Data and related content for Rural place-based theory of care

<p>Objectives or purposes<br />
The purpose of this school-based narrative inquiry was to examine the beliefs, attitudes, and practices of rural educators as they described their work with Latinx immigrant, elementary students, negotiated the “space” between a professional and personal identity and demonstrated an ethic of care. Findings from this study support teacher education by providing practical recommendations for promoting culturally responsive practices, grounded in care, for PST and in-service teachers. To understand how rural educators worked with and cared for Latinx immigrant, elementary students, this study addressed the following questions: (1) How do rural educators describe their work with immigrant students and their families? (2) How do rural educators negotiate the "space" between a professional and personal identity? (3) How do rural educators define and demonstrate an ethic of care? </p>

<p>Methods<br />
I chose Narrative Inquiry as my methodology because, according to Clandinin and Connelly (2000), narrative inquiry focuses on the human experience as a holistic quality and is grounded in “mutual storytelling and restorying” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990, p. 4) in which the voices of both the researcher and participant become known. Narrative inquiry allows for caring relationships to be established (Noddings, 1986) that not only promote a more equitable partnership between researcher and participant but also collaboration. As stories unfold, the researcher and participant enter an entwined relationship comprised of shared experiences. Within narrative inquiry, the voice of the participant is central to how participants make meaning of their experiences and how a researcher comes to understand those experiences through the “telling, retelling, and reliving” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) of those stories. These experiences occur over time in a fluid motion and draw from past, present, and future events. According to Chase (2011), as researchers come to know the experiences of their participants, the relationship between them becomes entangled, “allowing for co-constructed meaning of selves, realities, and identities” (p. 422). Narrative inquiry is much more than the retelling of stories; rather, it situates those experiences within a larger context. These experiences are categorized by Clandinin and Connelly (2000) into three dimensions of narrative inquiry – temporality, sociality, and place. Huber, Murphy, and Clandinin (2011) unpacked these “commonplaces” as a way of further distinguishing narrative inquiry from other methodologies. Temporality refers to the “place, things, and events” that a participant experiences and encompasses their past, present, and future. Sociality refers to the social conditions found within experiences. These social conditions comprised the “cultural, social, institutional, and linguistic narratives” (Huber et al., 2011, p. 5) which are both experienced by the researcher and participant.<br />
Consistent with Narrative Inquiry, interviews and classroom observation field notes were turned into written field texts. Participants participated in three separate, in-depth, semi-structured interviews. All interviews were audio-recorded and lasted between 30 and 60 minutes. Once the interviews had been transcribed by the researcher, copies were sent to each participant for member checking. The semi-structured interviews (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) allowed for flexibility within the interview questions. During the 2019-2020 academic year, twenty-five full-day classroom observations were conducted; equal amounts of time were spent with the second-grade teacher, third-grade teacher, and paraprofessional. Following narrative inquiry protocols, as a way of co-creating meaning with participants, detailed field notes were recorded during the classroom observations. These field notes were important in developing follow-up interview questions, as well as beneficial to informing my understanding of educators’ experiences. Observations served as a way of recording and contextualizing specific incidents and behaviors, thus providing a reference point for interviews (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). During the observations, field notes included the physical setting, informal and formal student-educator interactions, educator behaviors, and dialogue between student-educators and educators-educators. Following classroom observations, field notes, researcher journals, and researcher memos served as a way of reflecting upon my time in the field, as well as making meaning of how the participants conceptualized an ethic of care. As a way of situating the school within a larger context, the researcher, who lives in this rural community, began this inquiry by reviewing newspaper archives that addressed issues related to immigration. Additionally, the researcher attended school board meetings and community events. Social interactions with students, families, and teachers outside of the school environment allowed for an up-close and personal inquiry into this rural community. <br />
Data Sources<br />
The rural community in which this study was situated has experienced a steady increase in the enrollment of Latinx immigrant students over the past ten years. The site for this study was selected based upon three factors: 1) location, 2) demographics, and 3) snowball sampling. Ririe Elementary School (all names used are pseudonyms) is a PK-6 building that serves a student population of fewer than 200 students. According to 2018-2019 IDOE: Compass data, Ririe Elementary School’s Hispanic population is 28 percent and 18 percent of students are categorized as English Language Learners (Indiana Department of Education, 2019). For the current 2019-2020 academic year, the certified teaching staff is 100 percent white, female with 31 percent having 0-5 years of teaching experience. For the purposes of this study, a total of four participants were recruited: a first-year elementary school principal, two classroom teachers, and a bi-lingual Spanish/English paraprofessional. Both the second and third-grade teachers currently teach immigrant students. The paraprofessional, born in Mexico, is the only bilingual educator in this study and works specifically with the Spanish-speaking population. Of the four participants in this study, three identify as female.    </p>

<p>Theoretical frameworks<br />
For this study, I drew on Swanson's (1991) middle-range theory of caring, Valenzuela’s (1999) concept of subtractive schooling, and Gay’s (2018) Culturally Responsive Caring as theoretical frameworks. Swanson's (1991) middle-range theory of caring was the conceptual framework that initially grounded my understanding of how educators work with and care for Latinx immigrant students. This theory, contextualized within the field of nursing and extended to the field of education for this study, outlined five caring processes: 1) knowing, 2) being with, 3) doing for, 4) enabling, and 5) maintaining belief. Swanson (1991) defined caring as “a nurturing way of relating to a valued other toward whom one feels a personal sense of commitment and responsibility” (p. 162). Valenzuela (1999, 2002), a leading scholar on Latino educational research, examined the subtractive assimilationist policies and practices in the schooling of Mexican immigrant and Mexican American students in Texas. These subtractive practices contributed to a loss of social capital and orientation towards academics. Gay’s (2018) Culturally Responsive Caring specifically focused on “caring for” ethnically diverse students. Culturally responsive practices “acknowledge the legitimacy of the cultural heritage of different ethnic groups, both as legacies that affect students’ dispositions, attitudes, and approaches to learning and as worthy content to be taught in the formal curriculum” (Gay, 2018, p. 37), which includes the need to incorporate multicultural curriculum into all subject matters. My conceptual framework, rural place-based theory of care is a result of the following findings and builds on Swanson, Gay, and Valenzuela's work on care. <br />
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Results <br />
Preliminary analysis of the data began during the process of collecting data by reviewing field notes from classroom observations and transcribed interviews. Researcher memos that included autobiographical writing and researcher journals, served as a way of helping me think through connections between the interview transcripts and field observations. Before coding, field notes and interviews were transcribed verbatim, including pauses and other verbal utterances. Data were coded using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). During the first round of initial coding, I focused on emerging ideas and subsequent emerging themes. Once themes had been categorized, decisions were made regarding whether these themes presented an “accurate representation” (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of the data, based upon the theoretical frameworks. After specific themes were “defined and refined” (Braun & Clarke, 2006), a detailed analysis was written. Based on classroom observations and participant interviews, narrative accounts were constructed that described incidents of “subtractive assimilation” (Valenzuela, 1999, p. 25). Preliminary findings discussed incidents of “othering” between various immigrant student groups (e.g., bi-lingual and emerging English Language Learners), as well as a transference of care (cite). Educators often relied on bi-lingual students to support emerging ELL’s academic and social-emotional needs.</p>

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