Valuing Education: How Culture Influences the Participation of Mexican Immigrant Mothers in the Formal Education of their Children in the United States

U.S. Latino parents are often characterized by educators as uninvolved in school and the formal education of their children because they do not value education. While research indicates otherwise, stereotypes still exist among many educators that one reason Latinos do poorly in school is because they do not care. Masked behind stereotypes is the significant variation in levels of parent involvement in education among U.S. Latinos. The literature does not address why parents with similar socioeconomic, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds respond to schools in such distinct ways. This ethnographic case study addresses variation in the involvement of Mexican immigrant mothers by focusing on how some use their cultured capacities to construct strategies of action in the formal education of their children in the United States. The implications for policy and practice include a greater understanding of why some Mexican immigrant parents routinely participate in the school affairs of their children while others with similar characteristics and backgrounds do not; and how institutions, like schools, may have the means to impact the strategies of action chosen by parents through the use of widely disseminated semiotic codes. This study also finds that culture's role in the participation of Mexican immigrant parents could not fully be accounted for in Epstein's (1995, 2001) Six Types of Involvement for Parents. Socializing was identified as a seventh type of involvement that may actually serve as a catalyst for involvement in the other six types and a means for strengthening home-school connections. In addition, a significant finding not seen elsewhere in the literature was an overwhelming amount of evidence that the majority of Mexican immigrant mothers in this study believed that schools were better in Mexico than the U.S.