of Latin American immigrant students. Adults at school offer information about cultural practices (Brewster and Bowen, 2004, Cooper et al., 1999, Stanton-Salazar and Spina, 2003) and buffer the emotional stresses of language difficulties, exposure to discrimination, discomfort with other cultures, and family separations secondary to migration (Davison Aviles et al., 1999, Roffman et al., 2003, Romero and Roberts, 2003, Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco, 2001). Supportive school adults may provide positive social mirrors for Latin American immigrant youth, enhancing their pride in their ethnic and cultural backgrounds and affirming self-worth and competence (Suárez-Orozco, 1987). Importantly, school staff also affect students' peer relationships, shaping norms of behavior by setting cooperative goals, discouraging competition, and creating an ethos of mutual respect (Ryan & Patrick, 2001). Finally, school staff may reach out to the other important adults in students' lives by holding culturally sensitive parent-teacher meetings and sending home instructive materials, thereby increasing parents' and guardians' involvement in their children's education.

A number of studies have shown that positive experiences with adults at school can set the stage for later academic engagement among Latino youth (Hamre and Pianta, 2001, Roderick, 2003, Stanton-Salazar et al., 2001). Teacher support is negatively associated with absences, detentions, and suspensions (Catterall, 1998, Hudley et al., 2003). Increases in teacher responsiveness have been associated with increases in Latino youths' confidence in graduating from high school, with the most vulnerable students showing the largest gains (Catterall, 1998, Valenzuela, 1999a). Croninger and Lee (2001) found that those students perceiving supportive teacher relationships were half as likely to drop out. Similarly, Roderick (2003) found that boys who graduated resembled their less fortunate peers in facing academic difficulties, but benefited from relationships with supportive adults at school that enabled them to push through hard times.

Unfortunately, Latin American immigrant youth often have limited access to supportive adults in schools. Schools serving immigrant populations tend to be affected by poverty, over-crowding, and segregation. Teachers and school staff are often ill-equipped with the specific skills (including bilingual education credentials) and knowledge needed to work with diverse students (Fry, 2003, Lowell and Suro, 2002). In fact, Latin American immigrant youth in particular may have relationships with school adults that compromise their attachment to school. For example, studies have shown that teachers are less likely to praise and encourage Latino youth or to incorporate their ideas in class, as compared with youth of other ethnic backgrounds (Katz, 1999, Losey, 1995). Importantly, discrimination from teachers has been found to predict lower grades, academic self-concept and positive peer affiliation (Davison Aviles, Guerrero, Barajas Howarth, & Thomas, 1999). Consequently, some have proposed that Latino youth rarely “drop out” of school; instead, they are “pushed out”.

Previous research suggests that access to supportive relationships with school adults may also vary by gender. Latin American immigrant boys may experience less support from school staff, including stereotypes that are especially harmful to academic engagement; in addition, they may be more sensitive to the prejudices and disciplinary actions that regularly face them (Lopez, 2002, Suárez-Orozco et al., 2004, Valenzuela, 1999a, Valenzuela, 1999b). Moreover and perhaps related, Latin American immigrant boys have been found to be less likely than their female counterparts to seek help when experiencing academic setbacks or conflicts with school personnel. In part, such help-seeking may be at odds with culturally prescribed gender roles that discourage boys from showing vulnerability (Roderick, 2003, Stanton-Salazar, 2001).

This study employed hierarchical linear modeling to examine students' perceptions of supportive school relationships as protective against academic disengagement over time. Previous studies of academic disengagement among immigrant students have tended to employ cross-sectional data, comparing two or more generations of cohorts, rather than addressing trajectories of change over time within the same cohort. Because most previous studies have included second- and sometimes even third-generation immigrants from a variety of origins (Fuligini and Pederson, 2002, Garcia-Coll et al., 2005), they have been less able to explore initial adjustment patterns and the unique experiences of recently-arrived Latin American immigrant students. Additionally, prior work has been largely descriptive of youths' academic outcomes, with less attention to the underlying processes that might account for variation in adjustment, including change over time.

Statistical methods used to understand the nature and effects of perceived support on immigrant students' adjustment have often focused on correlational and mean-level analyses (e.g. regressions and multivariate analyses of variance). These statistical methods reflect the tacit assumptions that students who represent a wide range of adjustment experiences and who follow diverse trajectories can be meaningfully grouped together; moreover, they present a static picture of a period that is best characterized by heterogeneity and flux. Even studies benefiting from longitudinal designs typically have modeled baseline perceptions of school support onto changes in adjustment, resting on the notion that such perceptions remain stable over multiple years amidst changes in schools and teacher assignments. This view is valid only to the extent that perceptions of support actually reflect fixed, intrinsic qualities or characteristics of the student (e.g., attachment style, personality) (Pianta, Steinberg, & Rollins, 1995).

While many theorists have, in fact, argued that support perceptions can be treated as relatively stable characteristics across providers and time (Lutz & Lakey, 2001), this study draws from the theoretical perspective that support perceptions represent interactions among perceivers and their environments. As such, while adolescents may have some tendency to maintain global representations of relationships, their perceptions are also subject to new and changing relationships and contexts (Pianta, 1999, Pierce and Lydon, 2001, Lakey et al., 1996). In addition, while some students are intrinsically more academically-orientated than others, academic engagement is also shaped by a variety of environmental factors, which themselves change over time.

Recognition of these complexities has increased in recent years and advanced statistical methods—including multilevel modeling (such as HLM) and structural equation modeling—have become popular approaches to studying youth over time. Such quantitative approaches have typically focused on native-born youth, however, and have rarely been applied to immigrant youth, including those from Latin America. For this reason, we chose an analytic framework (HLM; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002) that can dynamically model time-sensitive fluctuations. HLM is ideally suited for looking at longitudinal data where both independent and dependent variables fluctuate over time.

In this study, we tested three models, each of which examined a different facet of Latin American immigrant youths' engagement in school. The first model investigated trends in youths' engagement trajectories, describing change over time occurring at the group and individual levels, variation within the sample, and relationships between initial engagement and changes in engagement. We anticipated that students' engagement trajectories would show decreases over time at the group-level, but that there would be significant variation in these trajectories among the individuals within the group. Thus, some youth were expected to increase, others to decrease, and still others to maintain fairly constant levels of engagement during the three time points studied.

A second model predicted initial engagement and change in engagement over time with particular attention to gender and perceived support. In particular, we predicted that youth who perceived higher levels of support during the three years of the study would report more positive changes in engagement over time relative to youth who perceived lower levels of support. Within this context, girls were expected to evidence more positive changes in engagement than boys, although boys' engagement was expected to be more sensitive to perceptions of support.

Finally, a third model addressed relationships between year-to-year fluctuations in support and engagement in the group as a whole. Unlike the predictive model, which focused on associations between absolute, time-invariant levels of support and changing engagement, the third model addressed questions about associations between student-centered variation in support perceptions and engagement. Within-student variation in perceptions of support was expected to be positively associated with variation in engagement.