Conceptualising teachers’ understanding of the immigrant learner

International Journal of Educational Research 63 (2014) 26–37

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International Journal of Educational Research

jo ur n al ho mep ag e: www .e lsev ier . c om / lo cate / i jed u res

Conceptualising teachers’ understanding of the immigrant learner

Guida de Abreu a,1,*, Hannah Hale b

a Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdomb University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

A R T I C L E I N F O

Article history:

Received 1 June 2012

Accepted 25 September 2012

Available online 22 October 2012

Keywords:

Teachers’ conceptions

Teachers’ representations

Immigrant students

Cultural diversity

A B S T R A C T

This article examines teachers’ accounts of their experiences with Portuguese children and

adolescents in British schools. Specifically, teachers’ accounts of ‘‘bright’’ students and

students’ ‘‘needs’’ are examined to investigate understandings of their immigrant

students. Valsiner’s conceptualisation of the psychological construction of difference as a

process that is socio-culturally constituted and value-laden and Hermans and Kempen’s

notion of ‘‘contact zones’’ are used as a conceptual framework. The analysis shows that

processes of ‘‘normalisation’’ and ‘‘stigmatisation’’ underline the interpretation of

differences. The ‘‘bright’’ Portuguese student becomes assimilated to the category British

– the difference is eliminated. The student with difficulties, ‘‘not-bright’’, become

assimilated to the category other – the difference is valued as a ‘‘deficiency’’ (e.g. special

needs). Teachers acting within different contact zones provided alternative representa-

tions, and in particular, those from immigrant background take into account the cultural

dimension in their conceptualisation of the immigrant learner.

� 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Understanding trajectories of development and learning of children of immigration is a priority in our current world. Thelarge-scale of travelling and migration across countries and continents has created many challenges for families, schools andother institutions in modern societies. Teachers and parents often educated in relatively monolingual and homogeneouscultures have to engage with the schooling of children, who have different languages and cultures at home and at school. Thisis a task that many parents and many teachers feel unprepared and uncertain about how to carry out (Abreu & Cline, 2005;Abreu & Elbers, 2005; Civil & Andrade, 2002; Cline et al., 2002; O’Toole & Abreu, 2005).

The presence of immigrant learners in many classrooms challenges mainstream teaching practices (Gorgorio & Planas,2001; Gorgorio, Planas, & Vilella, 2002; Pastoor, 2005). Teachers are confronted with a learner who is ‘‘different’’linguistically, socially and culturally. As dialogical beings (Hermans & Kempen, 1998) teachers respond to these situations.How teachers respond to cultural diversity is an area under-investigated, but one which is increasingly gaining attention. Sofar, the available studies often provide evidence of teachers’ difficulties in working in culturally diverse classrooms, which isattributed to lack of knowledge, skill and motivation to cope with the challenges of cultural diversity (Tatar & Horenczyk,2003). Studies have also shown that teachers’ attitudes and views on multicultural education impact on the way theyrespond and organise their classroom practices and interactions. For example, in studies with teachers in England, Abreu and

* Corresponding author.

E-mail address: [email protected] (G. de Abreu).1 We are very grateful to the Portuguese Department of Education and the Gulbenkian Foundation for their grants to support this project, to Teresa Silva

for her assistance with data collection, the students, the parents, the teachers and schools who accepted to participate in this project.

0883-0355/$ – see front matter � 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2012.09.004


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G. de Abreu, H. Hale / International Journal of Educational Research 63 (2014) 26–37 27

her colleagues (Abreu, 2005; Cline et al., 2002) found a great divide on teachers’ views on the significance of the student’scultural identity in their school learning. This divide included teachers who ‘‘play down cultural differences’’ on the basis ofuniversal (and culture free) constructions of human development and understanding of ‘‘equity’’ as treating ‘‘everybody asequals’’. This was the dominant representation, in the sense that was shared by the majority of participants, but also in thesense that the institutional structures facilitated drawing on this view. Often teachers referred to their professional training,the National Curriculum and the teaching materials as constraining their practices in multiethnic classrooms (Cline et al.,2002). Teachers, who ‘‘accept cultural differences’’ as an important dimension in students’ school learning were of a minorityin these studies. Interestingly, they were the teachers who could resource their views drawing on their own personalexperiences of being a member of a different ethnic group or immigrant origin.

Thus there is some indication that the ways teachers are responding to cultural diversity may relate to their own lifetrajectories. But, there is something puzzling in the dominant response of the ‘‘playing down of cultural differences’’, as oftenthis ‘‘mismatch’’ and ‘‘conflict’’ with the expectations and experiences of students and parents. Cultural differences are oftenperceived by an immigrant student and by the parent as an important dimension of the student’s learning. But why does ateacher play this down? Here we would like to take a step back and investigate the processes that underline teachers’construction of their understanding of the ‘‘immigrant’’ learner. We will examine teachers’ accounts of their experienceswith Portuguese children and adolescents in British schools (Abreu & Lambert, 2003) that focused on the academicdevelopment of their Portuguese students. Our aim is to shed light on underlying representations and processes in teachers’understandings of their immigrant students.

Two main conceptual ideas from current cultural psychology will be used as a framework for the analysis of teachers’understanding of immigrant learners. The first idea informing the analysis is Valsiner’s conceptualisation of thepsychological construction of difference as a process that is socio-culturally constituted and value-laden (Valsiner, 2000).The second idea comes from Hermans and Kempen (1998) who introduced the notion of ‘‘contact zones’’ between cultures toexplain the multiplicity of human experience in the current climate of globalisation. By contact zones Hermans and Kempenmean the zones where people meet (physically or virtually). The focus on contact zones informs questions such as ‘‘How dothe meanings and practices of the contacting partners change as a result of their communication, understandings andmisunderstandings and conflict and power differences in these contact zones?’’ (p. 1117). In a certain way the notion ofcontact zone can be seen as an elaboration and extension of Vygotsky’s concept of Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky,1978). One difference is that Vygotsky introduced the concept to explain the cultural transmission of knowledge, whileHermans and Kempen wish to emphasise the cultural production of new knowledge. The other difference is that Vygotsky’semphasis was on negotiating understanding of knowledge tools, while Hermans and Kempen also emphasise negotiatingvalues and power differences. Combining these conceptual ideas enables us to explore teachers’ accounts of differences withreference to existing dominant social representations of the immigrant learner and also with reference to their experiencesin contact zones. The concept of contact zone will highlight the situated nature of teachers’ constructions of the difference.Comparing teachers who operate in different cultural contact zones, will enable us to examine constructions of theimmigrant learner that emerge from particular histories of contact.

2. The psychological construction of difference

Construction of differences, according to Valsiner (2000), is a basic cultural-psychological process. In his view,

Our psychological system is set up to make distinctions within the field in which we are constantly existing. Humandistinctions are overdetermined by meaning – both pre-emptively (my personal meaning system pre-sets myattention to create some distinctions and overlook the possibility of creating others), and in conjunction with thedistinction (a perceptual distinction becomes meaningfully interpreted). Each interpretation is value-laden –beginning from the value of the given distinction itself. Furthermore, the value-laden nature of interpretations isaction-prescriptive. (pp. 90–92)

Valsiner’s view enables us to hypothesize that teachers working with immigrant students would actively engage inmeaning making processes as an attempt to understand differences between their British students and their immigrantstudents. Secondly, Valsiner’s argument is that the socio-cultural basis of individual meaning making processes will pre-dispose the individual to pay attention to some distinctions and overlook others. Recognition of the socio-cultural basissuggests that teachers who are members of particular schooling histories, traditions and practices may be predisposed tocertain constructions of the difference. Furthermore, the constructions of the other that emerge from what is constructed assameness and what is constructed as different are value-laden (Valsiner, 2000).

The notion that the psychological construction of differences is socio-culturally based and value-laden is not new. Forinstance, it is a central notion in social representations’ theories (Moscovici, 2000). In order to understand the world aroundthem people draw on social representations, such as social representations of what is an intelligent person (Mugny &Carugati, 1989), what is a mad person (Jodelet, 1991), what is a person from a particular cultural and or ethnic group(Howarth, 2002). These images that people form serve as categories to position the other, and thus can be seen as definingsocial identities (Duveen, 2001). They become part of one’s social reality (Howarth, 2006), and mediate how one perceives,interprets and categorizes their social world, and also mediate what one does in the social world. For example, the image ofwhat is an intelligent person, serves not only to categorize oneself and others as more or less intelligent, but it also impacts

G. de Abreu, H. Hale / International Journal of Educational Research 63 (2014) 26–3728

on what one does to protect and reproduce these identities. Indeed, the example of a representation of an intelligent personis useful to exemplify the value-laden character of the interpretation of differences. Different cultures often define somebehaviours as more ‘smart’ or ‘intelligent’ than others do (Goodnow, 1990), and those who display the desirable ‘smart’behaviours are also categorised differently, such as ‘‘good pupil’’, ‘‘good girl’’, ‘‘good mother’’, etc. These definitions can partlyreflect that some behaviours are more adaptive for that culture, but they are also a reflection of what is valued in thatparticular society, institution or community.

Of particular relevance for both theory and practice is the fact that often the value-laden character of the representationsis not obvious for the individual and social group making use of them to construct their realities. This is a complex area, aspsychologically one tends to anchor the unfamiliar (new experiences) on what is familiar (Moscovici, 1988, 1998, 2000).Studies on teachers’ constructions of particular groups of students contribute to highlighting dominant and oftenstereotypical representations, which are used to categorize the students. For instance, Archer and Francis’ (2005) studyrevealed that teachers’ constructions of their British Chinese pupils was based on ‘‘narrow representations’’ of Chinese‘culture’ in dominant everyday thinking. Taking this background into account we set up to examine how teachers whointeract with students of Portuguese origin constructed representations of these students as learners. Are teachers’representations of Portuguese students grounded in their experiences? Do the representations borrow meanings from their‘‘representations’’ of the school learners in their society? Understanding how teachers re-construct their representations ofstudents to include the immigrant students is an important issue. As key social actors, in the orchestration of schoolpractices, the meanings teachers and educators give to differences are bound to influence the experiences of the learners.

3. Contact zones between cultures

It is important to take into account that the historical dimension is crucial in socio-cultural analysis of learning andhuman development. In fact, it has been argued that to understand human development in the present historical conditionsof mass immigration, new theories are needed (Abreu & Elbers, 2005). Current historical conditions such as globalisation, andmass travelling and migration require a complementary focus on the studies of human development of learning, i.e., a focuson creation of new cultural forms, as complementary to the focus on transmission of tradition. Hermans and Kempen (1998)argued against the old dichotic conceptualisations of cultures as ‘‘internally homogeneous and externally distinctive’’ toexplain development in the current globalised world. Instead they suggested that it would be more productive to explore‘‘contact zones’’ between cultures. For Hermans and Kempen, these are zones where people meet (physically or virtually).Contact zones are the periphery of cultures rather than the core as the boundaries between cultures become more and morepermeable due to the globalised world we now live in. The concept of contact zone between cultures is interesting as analternative to traditional accounts of cultural contact, such as the concept of acculturation, because it is more fluid. Contactzones are spaces for interaction, but they are located in societal contexts, and in this sense are socio-cultural spaces. Thecontact zones where teachers and students encounter are located in specific cultural practices, such as formal schooling orafter school supplementary schooling. In this sense the dynamics of these encounters are socio-culturally and institutionallyconstrained. For example, teachers’ contact with an immigrant student who has just arrived may be constrained by schoolpolicies, practices and resources. In the Portuguese project we found a diversity of settings, practices, policies and resources.One of the key differences, for example, was that some schools with a high percentage of Portuguese students had a teacherof Portuguese origin among their permanent members of staff. Other schools, argued that they could not afford suchresources, and were dependent on the after school service supported by the Portuguese Department of Education. Schoolpolicies clearly informed this allocation of resources, as the teachers of Portuguese origin, who were working for a Britishschool had a job similar to any other teacher in the school. That is, they were a classroom teacher in primary schools, or asubject teacher in secondary schools and colleges. However, the presence of these teachers did make a difference to practicesrelated to schooling of the Portuguese students, as they were used as a resource for bridging between the two cultures. Insome cases, this has been institutionalised in roles attributed to these teachers, such as being the school ethnic minorityachievement co-ordinator. In the empirical analysis we will illustrate how contact zones impact on teachers’ understandingof the Portuguese learner.

The contact zone is a space of interaction, and thus the same person can move between different contact zones. A keyissue for teachers of immigrants is that their presence in the classroom may disrupt the taken-for-granted routines they areused to. Interactions with these students may make these teachers aware of the cultural and social resources they took forgranted in the past (such as mastering of the language for communication, being able to predict home school relationships).The contact zone exposes the teacher to unfamiliar teaching and learning situations. Thus, the contact zone can beconceptualised as a zone in which existing social representations are challenged, a space for both re-production and for re-interpretation of existing representations and for development of new ones. In this contact zone, the teacher’s socialrepresentations of the students are challenged. The ‘collective’ they are teaching becomes disrupted and unfamiliar when aPortuguese student is introduced to the classroom. This disruption or intrusion on the familiar can threaten the teacher’sidentity – it disrupts his or her knowledge of what is required to teach this collective.

According to Moscovici (2001) we create representations in order to make familiar what is strange, disturbing, uncanny(p. 20). Moreover the social representations that emerge to make sense of the unfamiliar are not neutral and disinterested.They are constructed on the basis of the existing social reality, what is familiar for the social group, and involve a positioningtowards the object. It is as if they are created with the function of protecting the existing practices, and defending existing


identities (see for instance, Jodelet, 1991; Howarth, 2002). Initially the unfamiliar is perceived as strange. With time, as thecontact with the unfamiliar cannot be avoided a representation is developed drawing on what is already familiar. Drawing onthe familiar is a mechanism for ensuring cultural continuity. It can also be a mechanism for unwittingly perpetuatingrepresentations and practices without questioning or problematizing them. Drawing on these ideas enables us to speculatethat the way teachers ‘‘construct the difference’’ is not fixed, but evolves within contact zones.

4. Empirical context and methods

The data analysed in this paper was collected as part of much larger three-year research project titled The Education ofPortuguese Students in England and Channel Island Schools (Abreu & Lambert, 2003). The project was commissioned by thePortuguese Department of Education and involved two main stages. The first stage consisted of a survey of performance instandard formal tests and examinations part of the British formal schooling system. The second stage explored theexperiences of Portuguese students in schools in England and Jersey, considering the perspectives of students, their teachersand their parents. Though students of Portuguese origin form a significant group in British schools, when we started thisproject, in 1999, there was virtually no research-based work published in Britain about their adaptation and educationalexperiences. Portugal has historically been a country of emigration. Britain has been one of the main destinations of recentflows and there are indications of the fast growing size of the Portuguese community in Britain (Abreu, Cline, & Lambert,2004). In the last decades the number of Portuguese people living in England and British Isles has increased rapidly.

Since 1974 the Portuguese Department of Education in London have been providing courses to support learning (ormaintenance) mother tongue and culture. At the time of this study (2001/02) 151 Portuguese language courses were runningin Britain (Estrela, 2003), covering from primary to college level. The vast majority of these courses were taught after schooland 2725 students aged 7 and 19 years attended these classes. This service provided a starting point for the study of theexperiences of Portuguese students in Britain. The enrolment in Portuguese classes provided a good indicator of areas inwhich the recent migrants were settling. Based on this information, British schools located in London, the South Coast ofEngland and Jersey were contacted. After establishing that they had a substantial number of Portuguese students enrolled,they were invited to participate in the study. This facilitated access to a broader sample, which included students who wereenrolled in Portuguese classes and others who were only attending the British schools.

The survey of performance conducted in the first year of the project revealed that a large number of Portuguese studentswere achieving below the targets for their age (Abreu & Lambert, 2003). The patterns were nevertheless complex withvariations between areas, between schools in the same area, and on advanced level studies dependent on the subject. Thefieldwork in the second stage involved an ethnographic approach using a multiple-method strategy of data collection(interviews, classroom observations, written life-stories, semi-structured questionnaires); multiple-data sources (schools,students, parents, teachers); a bilingual–bicultural approach enabling data collection in English and Portuguese languages.This paper will draw selectively on data from interviews with teachers who taught students of Portuguese origin in Englandand Jersey schools.

4.1. The teachers interviewed and their schools

The corpus of data examined in the article covers 31 interviews, all conducted in English language. Twenty-nine of theseinterviews were carried out individually, and two in groups. The group interviews included a head teacher and a language co-ordinator in one of the primary British schools, and a group of five Portuguese teachers. The total sample interviewedincluded 27 British teachers and 9 Portuguese teachers (includes a French born Portuguese teacher). They were involvedwith the teaching of Portuguese students at the time of being interviewed, but their roles varied. The British sample included16 classroom teachers, 5 English as a second language co-ordinators, 5 head teachers and one head of modern languages. AllPortuguese teachers taught Portuguese language, but they had varied institutional affiliations. Two of the teachers wereemployed by local British schools, one teacher worked for a Local Education Authority, and the others were employed by thePortuguese Department of Education.

The type of school these teachers worked in also varied. As shown in Table 1, these included primary, secondary and SixthForm College teachers who worked in highly multiethnic schools in London and in mainly white British schools in the SouthCoast of England and Jersey Island. This diversity in the teachers’ experiences and background proved to be relevant for theunderstanding of how contact zones can impact on teachers’ conceptualisation of immigrant students.

The criteria given to schools to help to select potential participants was to include students of Portuguese backgroundwho were experiencing difficulties and achieving below the targets and students who were ‘‘good’’ and achieving at, orabove, the targets expected for their age group. To facilitate this task, the year-3 group was targeted in primary schools, as thestudents had to take their key stage 1 tests at the end of year-2. The same principle was used for secondary schools targetingstudents in year-7, year-10 and A Level. For each of these year groups, teachers could draw on formal tests to suggestpotential participants for the study. All parents were informed about the study, and specific students were only approachedafter their parents had given their consent. Table 1 shows that only 11 of the 48 students, who participated as case studies,were born in the UK. This reflects the composition of the group in the participating schools, with a very high proportion ofstudents born in Portugal and who arrived at the British schools at different stages of their schooling, with no fluency in thelanguage of teaching.

Table 1

Number of teachers interviewed, targeted students and their schools.

Schools Number of students interviewed Number of teachers interviewed

Total Born in the UK British Portuguese

Highly multiethnic

Primary/London (2 schools) 08 04 04 01

Secondary/London 10 04 10

Sixth Form/London 11 01 01

Mainly White British

Primary/South Coast 04 01 04

Secondary/South Coast 07 00 05

Secondary/Jersey 08 01 04 07

Total 48 11 27 09

Table 2

Number of passages.

British teachers Portuguese teachers Total

Bright 12 passages/7 teachers 05 passages/3 teachers 17 passages/10 teachers

Needs 36 passages/17 teachers 08 passages/3 teachers 44 passages/20 teachers


4.2. The procedures for data collection and analysis

The interviews with the teachers were conducted as a final step of data collection in each school. This meant that all theclassroom teachers were interviewed after their students, and head teachers and language co-ordinators were the last to beinterviewed in each school. This provided an opportunity for the teachers and the researchers to get familiar with each other,as they collaborated in the organisation of the previous steps of the research, such as selecting targeted students, obtainingcollaboration and ethical consent from parents, etc. In addition, this provided the researcher with specific knowledge of someof the school’s Portuguese students. Drawing on this knowledge the researcher was able to ask the teachers to talk about thespecific students involved in the study, as well as to draw on their wider experience with the group. The interviews weresemi-structured, combining a mixture of episodic (asking the interviewees to draw on specific experiences, concrete cases)and narrative structure (reflecting on their experiences over time, and exploring the representation they formed of theirteaching of Portuguese students) (Flick, 2000). Thus, for example, teachers of target students were asked questions, such as‘‘How is [name of the student] doing academically?’’, ‘‘How do you perceive the situation of the Portuguese students in thisschool?’’, ‘‘Is there anything in particular that you enjoy about teaching Portuguese students as a group?’’, ‘‘If there isanything that could improve the situation of Portuguese students in British schools, what would you say it is?’’

Interviews with teachers varied in length from 30 minutes to approximately one hour. They were recorded and fullytranscribed. For the purpose of this paper the first step in the analysis consisted of reading and re-reading of the interviewtranscripts to form an overall view of what teachers conveyed about Portuguese students who were doing well and otherswho were struggling. At this stage it emerged that teachers were using key words, such as ‘‘bright’’ and ‘‘needs’’, to describethe Portuguese students. It was also noted that the use of these key words carried out meanings revealing implicitconstructions of the Portuguese student. These implicit constructions involved positioning the student in particular socialcategories, which would privilege a particular type of explanation for their academic development.

Following on these observations the second step in the analysis involved systematic coding of all the passages(word + paragraph) where teachers used the words ‘‘bright’’ and ‘‘needs’’. The examination of key words is a recognisedmethod in cultural analysis. Social scientists, such as anthropologists and social psychologists, see key words as an ‘‘easyreference to the salient cultural concepts that they mark’’ (Quinn, 2005) and as a tool to examine cultural schema andrepresentations. The method has the advantage of enabling comparison between interviews (Grossen & Apotheloz, 1998).

The key word coding was supported by NVivo, and resulted in 22 passages for the word ‘‘bright’’ and 63 passages for theword ‘‘needs’’. As the programme automatically coded each paragraph where the key word appeared, this mechanic codingwas refined through reading each passage to ascertain if its meaning was relevant to teachers’ understandings of theirPortuguese students. This resulted in a final selection of 17 passages for ‘‘bright’’ and 44 passages for ‘‘needs’’ as the corpus ofdata examined in this paper. As shown in Table 2 these passages were drawn from interviews with 10 teachers (bright) and20 teachers (needs).

The third step in the analysis consisted of scrutinising the passages for underlying themes recurring in teachers’ accountsof the ‘‘bright’’ student and the students’ ‘‘needs’’, and which illustrate patterns across more than one interview. Finally,using theoretical lenses the above themes were examined in terms of what they reveal about (i) processes in thepsychological construction of the difference and (ii) in terms of the extent to which that ‘‘contact zones’’ influence thisconstruction.

Table 3

British teachers’ accounts of Portuguese ‘‘bright’’ students.

Selection of extracts from teachers’ interviews Underlying theme

1. Academically, I’m not aware that she has had any problems. I mean she is bright,

you know she is articulate. She has integrated well with the form and has got lots

of close friends. She’s quite competent with her English though. You know, she

doesn’t struggle for words. You know, if you didn’t know that she isPortuguese, I don’t think that you would necessarily guess straight away

because she is so. . .you know, her English is at such a good level. (LS-Alicia)

‘‘bright’’ makes being Portuguese invisible

2. She was so obviously such a bright girl. And her Mum had told me that she was

in the top class back in Madeira for English, Maths. . .for everything. And of

course, she is plonked in here and unable to communicate and I could see it was

so frustrating for her. But she’s now one of the better achievers in year four. She

has done really well. I mean, she. . .I had that class from the middle of year one

(. . .) So, when in year two she was reading fluently, writing fluently, speakingfluently in both languages. (PS-Amy)

‘‘bright’’ means equivalence to monolingual

competence in English

3. So, you’ve got a real range who’s in year eleven and I’m not too sure when she

came here, but Anna has got an incredible brain. Gabrielle isn’t a bright student.

So, I don’t think that that helps either. So. . .we come down to innate ability to a

certain extent. (SS-Pierce)

‘‘bright’’ means incredible brain

Not ‘‘bright’’ is a result of one’s innate ability

4. The boy is lovely. Not a high flier but I think that is actually due to innate ability.

He’s not the brightest lad. (JE-Gail)

Not ‘‘bright’’ is a result of one’s innate ability

5. When I came here, everything in the English department was set. (. . .) I noticed that

the classroom two doors down was the room where there are the bottom set and

most of the kids in there were Portuguese kids. Now, the others were the naughty

ones who were falling behind academically because of their behaviour. But the

Portuguese kids. . .I remember saying, ‘‘Are they not very bright these kids in thisgroup?’’ ‘‘Oh no they’re not.’’ And it was dismissed. (. . ..) Here it wasn’t like that at

all. It was very much a case of they don’t speak the language. They can’t do this.

They are poorly motivated. They are not really very interested. They are right down

here. Now, it’s actually only when I got talking to some of the kids in that group. . .I

remember being staggered by how bright and sparkly these kids were. (JE-Gail)

Not ‘‘bright’’ means being allocated to the bottom set

Do not speak the language

2 Numbers into brackets refer to the specific teacher’s extract in the respective tables.


5. Analysis

The analysis is presented in two parts. Part one focuses on the British teachers and illustrates how they conceptualise thedifferences between the Portuguese and their British students. This analysis attempts to examine psychological processesinvolved in the construction of the difference. The second part focuses on accounts from Portuguese teachers and examinesthe extent to which contact zones matter in the way differences are constructed.

6. British teachers’ representations of Portuguese students

6.1. British teachers’ accounts of ‘‘bright’’ Portuguese students

Table 3 presents a selection of extracts from British teachers’ interviews illustrating ways in which the keyword ‘‘bright’’ wasused in their accounts of Portuguese students. Close examination of these accounts reveals that ‘‘bright’’ students are describedas students who have no academic problems (1),2 are high achievers (2), have got an incredible brain (3), are competent inEnglish language (1, 2) one would not guess they are Portuguese (1), socially they are very well integrated and have friends (1).This representation is in opposition to the ‘‘not-bright’’ student, which was a description applied to students who were lowachievers (3, 4), supposedly due to some kind of innate ability (3, 4), a language problem (5), and lack motivation (5).

Though these characteristics can be taken as dominant in the categorisation of the ‘‘bright’’ student, it is clear that thereare dissident views when they become institutionalised and applied homogeneously to the group, and in particular when thenegative view overrides (‘‘not-bright’’ dominates the practices). Extract 5 in Table 3, shows an example of the enacting of thisrepresentation in institutionalised school practices, and how a teacher who did not share the representation opposed it.Elaborating her thinking further, the teacher argued that school practices of allocating Portuguese students to low achievingsets were based on the assumption that language barrier meant intelligence barrier, and consequently not being ‘‘bright’’.

Now I remember. . .bearing in mind that where I came from, we didn’t have that approach. It was, ok, recognisesomeone’s intelligence. You might also recognise that the language might not match the intelligence but you dorecognise their intelligence as well. Here it wasn’t like that at all. It was very much a case of they don’t speak thelanguage, they can’t do this. They are poorly motivated. They are not really very interested. They are right down here.

Table 4

British

Selec

1. We

you

the

bee

2. Yoare

me

fro

fee

(SS

3. The

is a

had(SP

4. For

mo

5. So

tea(JE

6. We

(PS

7. Mehav

ma

8. I th

don

dif

6. It c

yea

sup

the

spe

neou


Now, it’s actually only when I got talking to some of the kids in that group. . .I remember being staggered by how brightand sparkly these kids were. And then when you start looking a the. . .because Jersey is very hot on the CATs testing andlook at some of their scores especially where the learning skills aren’t involved and they are actually quite high. Andthat made me feel, you know there is a problem here in terms of the perception of these people. . .because of thelanguage barrier, there is the assumption also that there is an intelligence barrier. (JE-Gail)

What emerges from this analysis is that in distinguishing between being ‘‘bright’’ and ‘‘not-bright’’ is implied a way ofmaking sense of the differences between the Portuguese students and the British students. For the ‘‘bright’’ students thedifferences are discounted and the similarities with British students emphasised. For the ‘‘not-bright’’ students, differencescan be considered on one level as emphasised as they are perceived as having a ‘‘language problem’’. On the other hand, theycan be seen as minimised as this is attributed to innate ability. Let us now move to the analysis of ‘‘needs’’, which will shedsome further insight into this construction.

6.2. British teachers’ accounts of the needs of Portuguese students

Table 4 presents a selection of extracts from British teachers’ interviews illustrating ways in which the keyword ‘‘needs’’was used in their accounts of Portuguese students. Close examination of these accounts reinforces key dimensions inteachers’ representations of Portuguese students, which were already stressed in their accounts of ‘‘bright students’’. One ofthese dimensions is the underplaying of being Portuguese (1, 2, 3). A students’ needs takes priority over their culturalbackground, and provides the frame for a teacher to discount the cultural origin of the student, as it is strongly emphasisedby Pierce, ‘‘I do not see them as Portuguese pupils’’ (1), and by Laura, ‘‘You do not think Portuguese, Chinese’’. (2). The otherdimension is the emphasis on individual characteristics of the student, such as emphasis on individual’s ‘‘special needs’’ thatare independent of context, which as argued by Rachel would have appeared if the student ‘‘had been brought up in Portugal’’(3). The ‘‘language problem’’ is also included as a need (4). The centrality of the concept of needs can also be seen enacted in

teachers’ accounts of Portuguese students’ needs.

tion of extracts from teachers’ interviews Main theme

ll, I don’t see them as Portuguese pupils. I see them as students, first and foremost. Obviously

’ve got to be aware of their needs because many of them come along and

y don’t have access to or experience of English in the way you would expect students who have

n brought up in the system. (SS-Pierce)

Students needs comes first, and being

Portuguese is discounted

u don’t think, Portuguese, Chinese. That doesn’t happen. It’s like, ok, this is a person. Where

they? What do they need? What are their requirements? And how can we

et their needs? It doesn’t have to do with where they come from. Um and where they come

m isn’t an issue. I mean it might be an issue socially with them within the school and how they

l socially within the school.

-Laura)

Students needs comes first, and being

Portuguese is discounted

re is one girl that I don’t think you have met that I would say has low self esteem. But then she

lso the one I would say who has special needs problems anyway. So she probably would have trouble if she had been brought up in Portugal as well.

-Rachel)

Special needs are individual and

independent of cultural context

more than any the Portuguese children, it is the language problem that is sometimes a needre than anything else. (LP-Alex)

Not speaking English is a language

problem and a need to be addressed

they came to our school and I was then what we call a remedial teacher, a special needscher and some I had to teach them to read and that held me and in the process

-Christopher)

Special needs teacher is assumed to have

the skills to deal with the student at arrival

use a lot to be honest from the special needs kind of area or lower down the school.

-Rachel)

School draws on existing special needs

service

et their needs. Meet their needs. Really fundamentally make sure. . .and we do have this. We

e kids like the young boy who come over from Madeira and they are put straight into

instream school. There is no attempt to bridge the gap. (JE-Gail)

Schools must meet their needs

ink it’s generally quite good throughout school. We have addressed some needs and we have

e some training. Some staff take it on more easily than others and some find it really quiteficult. (PS-Frank)

Some teachers find difficult to address

their needs

an actually be quite difficult especially with older kids when you get put in say

r 9 with very basic English because they have just come from overseas and although you have

port in the school, you don’t have the support in the lesson to help you and

y don’t have learning support assistants for all the children and you have got some really

cial needs kids and you’ve got the language kids. To try and go round and address everyone’seds while you have got six kids that really need special attention and the rest of the class to sort

t can be quite stretching. (LS-Fiona)

Some teachers find difficult to address

their needs


the school practices, as illustrated in the accounts from Christopher (5) and Frank (7). Christopher’s (5) account isparticularly illuminating as it shows that the school reaction to ‘‘meet the needs’’ of this new arrival group they wereunfamiliar with was to draw on the ‘‘special needs teacher’’. Rachel (6) also points out that the school draws on their existingresources from the special needs area to address the ‘‘needs’’ of their Portuguese students.

It is relevant to note that while the concept of ‘‘bright’’ generated some controversy, the concept of ‘‘needs’’ was morewidely accepted.

7. Some threads in British teachers’ construction of the difference

The analysis of common threads in the British teachers uses of the key words ‘‘bright’’ and ‘‘needs’’ reveal a dominantconstruction of the Portuguese students in British schools that emphasise the ‘‘underplaying of being Portuguese’’ and the‘‘primacy of innate abilities in learning’’. After discussing these two dimensions we will examine how this informs thecategorisation of the students.

7.1. Underplaying being Portuguese?

One common theme that emerged in the analysis of the British teachers’ accounts of ‘‘bright’’ students and of students’needs was the underplaying of being Portuguese. As illustrated in Table 5, the theme was expressed in terms ofcharacteristics of the ‘‘bright’’ student, which would make it difficult to identify the student as Portuguese.

In Alicia’s words ‘‘If you didn’t know that she is Portuguese, I don’t think that you would necessarily guess’’. ThePortugueseness of a student is made invisible by her level of competence in the English language and integration in the localschool friendship network. One key characteristic of this student is her competence in English language, described by Aliciaas ‘‘you know, her English is at such a good level’’. One may argue that in this case the teacher’s intention is not to underplaybeing Portuguese, but alternatively to praise the level of bilingual competence, where the student developed to themonolingual standards in the English language. This alternative interpretation however is not well supported by the otheraccounts that clearly emphasise the invisibility of being Portuguese, such as:

Table 5

Passage

‘‘Brig

� Aca

is bknogue

a go

Table 6

Passage

‘‘Not-

� So,

whe

isn’com

I consider her a British kid. The fact that she has that background and the fact that she speaks another language isfabulous. That’s fine. That’s a real advantage to her but I consider. . .I don’t consider her a Portuguese student. I dobut. . .I consider her a Portuguese student but not. . .first and foremost, I consider her British and a student first andforemost with those extra skills. And the extra background because . . .she has never had a language problem. I mean Isuppose a language problem is what I would almost use to identify the difference because that is when they need thehelp and you only identify it through helping and getting the extra help. (LS-Laura)

The second format the theme was expressed was in terms of what Valsiner may have labelled an identity chaining wherethe Portuguese identity is subordinated to the identity as a student. The identity category of student takes precedence, asillustrated when the teacher argues ‘‘I see them as students, first and foremost’’. In this being Portuguese is made invisible bya subordination of identities. This process is enabled by defining what counts for a teacher as being aware of their students’individual needs.

7.2. The primacy of innate abilities in learning

Another common theme that emerged in this analysis was that the view that being ‘‘bright’’ or having ‘‘needs’’ is linked todispositional characteristics of the individual student. This is illustrated in Table 6.

s comparing the underplay of being Portuguese in accounts of ‘‘bright’’ and ‘‘needs’’.

ht’’ ‘‘Needs’’

demically, I’m not aware that she has had any problems. I mean she

right, you know she is articulate. (. . ..) You know, if you didn’tw that she is Portuguese, I don’t think that you would necessarily

ss straight away because she is so. . .you know, her English is at such

od level. (LS-Alicia)

� Well, I don’t see them as Portuguese pupils. I see them as students,

first and foremost. Obviously you’ve got to be aware of their needsbecause many of them come along and they don’t have access to or

experience of English in the way you would expect students who have

been brought up in the system. (SS-Pierce)

s comparing ‘‘not-bright’’ and special needs.

bright’’ as innate ability Needs has not to do with where they come from

you’ve got a real range who’s in year eleven and I’m not too sure

n she came here, but Anna has got an incredible brain. Gabrielle

t a bright student. So, I don’t think that that helps either. So. . .we

e down to innate ability to a certain extent. (SS-Pierce)

� There is one girl that I don’t think you have met that I would say has low

self esteem. But then she is also the one I would say who has specialneeds problems anyway. So she probably would have had trouble if

she had been brought up in Portugal as well. (SP-Rachel)


Pierce described Anna as someone who ‘‘has got an incredible brain’’ in opposition to Gabrielle, who ‘‘isn’t a brightstudent’’, which he accounts in terms of ‘‘innate ability’’. Individual characteristics were also stressed as more important thanthe cultural background in determining students’ needs. Needs have nothing to do with where the students come from(Rachel).

8. British teachers’ categorisation of Portuguese students

The minimisation of the importance of the student’s home culture in their school learning was expressed by assimilatingthe immigrant student to the ‘‘norm’’. ‘‘Bright’’ students were assimilated to the same category as the ‘‘normal’’ Englishstudents. The students with difficulties were assimilated to the category of students with special needs. Two mainrepresentations of the learner were used for this categorisation.

One representation focused on the primacy of innate cognitive abilities, located in the brain, over the impact of thecultural background on learning. Mugny and Carugati (1989) suggested that the biological view of development is oftenevoked in circumstances, where individual differences between individuals need to be explained. It is an enormous challengefor teachers, who often told the researchers they did not have any specific training to teach students learning in English as asecond language, to understand how they learn, and why some do well academically and fit their representations of ‘‘goodstudents’’ and others struggle.

The other representation focused on the primacy of children’s needs, and can be seen as ideologically rooted in what arewidely regarded as progressive ways of working with children. However, the notion of needs is not a neutral one. As arguedby Woodhead (1991): ‘‘While in certain very general respects, ‘‘need’’ statements may have universal validity, detailedprescriptions about children’s needs are normative, and depend on a judgement about processes of cultural adaptation andsocial adjustment’’. (p. 48). Furthermore, Woodhead argued that unproblematized usages of needs are particularly difficultin multicultural societies, such as Britain. The reason for these being more problematic is that there is more scope for takingone group as the norm and assuming that the other cultural groups have the same needs, as clearly illustrated in the analysisof the British teachers’ constructions of the Portuguese pupils.

9. Portuguese teachers’ representations of Portuguese students

9.1. Portuguese teachers accounts of ‘‘bright’’ Portuguese students

Table 7 presents extracts where Portuguese teachers used the key word ‘‘‘bright’’’ to describe Portuguese students. Theextracts show similarities with the British teachers as ‘‘bright’’ was associated with being good students (1, 3), endowed bygenetics with good brains (4), linguistically competent (2), and well integrated socially (2, 3). The extracts also showdifferences in relation to the British teachers in terms of the emphasis that was given to the Portuguese background. So, theimportance of the linguistics dimension is described in terms of bilingual competence, being perfectly bilingual (2). Inaddition, the importance of one’s Portuguese identity is stressed in terms of being fully integrated in both systems (2), and‘‘remembering’’ that one is Portuguese (3).

Table 7

Portuguese teachers’ accounts of Portuguese ‘‘bright’’ students.

Selection of extracts from teachers’ interviews Underlying theme

1. This year I have excellent parents who are learning from other parents. I had

another student who is finishing next year. His parents came over from

Madeira and he is doing Portuguese and he is a brilliant student. Very very

bright. He is really keen. (JE-Isadora)

‘‘bright’’ means having been a brilliant

and keen student.

2. So they went back to Madeira and then because there had been a medical

problem for step-Dad, they have gone back to Jersey. Thanks to God, she is

very bright and she is coping extremely well. She is perfectly bilingual and sheis fully integrated in both systems. So that’s not a problem but that’s

something you could see with other people, you know and other pupils who are

not so good.

(JE-Nicola)

‘‘bright’’ means perfectly bilingual and

well integrated in both systems

3. There is one boy. He’s very good. He’s very bright. He came three years ago and

now he is one of the best in his class. So, he didn’t have any English and

nor his family and now he is one of the brightest and one of the best. So, so he’s

quite I think, bright and good. Um, and he is very protective of the others. Um,

when there is a new child, he comes and helps and so I like him because

of these characteristics. He is very bright. He is very quick and at the same

time, he remembers that he is Portuguese and helps the Portuguesechildren (PL-Esther)

‘‘bright’’ means being accepting being Portuguese

4. A: He was very bright. Good brains. Good food when he was a child. Family thatcares and luck genetics. (PL-Esther)

‘‘bright’’ results from a combination of genetics

and family

Table 8

The Portuguese teachers’ accounts of Portuguese students’ needs.

Selection of extracts from teachers’ interviews Main theme

1. But I mean I do appreciate what is going on and so we are all compromising, all of us with how

many hours we can have here and there. And it’s not so much down to me. It’s down to the head of

SEN, special needs education and so she looks after that and she is working in very close contact with

these students and even in our school, we’ve got one teaching assistant. Basically, they are following

some students with problems. Not necessarily the Portuguese one and to assess whether they arespecial needs.

(. . ..) And what is frustrating for them sometimes is. . .[when we get the SATs scores], they are given

a predicted grade for other languages and for other subjects and we find very often that some of

them are not so good in science or Maths or English but get very good grades for languages. So I had one

student that was two years ago. . .I mean loads of us have experienced that but I can tell you about

that and this girl had a predicted E in languages. She thought, I’m rubbish. (. . .) I said, ‘‘no you’re not.

You’ve got to prove that the statistics are wrong.’’ But that is frustrating for a lot of them, you know

to see that they are graded as an E. (JE-Nicola)

Schools have problems in assessing

needs and also underestimate

predicted grades

2. Rural area. So, he started school. No English, no experience of school. Nothing. And the schooldidn’t quite understand his name. So, instead of Leandro, they started to call him Leonardo. And

when I arrived at school, um, the teacher obviously came to me and said, ‘‘oh Ana, you have to help me

because I have this new boy. His name is Leonardo and he doesn’t understand a word of English. When

I ask him to sit down, he doesn’t sit down, so he must have some sort of educational needs.’’ (. . .) So,

I went to the classroom and the boy said, ‘‘Ah, you speak Portuguese. They don’t even know myname and I do not understand what they say to me.’’ ‘‘So what is your name?’’ ‘‘Oh, my name is

Leandro’’. So, when the boy was asked, ‘‘Leonardo, sit down’’. . . (. . .) He’s not going to respond because

it’s not his name, is it? So, obviously he’s not special needs. (LP-Esther)

Wrong attribution of

special needs

3. So it is quite interesting because although the children are more or less you know the same because theycome from all over the world and they have all these sorts of. . .they have the same kinds of needs.

(LP-Esther)

The needs of immigrant children are

similar

4. There are thirty children. They come from all over the world, speak all sorts of languages. Some

have really special educational needs. And then you have this boy who comes and you build up a

picture obviously and you ask for help . . ..

(. . ..). The teachers don’t know if it’s English as an additional language, or it’s special needs. So, the

first thing they do is label OK, it’s English as an additional language and then if it doesn’t go quite

well, then it’s special needs as well. So, if it’s a simple thing like it’s the name that wasn’t right, it’s

very horrible for me to go there and see this boy he’s wonderful, it’s just that obviously he’s neverbeen in school and so it’s going to take him longer to write letters and that and then if they don’t

know his name, it will take him longer. (LP-Esther)

Teachers have difficulties in

differentiating issues of having

English as additional language

from special needs


Though one has to be tentative in this analysis it seems that the Portuguese teachers’ representations of the ‘‘bright’’student draw in a bilingual and bicultural construction of the learner. This point is further supported in the following analysisof their account of needs.

9.2. Portuguese teachers’ accounts of needs of Portuguese students

Table 8 presents a selection of extracts from Portuguese teachers’ interviews illustrating ways in which the keyword‘‘needs’’ was used in their accounts of Portuguese students. Here we can see a stark contrast on the way teachers talked aboutthe needs when compared with the British teachers. Firstly, the concept of needs does not discount linguistic and culturalbackground. The needs of many students may be similar because they share a dimension of the context of their lives: ‘‘Theycome from all over the world, speak all sorts of languages’’ (3, 4). Secondly, the process of determining students’ needs isdiscussed as problematic, not because the student has a ‘‘language problem’’, but because the school and teachers havedifficulties in understanding the learning of students who have English as additional language. Teachers used specific casestudies to illustrate their point and referred to the frustration of students when the school underestimates their performancein exams (1) and fails to communicate with them on the basic level of not knowing their names (2). Issues related to being alearner with English as an additional language, and with a distinct history of schooling (4) then easily become mis-interpreted as special needs (4).

10. Do contact zones matter?

In the same way that some threads could be identified in the accounts of the British teachers it is possible to see a commonthread in the accounts of the Portuguese teachers. Portuguese teachers expressed a representation of the learner as someonegrowing up and developing as a bilingual and bicultural person. It is clear in the analysis that for them the representation ofthe British student is not central for the understanding of the Portuguese student in the British school. Indeed, they criticisethe stereotyped representations, which fail to acknowledge the nature of the development of the bilingual and bicultural


person. A retrospective account from Portuguese teachers in Jersey illustrates both this criticism and how contact zones canevolve.

Because we were doing positive work, they saw the difference. When I arrived here, during the first four years. . .I’vebeen here eight years now. . .so in the first four years, there wasn’t a month without me going to do some tests becausethe teachers thought the Portuguese were handicapped, they were slow minded because they didn’t speak English andso I did all the tests to discover that the child was perfectly normal. The only problem was the language and so I thinkthat we had to fight like this with teachers. We had to show and tell the teachers, the only problem of the child isEnglish, is the language. It’s a barrier. So they ask the child, count up to ten and the child doesn’t know what the teacherwas doing and so ‘‘he is handicapped’’. Well. ‘‘He’s a disabled child.’’ ‘‘Go and do the DBS tests.’’ And there I went. It wasslowly but I think now everything goes smooth. (Group of Jersey Portuguese teachers)

The contact zones between these teachers and the recently arrived Portuguese students provided them with informationfor rejecting the dominant representations of the students in local schools. They talked and gave examples of how outragedthey felt on encountering situations where a student’s limited competence in the English language was treated as anintellectual deficit, and they had to administer a test to show that the child was ‘‘normal’’. In addition, this impacted on theirinteractions in contact zones established with local British schools and teachers. They reckoned that overtime thestereotypical and deficit representations of the Portuguese students were changing, slowly, but in a more positive direction.This could be taken as an example of teaching practices in contact zones, which then provided a space that exposed andchallenged existing representations of Portuguese students, and over-time contributed to re-interpretation of the meaningof the differences.

11. Concluding remarks

The analysis presented in this paper suggests that accounts of ‘‘bright/good students’’, from the British teachers, areunderlined by the ‘‘process of normalisation’’. The ‘‘bright’’ Portuguese student becomes assimilated to the category British –the difference is eliminated – their English language skills are perceived as similar to those of a monolingual person. On theother hand, the accounts of ‘‘students with difficulties’’, are underlined by a ‘‘process of stigmatisation’’. Immigrant studentswith difficulties become assimilated to the category other – the difference is valued as a ‘‘deficiency’’ – their English languageskills are perceived as lacking, they have a ‘‘language problem’’, and their process of learning is similar to that of a studentwho has ‘‘special needs’’. Finally, the analysis of teachers acting within different contact zones, ‘‘British teacher � Portuguesestudent’’ compared with ‘‘Portuguese teacher � Portuguese student’’, suggests that these processes are dynamic. Differentcontact zones resulted in alternative representations. Indeed it resulted in rejecting and condemning representations of thedifference as a deficit. They also provided spaces for challenging, re-interpreting and developing new representations ofwhat being different means.

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Conceptualising teachers’ understanding of the immigrant learner