‘We learned to be compassionate’: pre-service teachers’ perceptions of teaching immigrant children

Abstract

ABSTRACT Demographic changes continue to challenge educators across the United States. Currently, five million English language learners (ELL) attend the country’s public schools, and immigrant populations are expected to increase by 85% by 2060. Despite teacher education programmes offering English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses to prepare pre-service teachers to attend to the high demand of immigrant children, these courses often do not prepare them to be culturally competent. A longitudinal qualitative case study was applied to investigate pre-service teachers’ perceptions of teaching immigrant children during one academic semester through cultural competence lenses. The case was an upper-level undergraduate Foundations of ESOL course in a Southwest Florida public university. After the aggregated data was organised and coded, three themes emerged, indicating that the participants developed three competencies during the academic semester: (1) Self-awareness allowed them to see themselves through the experiences of immigrant students; (2) Compassionate competence emerged from the significant impact that understanding immigrants’ lives and struggles had on the participants’ perceptions of teaching immigrants; and (3) Culturally responsive awareness revealed the participants’ understanding of the importance of becoming culturally responsive in their future classrooms. Implications are discussed, and recommendations are offered based on the study’s findings.