Mentoring beginning immigrant teachers: How culture may impact the message

Abstract

Beginning immigrant teachers may experience cross‐cultural conflicts because their home cultures may differ in important ways from U.S. school culture. In California, mentors are assigned to work with new teachers, many born in other countries, to solve a range of problems—often attributable to cross‐cultural conflicts between the culture of the school and the cultures of these teachers. Mentors are veteran teachers, but even those who receive special training as mentors are not educated in theories explaining how culture influences child‐rearing and schooling practices. In this study, 12 beginning immigrant high school math and science teachers born in Asia and Latin America participated in lengthy, semi‐structured interviews conducted by an experienced mentor specialist (not known to the participants). Conflicts reported by participants were analysed from the perspective of differences between the collectivistic cultures of the teachers and individualistic culture of the schools in which they teach. The conflicts reported, primed in part by the nature of interview questions, were categorised as having to do with differences in perceptions of the roles of parents, teachers and students and relations among those roles—particularly in terms of role hierarchy and regard for authority.

You Have to Start from Scratch and You Need Someone by Your Side”: Perspectives of Parents and Teachers on Immigrant Students’ Adaptation to School

“…Much of this learning takes place in the educational system, giving teachers a significant role in the process (Horenczyk and Tatar, ). Teacher’s attitudes and beliefs are crucial because they reflect the perceptions of the dominant culture about the legitimacy of the students’ culture and their sense of worth as members of that culture (Geiger, ; Jhagroo, ; Mercado and Trumbull, ). A favourable attitude and orientation toward their ethnic culture makes a significant contribution to the adaptation of immigrant youth (Vedder et al, ).…”

Costs and benefits of cultural value mismatch in the globalising era: A commentary on the special issue “cross‐cultural value mismatch: A by‐product of migration and population diversity around the world” (IJP, December, 2018)

“…As found in this special issue, for example, parent–adolescent acculturation gaps were found in diaspora migrant women in Germany and in Israel (Aumann & Titzmann, ). Similarly, immigrant parents reported pronounced discrepancy with day care teachers in Germany (Bossong & Keller, ) and with social workers in Israel (Nadan et al, ) regarding child development; immigrant teachers from Asia and Latin America experienced cross‐cultural conflicts with students and their parents in the United States (Mercado & Trumbull, ); immigrant Latina/o students with home–school cultural value conflict showed poor performance in attentional control (Vasquez‐Salgado et al, ); marginalised indigenous groups (e.g., Bedouins youth in Israel, Maya girls in Mexico) were discriminated against in getting coping resources (Huss et al, ) and schooling opportunities (Tovote & Maynard, ).…”

“…In‐depth study of this topic has the potential to open up a new venue for future work on social change and cultural psychology. In the special issue “c ross‐cultural value mismatch: a by‐product of migration and population diversity around the world ,” nine research teams, who are from the United States, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Israel, and China, took an important step forward by identifying cultural value mismatches and associated distress among ethnic minorities (Huss, Ganayiem, & Braun‐Lewensohn, ; Nadan, Roer‐Strier, Gemara, Engdau‐Vanda, & Tener, ), immigrants or internationals (Aumann & Titzmann, ; Bossong & Keller, ; Galzer et al, 2018; Mercado & Trumbull, ; Vasquez‐Salgado, Ramirez, & Greenfield, ), and rural populations (Tovote & Maynard, ; Wu et al, ).…”

Cross‐cultural value mismatch: A by‐product of migration and population diversity around the world

“…Equally important, social change within a society can lead to a mismatch between pre-existing cultural values and adaptation to a new environment. As the articles in this special issue show, these interlinked sources of diversity lead to value mismatch on multiple levels: within individuals (Bedouin youth -Huss, Ganayiem, & Braun-Lewensohn, 2018), within families (Russian immigrants to Germany and Israel- Aumann & Titzmann, 2018), between values adaptive in rural villages and those adaptive in the city (Maya children working in city streets- Tovote & Maynard, 2018;rural and urban populations in China-Wu, Zhou, Chen, Cai, & Sundararajan, 2018), between clients and therapeutic models (Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Ethiopian immigrants in Israel-Nadan, Roer-Strier, Gemara, Engdau-Vanda, & Tener, 2018), between educational institutions and the families they serve (Turkish and Russian immigrant mothers, low-income German mothers in German daycare centres- Bossong & Keller, 2018), between educational institutions and their students (Latino youth from immigrant families studying at a U.S. university-Vasquez-Salgado, Ramirez, & Greenfield, 2018), between international students and domestic students at a U.S. university -Glazer, Simonovich, Roach, & Carmona, 2018) and even between educational institutions and the immigrant teachers they employ (teachers from Asia and Latin America employed in U.S. schools- Mercado & Trumbull, 2018). This special issue delineates and analyses these value mismatches and conflicts, investigating their causes and their consequences.…”

“…These common themes of cultural mismatch around the world illustrate the globalisation of social change and its effects. But there is another side to globalisation and that is the variety of cultural combinations and migratory movements involved in these nine articles: In the United States, research participants are Latino university students from immigrant families (Vasquez‐Salgado et al, ), teachers from Asia and Latin America (Mercado & Trumbull, ) and international students from all over the world (Glazer et al, ). In Germany, research participants are immigrants from Russia and Turkey (Aumann & Titzmann, ; Bossong & Keller, ).…”