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Taking a closer look at Latino parentsat one Spanish–English two-wayimmersion charter schoolErin Whiting a , Erika Feinauer a & Douglas VanDerwerken a ba Department of Teacher Education , Brigham Young University ,201 J MCKB, Provo , UT , 84604 , USAb Department of Statistical Science , Duke University , Durham ,NC , USAPublished online: 09 May 2012.

To cite this article: Erin Whiting , Erika Feinauer & Douglas VanDerwerken (2012) Taking a closerlook at Latino parents at one Spanish–English two-way immersion charter school, Journal ofMultilingual and Multicultural Development, 33:5, 497-510, DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2012.681660

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Taking a closer look at Latino parents at one Spanish�Englishtwo-way immersion charter school

Erin Whiting*, Erika Feinauer and Douglas VanDerwerken

Department of Teacher Education, Brigham Young University, 201 J MCKB, Provo, UT 84604,USA

(Received 11 January 2012; final version received 28 March 2012)

Scholars who work with Latino/as in the USA have long been calling for a morenuanced understanding of the heterogeneity of the US-based Latino population.Two-way Immersion (TWI) bilingual education programmes are an interestingcontext in which to examine the Latino parent communities in the USA. Overall,the language enrichment nature of TWI programmes attracts diverse parentsfrom across many different demographic groups, and for a variety of reasons. Thisstudy uses an innovative application of cluster analysis to examine the parentpopulation at one TWI Spanish�English elementary school. Survey questionsasked were: parents’ income, educational achievement, ethnicity, language spokenat home, religious affiliation, country of origin and residential distance from theschool. Our analyses reveal that parents in our sample can be classified into fourdistinct groups based on the combinations of included characteristics. Ouranalyses show the emergence of three Latino parent clusters and one Caucasianparent cluster. These analyses show how accounting for the different socialdimensions of these parents’ lives simultaneously can provide a more nuancedunderstanding of the Latino parents at this school.

Keywords: cultural diversity; education; bilingualism; ethnic identity; ethnolin-guistic vitality

Introduction

Typical discussions of the current Latino population in the USA often describe their

impressive rate of growth. Latinos are now the largest minority group in the USA

(Ennis, Rı́os-Vargas and Albert 2011), and according to some scholars, Latinos as

a group have grown seven times faster than the national population since 1980

(N. Rodriguez 2008). Such remarkable growth rates have raised questions for scholars

across many disciplines about the impact of this demographic shift on many aspects of

life in the USA. Much of this demographic research has treated Latinos as one

homogeneous group. However, scholars who work with Latino/as in the USA have long

been calling for a more nuanced understanding of the heterogeneity of the US-based

Latino population (Pachon 2009; C. Rodriguez 2008; N. Rodriguez 2008).

The parent community at a school-wide Spanish�English two-way immersion

(TWI) bilingual programme presents an interesting and compelling case in which to

*Corresponding author. Email: erin_whiting@byu.eduCurrent address: Douglas VanDerwerken, Department of Statistical Science, Duke University,Durham, NC, USA.

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Vol. 33, No. 5, August 2012, 497�510

ISSN 0143-4632 print/ISSN 1747-7557 online

# 2012 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2012.681660

http://www.tandfonline.com

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examine the heterogeneity of Latino groups in an educational setting. Spanish�English TWI programmes combine equal numbers of English-dominant and

Spanish-dominant speakers in one classroom and provide literacy and content

instruction in both languages. TWI programmes bring together a linguistically

diverse parent community due to the nature of the programme. Research has shown

that parents who choose TWI programmes are often diverse in other ways as well

(Calderon and Minaya-Rowe 2003; Lindholm-Leary 2001; Parkes 2008; Whiting &

Feinauer, 2011). The implementation of any TWI programme is heavily dependent

on the social context in which it is situated and is largely determined by the parent

population from which these schools can draw.

Calderon and Minaya-Rowe (2003) highlight the vital role of parents in the

success of TWI programmes, saying ‘Two-way bilingual program parents have a role

in their children’s education’ (189). However, she also notes that specific research on

parental involvement in TWI programmes is scarce, compared to the research on

parents in other types of bilingual education and mainstream school programmes.

Like in many other educational and school settings, the success of TWI programmes

often hinges on how well teacher and school administrators can reach out to and

involve the parents at the school. Given the unique nature and diversity in the parent

population in Spanish�English TWI programmes, efforts to include parents can

often be challenging in complex and often unexpected ways. This is especially true

when educators fail to appreciate the varied social experiences of the parent in their

school. Calderon and Minaya-Rowe (2003) suggest that the diversity of the parent

population, especially the English language leaner (ELL) parents, needs to be

considered when planning for parental involvement in a TWI programme, or for any

outreach effort that draws on the expertise and resources of the home and family of

students at the school (see also Moll et al. 1992).

This study uses an innovative application of cluster analysis to examine the

parent population at one TWI Spanish�English elementary school. The parents at

this school are diverse in many ways, including not only ethnicity and language, but

also socio-economic status (SES), religion and place of birth. Using cluster analysis,

we explore the similarities between parents in terms of these broader characteristics

and question if distinct parent groups emerge at this school. This study reveals the

heterogeneity of the Latino parent population and highlights the importance of

going beyond simple classifications of parents to provide a more nuanced picture of

the Latino communities within the USA.

Literature review

Heterogeneity of Latino groups

In the USA today, Latinos account for 16.3% of the total population in the 2010

census, reflecting a 43% increase since 2000 (Ennis, Rı́os-Vargas, and Albert 2011).

However, census statistics and growth rates often obscure the diversity that exists

within the growing Latino population. Latinos are represented across income

categories, age groups, national origin and are distinguished by their length of

residence and language abilities in Spanish and English, among other things (Pachon

2009). Further, Latino immigrants are not only settling in various and new (as

compared to previous immigration) parts of the country, but are also coming from

many different countries in Latin America. Their experiences of emigration and

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immigration are varied, and their impact on the US communities is similarly varied.

These trends raise questions about how the heterogeneity of Latino groups comes

into play across the many communities in the USA. As Clara Rodriguez noted, ‘[an]

important reason to focus on Latina/o heterogeneity is to underscore how each

group’s mode of incorporation into the United States has influenced the group’s

geographic distribution, socio-economic measures, lived experiences, and often

political orientations’ (2008, viii).

The complicated nature of intragroup relations among Latinos in the USA isrevealed in research looking at participation in religious institutions (Ebaugh and

Chafetz 2000; Hagan 1994; N. Rodriguez 2008). For example, Ebaugh and Chafetz

(2000) note the tensions between unity and conflict for 13 different religious

congregations in the Houston area, five of which served Spanish-speaking

congregants. They find that these immigrants often join religious congregations,

specifically because of shared ethnic and language characteristics. However, tensions

often arise between members in these Latino groups based on generation, country of

origin, language use and proficiency and other differences, as they may resist ahomogenising pan-ethnic community identity (Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000).

This research highlights the heterogeneity of these groups and reminds us again

that there is not just one US Latino community. In fact, this research raises questions

about how intragroup differences matter for Latino communities that form around

social institutions and underscores the myriad possibilities of how these communities

emerge and evolve (N. Rodriguez 2008). Studies are needed that look at the ways that

people belong to multiple social-contextual groups in social institutions.

In this study, we use cluster analysis to explore the ways that backgroundcharacteristics are experienced together by parents in this Spanish�English TWI

school. We allow real groups to emerge from this larger community, based on

multiple characteristics simultaneously, rather than drawing conclusions about whole

groups from simple characteristics. This methodology allows us to take into

consideration the heterogeneity of the Latino parents in our study, without also

ignoring the commonalties that also exist. In this way, we are responding to the call

to provide a more nuanced understanding of the Latino experience, specifically by

examining the parent population at this school.

Two-way immersion (TWI)

Recent research has shown that two-way immersion (TWI) programmes are reaching

their instructional goals and show promise as an effective educational approach for

both language-majority and language-minority students (Barnett et al. 2007;

Howard, Christian, and Genesee 2004; Howard, Sugarman, and Christian 2003;

Lindholm-Leary 2001, 2005; Thomas and Collier 2002). They have as stated goalsbilingualism, bi-literacy and academic achievement in both languages (Christian

1996; Howard and Sugarman 2007; Potowski 2004; Shannon and Milian 2002).

Because these programmes add a second language to the native language, rather than

replacing the native language with a second language, they are considered to be

language enrichment programmes (de Jong and Howard 2009; Howard and

Sugarman 2007; Lindholm-Leary 2001; Parkes 2008). It is not surprising that

Spanish�English TWI bilingual education programmes are attracting Latino families

in the USA more and more frequently, because of these successes and drawing on thegrowing number of native Spanish speakers in this country.

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Research on parents at TWI programmes has often focused on the interest in

and reasons for enrolment, classifying parents based on simple background

characteristics. Our own previous work has focused on understanding parental

decisions for enrolment in a TWI programme (Whiting & Feinauer, 2011). In a

previous study with parents in this sample, we looked at the differences in parent

reasons for enrolment in the TWI school, as presented in their own words.

Differences emerged between parents in terms of language, ethnicity, education

level, income, religion and household distance from the school, raising questionsabout how we, as educators, think about these Latino parents. Findings from this

study highlighted the intragroup diversity in the Latino parent group, prompting us

to take a closer look at the complexity of parent community groups that goes beyond

language and ethnicity.

Research studies looking at the background characteristics of parents at TWI

programmes have focused mainly on the differences between parents based on

primary language (Craig 1996; Lindholm-Leary 2001; Parkes 2008). However,

Goldenberg, Rueda and August (2006) point to the significance of investigatingsociocultural influences as ‘factors that make up the broad social context in which

children and youth live and go to school’ (250). These sociocultural factors include,

but are not limited to, measures of SES, race, religion, ethnicity, culture and

immigration time and status. These social forces play an important role in the lives of

both minority and majority culture families in the USA and are experienced in

concert with one another as families belong to multiple and overlapping demo-

graphic categories. It is important for scholars to seek for ways to take all of these

dimensions of social experience and force into account simultaneously, to betterunderstand the complexity of ethnic communities in the USA.

The present study follows up on our previous work at this Spanish�English TWI

elementary charter school. In this article, we extend our previous work by using

cluster analysis to more thoroughly examine the parent community at the school. We

will discuss how the parents naturally cluster in terms of ethnolinguistic character-

istics, socio-economic indicators, religion and country of origin. By looking at

parents in clusters of demographic profiles, we will be able to describe more

comprehensively the parent community, taking into account the various ways thatthese background variables interact and overlap in the lives of the parents.

Method

This project explores two specific questions: (1) to what extent can parents be

classified into distinct naturally occurring social groups? and (2)what are the defining

characteristics of these groups? We begin by introducing the school and the sample,

discussing the survey and measures, and then describing the analyses.

Sunny Creek Elementary

The study represents parents who enrolled their children in Sunny Creek Elementary

(pseudonym), a newly organised Spanish�English TWI elementary charter school

located in an urban neighbourhood of a mid-sized city in Utah. Utah is unique due

to its large Latter-day Saint (LDS) population, rooted in pioneer history, and as

headquarters of the LDS (Mormon) church. Furthermore, Utah, a state in theintermountain west, has experienced a dramatic influx of Latino families in the past

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20 years. In fact, the Urban Institute listed Utah as a new growth state in 1999,

indicating a faster growth rate for Latinos than any of the ‘top six’ states, such as

California, Illinois or Texas. Recently, the US Census Bureau (2010) noted that there

were from over 300,000 to 358,340 Latinos living in the state of Utah (population

2,763,885). Although Utah is still a largely white majority culture with only 13% of

Latinos overall (U.S. Census 2010), urban areas have a more diverse population. For

example, Salt Lake City reports about 19% Latinos according to the US Census (US

Census Bureau 2011).Sunny Creek Elementary is one of the first school-wide TWI programmes in the

state, although many schools offer TWI strands as part of a bilingual curriculum. In

this school, equal numbers of Spanish-dominant and English-dominant children at

each grade level meet together in one classroom. This programme follows a 50�50

bilingual immersion model, where a teaching team of one English-speaking and one

Spanish-speaking teacher are assigned to each classroom. Classrooms alternate one

day of instruction in English with one day of instruction in Spanish. These two

teachers coordinate closely with each other to scaffold learning across the content

areas as well as to support literacy development in both languages.

As part of their school charter mandate, selection of students occurs through an

annual weighted lottery system, where parents submit their children’s name as an

indication of their desire to enrol their child at the school. Students of founding

parents, or current school board parents, are given priority in the lottery, as well as

students whose siblings already attend the school. Once these priorities are given to

the appropriate students, the rest of the student body is selected randomly, where

50% of the students are selected from a pool of Spanish-dominant students and 50%

from a pool of English-dominant students. In this inaugural year, Spanish-dominant

students were underrepresented and recruitment efforts included a targeted outreach

to the local Latino community.

Sunny Creek Elementary is located in a low-income neighbourhood in a section of

the city made up predominantly of Latino and Pacific Islander families. Despite these

two overarching language groups, as mandated by the school charter, there is extensive

diversity among the families at this school in terms of other characteristics, such as

ethnicity, household income, educational attainment, religion, family composition and

the city neighbourhoods in which these families live (see Table 1). The student body at

this charter school is composed of children from a range of social groups and

represents a diverse population.

Data sources

All households of enrolled children were surveyed to assess school attitudes,

background characteristics, educational and language experiences, as well as reasons

for enrolment in the school. In cooperation with the school, surveys were created and

administered in the middle of the school’s inaugural year. Household surveys were

provided in both English and Spanish and sent home with students through their

classroom teacher. Letters were sent home informing parents of the research several

weeks prior to the beginning of data collection. As surveys were collected, two

bilingual research assistants organised and input the data into SPSS statistical

software, and translated the parent responses from Spanish into English when

necessary.

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Two hundred and eighty-seven usable surveys were returned for an average

response rate of 79%. There was a slight difference in the response rate for

respondents whose primary language was Spanish (81%) and English (77%), but this

difference was not statistically significant. Sample sizes were approximately the same

(English 142; Spanish 145), and the overall response rate was nearly the average of

the two rates (see Whiting & Feinauer, 2011, for more detail on the survey).

Survey questions asked parents about income, educational attainment, ethnicity,

language spoken in the home, religious affiliation, country of origin and residential

distance from the school (see Table 1). Research has highlighted that these

background characteristics are often the dimension across which Latino parents in

TWI programmes vary (Calderon and Minaya-Rowe 2003; Goldenberg, Rueda, and

August 2006; N. Rodriguez 2008). Information about household education and

income was collected using pre-determined categories in the survey. These two

variables were constructed as continuous quantitative variables by assigning them to

a scale of 1�5 (1 � lowest and 5 �highest) in order to compare the strength of the

contribution of these variables to each cluster. Residential distance from the school

was calculated from addresses and public information sources and is reported in

miles.

Table 1. Background characteristics of survey respondents (N�243).

Variable name Categories Frequency %

Primary language English 108 47Spanish 123 53Total 231 100

First adult’s ethnicity Hispanic/Latino 169 70Caucasian/Anglo 59 25Other 13 5Total 241 100

Maximum household education Junior high/middle school 45 19High school or equivalent 52 22Community college/vocational school 59 25Four-year college/university degree 53 22Advanced degree 29 12Total 238 100

Income $0�20,000 48 21$21,000�40,000 96 43$41,000�60,000 29 13$61,000�80,000 22 10More than 80,000 28 13Total 223 100

Religious affiliation None/atheist 22 10Catholic 100 45Other 27 12Latter-day Saint 74 33Total 223 100

Miles from Sunny Creek (Binned) 0�1 38 181�5 64 30.55�10 65 31More than 10 43 20.5Total 210 100

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Categorical variables were created from open-ended responses to survey

questions. The religious affiliation variable was collapsed into four categories

with Catholic, Protestant/unspecified Christian, Church of Jesus Christ of LDS

and none/atheist. Responses to questions about country of origin were condensed

from more than two-dozen nations into five categories including the USA, Mexico,

Central America/Cuba/Caribbean, South America/Trinidad & Tobago and Other.

Because of sample distributions, responses naming ethnicity were organised into

Latino, Anglo and Other. Due to concerns about collinearity, we created a single

‘ethnolinguistic composition’ variable to take into account the different correlational

relationship patterns observed between parent ethnicity and primary language. This

allows us to see the combinations of how these two variables co-occurred for parents

in our sample.

Analysis

Because of the challenge in capturing the ‘simultaneous bonding and divisive

influence of Latino identity’ (N. Rodriguez 2008, 6), we decided on an innovative

strategy to explore the intra-group dynamics of our parent sample. We use a cluster

analysis to go beyond comparisons of group profiles based on one variable and

create subsets of parents based on maximising similarities and minimising differences

across multiple characteristics at the same time.

As noted, variables in our analysis are both categorical and continuous. Weemployed SPSS’s TwoStep cluster analysis procedure, which is able to accommodate

data-sets with both continuous quantitative and categorical variables. The first step

of the procedure pre-clusters the observations into many sub-clusters. The second

step groups these sub-clusters into the user-inputted number of clusters (SPSS Inc

2007, 2). This technique allows for the grouping of parents into clusters, such that

observations in the same cluster are roughly similar, and those in different clusters

are dissimilar for the characteristics included (Hastie, Tibsharni, and Friedman

2008).

We attended to conceivable variations of possible violations of assumptions of

independence (e.g. maximum household education and income, or ethnicity and

primary language) and normality. As mentioned, we chose to create new variables

when two variables were highly correlated and clearly violated assumptions of

independence. Further, the SPSS manual reports that the TwoStep procedure is

‘fairly robust to violations of both the assumption of independence [of variables] and

the distributional assumptions’ (SPSS Inc 2007, 365). This supported our decision to

use this type of cluster analysis to organise parents into discrete and descriptive

groups.

Results

We start by explaining and justifying the cluster process, which reveals that parents in

our sample can be classified into four distinct groups based on the combinations of

included characteristics. As there is no universal standard for validating clusterresults, the first section takes some time to explain the decisions that we made and

the tests that we ran to verify that our clusters of parent sub-groups were discrete and

robust. Finally, we describe these distinct clusters of parents in terms of their defining

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characteristics and discuss the implications for understanding Latino heterogeneity

in this educational setting.

Grouping the parents

As two-step cluster analysis requires an initial user-inputted number of clusters, we

drew on our casual observations at Sunny Creek, through which we noted a great

deal of diversity in terms of education, income and ethnicity within Spanish language

and English language parent groups (see also Whiting & Feinauer, 2011). In order to

represent all of the heterogeneity, we began our cluster analyses with a four-cluster

model. We compared the distributions, spread and fit of this initial model to 3 and 5

cluster solutions and concluded that the 4-cluster model best represented the

distributions of our parent sample.

To validate this model, we began by comparing our results with the SPSS’s

automatic cluster number determination procedure. The SPSS TwoStep procedure

automatically selected a four-cluster model as the best fit. During this process we

also noted that The Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) was lowest for this model,

which is a generally accepted indicator of optimal tradeoff between intra-cluster

homogeneity and inter-cluster heterogeneity (Fraley and Raftery 1998). Further,

differences between cluster means and across cluster distributions were statistically

significant at the 0.01 level, supporting the four-cluster model.

In addition, random subsets of the data were used to examine the consistency of

results across our data and to provide cross-validation of our four-cluster solution. We

reproduced a four-cluster model using only a randomly selected subset of the data

several times, with approximately 50% of the observations selected for validation each

time. Cross-tabulations of cluster membership demonstrated that the models produced

by the sub-setted data were good at allocating cases in reliable ways. In every case, the

chi-square statistic testing the null hypothesis of independence of cluster membership

variables was statistically significant at the 0.001 level. In other words, the clustering in

all of these subsets mirrored the clustering in the full sample. For example, Table 2

shows agreement between the cluster solutions from the full sample and one partial

sample. Full sample clusters 2, 3 and 4 correspond perfectly to clusters from the

partial sample (although the clusters have been assigned different numbers in the

partial sample).

As tests for validation and reliability are not well defined and agreed upon in

cluster analysis, we used several approaches to establish the validity and reliability of

our four-cluster model. We found that our model demonstrates intra-cluster

Table 2. Cross-tabulation of full and part sample cluster solutions.

Sub-setted data cluster number

X2�173.7* 1 2 3 4 Total

Full data-set cluster number 1 1 10 1 0 122 0 0 13 0 133 16 0 0 0 164 0 0 0 23 23

Total 17 10 14 23 64

*p�0.001

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homogeneity and inter-cluster heterogeneity based on differences of the means and

proportions and supported by the SPSS two-step procedure. Furthermore, our

model was reliable and consistent across subsamples of our data. In sum, we feel

confident that our four-cluster solution is valid and demonstrates that parents group

together in distinct and discrete ways.

Describing the four parent profiles

As described earlier, this clustering procedure groups parents in terms of both

continuous quantitative and categorical variables. The resulting clusters can be

described by their cluster means (centroids) and standard deviations for continuous

variables and by the proportions of observations in each category for categoricalvariables. For continuous quantitative variables the centroids (means) represent the

strength of variable for cases in each cluster, and the standard deviations are reported

to show the variability in the scatter around the mean. For categorical variables,

percentages express the proportion of total observations from each variable for cases

that belong in each cluster. Parent profiles emerged based on the strength of both

continuous and categorical variables in each cluster. Clusters, therefore, represent

our classification of parents into groups that share similar background demographic

characteristics (see Table 3).

Cluster 1

Cluster 1 is typified by Spanish�Latino parents (65%) who were born in South and

Central American countries including Mexico. In fact, none of these parents were born

in the USA. Interestingly, 35% of these parents live in mixed ethnolinguistic

households in which parents are from different ethnic groups and/or speak different

primary languages from each other. Most of these parents are LDS (53%); however, of

the 14 Protestant/Other Christian parents in our sample, 10 are in this cluster as well.

These parents reported average annual household incomes as well as maximum

household education levels slightly above the sample average.

Cluster 2

Parents in cluster 2 are generally US born (64%), the majority of whom (55%) live inmixed ethnolinguistic households. Eight of the nine parents who are Latino, but

speak English as their primary language, are in this group. Ninety-five percent of

these parents are Catholic, and they report lower than sample average levels of

income and household education levels. This is the smallest of the four clusters

representing only 16% of the overall sample.

Cluster 3

Similar to cluster 2, parents in cluster 3 report below-average levels of education and

income. In fact, these parents report the lowest levels of all parents on these

measures. All of the parents in cluster 3 were in born in Mexico, are Catholic and are

Spanish-speaking Latinos. This cluster is similar to cluster 1 in that they bothrepresent foreign-born parents.

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Table 3. Cluster results for the four-cluster model.

Categorical variables N Cluster 1 Cluster 2 Cluster 3 Cluster 4

Ethno linguistic composition of parentsSpanish�Spanish/Latino 55 21 (65%) 0 34 (100%) 0English�English/Caucasian 25 0 1 (5%) 0 24 (55%)Mixeda 41 12 (35%) 12 (55%) 0 17 (39%)English�English/Latino 9 1 (3%) 8 (36%) 0 0Other 4 0 1 (5%) 0 3 (7%)

Religious affiliationNone/atheist 16 4 (12%) 0 0 12 (27%)Catholic 58 2 (6%) 21 (95%) 34 (100%) 1 (2%)LDS 46 18 (53%) 1 (5%) 0 24 (61%)Protestant/other Christian 14 10 (29%) 0 0 4 (9%)

Country of originSouth America 9 9 (26%) 0 0 0Central America/Caribbean 7 7 (21%) 0 0 0Mexico 56 15 (44%) 7 (32%) 34 (100%) 0USA/Canada 57 0 14 (64%) 0 43 (98%)

Other 5 3 (9%) 1 (5%) 0 1 (2%)Continuous quantitative variables Full Cluster 1 Cluster 2 Cluster 3 Cluster 4Miles from Sunny Creek 6.92 (5.96) 6.91(5.85) 5.75 (4.80) 5.36 (4.21) 8.70 (6.56)Annual incomeb 2.72 (1.35) 2.82 (1.38) 2.41 (1.37) 2.06 (1.15) 3.30 (1.23)Maximum household education levelc 3.06 (1.29) 3.29(1.12) 2.59 (1.05) 2.24 (1.46) 3.75 (0.92)Total N by cluster 134 34 22 34 44

aA ‘mixed’ ethnolinguistic composition refers to parental units where one parent is of a different ethnicity than the other, or one speaks a different primary language than theother.bIncome responses were coded between 1 (B$20,000/year) and 5 (�$80,000/year) with increments for each additional $20,000/year. Therefore, a value of 2.82 is equivalent toa mean income of between $36,400 and $56,400 per year.cEducation level responses were coded between 1 (middle school) and 5 (advanced degree). Therefore, a value of 3.29 corresponds to a mean education level between acommunity college degree (3) and a bachelor’s degree (4).

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Cluster 4

Almost all of the parents in cluster 4 were born in the USA and/or Canada (98%).

Twenty-four out of twenty-five English-speaking Caucasian parents (55%) are in this

cluster as well. However, 39% of parents in this cluster are from mixed

ethnolinguistic households. Most of the parents in this group are LDS (61%),

although 12 of the 16 non-religious parents are also in this group. Cluster 4 is the

largest cluster of parents (33%) and represents parents who report the highest level of

income and household education across the four clusters. These measures of SES are

considerably higher for parents in cluster 4 than for parents in other groups.

Interpreting the four parent profiles

The major finding from our cluster analysis is the emergence of four distinct parent

groups � three Latino parent clusters and one Caucasian parent cluster. Caucasian

parents in our sample are represented in cluster 4 and appear to be rather similar in

terms of background characteristics. The homogeneity of the Caucasian parents at

this school can be understood in the context of highly motivated parents who have

the means to transport their child across town every day to school. White parents at

this school, who generally do not live in the school neighbourhood, seem to have a

certain level of interest and commitment to the programme that unifies them in their

pursuit of a language enrichment programme offered at this TWI elementary school.

By contrast, our results also point to the heterogeneity in the Latino parent

population at this school. Through the four naturally occurring groups that emerged

from our cluster analyses, we see three Latino parent groups that vary from each

other in important ways. For example, although parents in cluster 1 and cluster 3 are

foreign born, the Latino parents in cluster 1 are born in various countries in Latin

America, while those in cluster 3 were all born specifically in Mexico. By contrast,

the Latino parents in cluster 2 reported more often being born in the USA, pointing

to a generation of immigration difference from clusters 1 and 3. Not surprisingly,

parents in cluster 3 report speaking Spanish while those in cluster 2 report speaking

both English and Spanish in their homes. Interestingly, parents in cluster 1 report a

more mixed ethno-linguistic composition.

Cluster 1 represents a Latino parent group that is very different from clusters

2 and 3 in others as well. Although they appear to be more recent immigrants, as all

the parents in this cluster report being born outside of the USA, these parents

represent greater diversity in terms of their country of origin as compared to cluster

3. Further, these parents are not Catholic, as compared to the parents in clusters 2

and 3, who all, save one, report being Catholic. Instead, the parents in cluster 1

report being LDS, Other Christian or no religion. The parents in cluster 1 are also

dissimilar from the other Latino parents at this school in terms of measures of SES.

They report higher than average annual incomes and educational levels while both

clusters 2 and 3 are below the mean on both of these SES measures.

These analyses show how accounting for the different social dimensions of these

parents’ lives simultaneously can provide a more nuanced understanding of the

Latino parents at this school. Specifically, we see how looking at merely one

background characteristic, for example using language to group parents, would not

capture the depth of the diversity within the Latino parent group at the school. Using

language as the only defining background characteristic would mask the important

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differences among Latino parents at this school in terms of religious group affiliation

and SES. Our analyses are able to reveal the complex interplay of various social

factors as they play out in the lives of this Latino parent group.

Conclusions and implications

This study is unique in that it applies a cluster analysis technique to look closely at

the parent community at one TWI elementary charter school. This cluster

methodology allows us to better describe the differences and similarities in parent

groups in terms of multiple background characteristics that co-occur for parents

within each cluster. Drawing conclusions about a community from disaggregated

data is not the same as looking holistically and directly at community groups. A

major finding from these analyses is the more complete understanding of the parent

community at the school, as revealed through clustering methodology, as each

background characteristic is taken into consideration at the same time when

grouping parents within the community.

One advantage of using cluster analysis is that we are able to see differences

between groups while also recognising the important commonalities that often define

Latinos in the USA. We are able to see that these parents still do share common

ethno-linguistic traits, which are important. As Clara Rodriguez (2008) states in

talking about the changing composition of Latino groups ‘it is important to note that

emphasizing the heterogeneity of the groups does not necessarily eliminate the

commonalities that also exist between groups; nor does emphasizing heterogeneity

mean that the diversity that exists within groups is ignored’. This research attempts

to provide a much more nuanced understanding of Latino parents at this school by

looking at them in a holistic way and points to future possibilities for understanding

Latino communities throughout the USA.In particular, religious affiliation, the stated country of origin, and levels of SES

were fundamental differences among these groups, pointing to different social

experiences for these parents. Although we were not able to explicitly assess the

generation of immigration, our results suggest that these differences are important

and future research should investigate this more thoroughly. For example, it appears

that among the three Latino groups there are obvious differences in language use and

country of origin. We could surmise that clusters 1 and 3 are more recent immigrants

because they report being born outside of the USA and Spanish more often as a

primary language. There are other differences between these groups however,

highlighting the multidimensional nature of Latino households and families in the

USA.

Because of the religious context of the state of Utah where this school is located,

religious affiliation was also an important dimension that distinguished one Latino

group from the others. The majority of Latino parents in cluster 1 reported being

LDS, which is the predominant religious group in Utah, and where the church

headquarters are located. As mentioned, parents in this cluster also reported higher

levels of SES compared to the other Latino groups, raising the question about the

role of religious affiliation for access to social and economic resources for Latinos in

Utah. Overall, this finding underscores the importance of understanding the diverse

nature of Latino communities within the specific US context in which they are

situated.

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Finally, this study also raises questions about what other social factors should be

taken into consideration when seeking to better understand Latino communities.

How might parents cluster around other important dimensions of their lives to form

clear groups within Latino parent communities? Similarly, how might this new way of

looking at parent communities help us understand and get a better picture of

different important social and educational outcomes? For example, we might see the

differences between how parents implement home language and literacy practices

across these specific Latino parent groups. Further, through a better understanding

of intragroup differences in the Latino community we can help teachers and

administrators facilitate parent involvement. These, among others, are examples of

important questions that policy-makers, school administrators and teachers are

called to take into consideration in their work with Latino communities in the USA.

Scholars need to continue to think of ways to recognise and allow for the diversity of

Latino groups to inform the work that schools and teachers are doing with these

students and their parents.

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