Scholar Profiles
Stephanie Hise
2005 - 2006 University Scholar
Mentor: Maria Coady
College of Education
"I applied to the USP because I was curious about how migrant children are perceived by teachers. I am hoping to find out how much teachers in North Central Florida know about the migrant children we know are in their classrooms and share this information with the rest of the teaching community."
Stephanie is a junior majoring in Spanish and linguistics. Her academic interests revolve around language and culture within the realm of education. She is a member and former president of the Hispanic Association of Bilingual Assistance and lead teacher of community English classes to migrant farm workers for Project SOL (Supporting Others in Language). Stephanie also is a member of Americore.
Research Description:
Teacher Understanding and Perception of Migrant and Resettled Farm Worker’s Children in North Central Florida Public Schools
The purpose of this project is to gauge the understanding and perception that teachers in the local public school system have of the migrant farm working community, its struggles and strengths, and, most importantly, how this information may impact the education of migrant farmworker children. Migrants are those workers who move frequently in pursuit of labor in the agricultural industry. According to federal guidelines, migrants must migrate in pursuit of labor more then once within a 36 month period (Pappamihiel, 2004). This information is important since we know that teachers in the public school system in north central Florida have migrant students in their classrooms (Norris, 2004).
This issue is of utmost importance. We know that 54.6 percent of migrant children drop out of school before completing high school (Pappamihiel, 2004). It is important that we understand the needs of these students so that we may better serve them in the school system with programs that are currently available and those that may need to be developed. It is also important that we understand the ideas and perceptions held by teachers so that we may better facilitate the interaction between students, teachers and services.
Research methods will include a survey of teachers in the north central Florida, 13-county region, as well as detailed observations and field notes of teacher-student interactions and in-depth interviews with teachers regarding their understanding and perception of migrant students. This information will be invaluable to all teachers who may encounter migrants in their classrooms. As a result of this study, teachers may tap into migrant students’ funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) as a rich resource in the classroom. A possible outcome for this project may be a compilation of the information found in this study in accessible information packets for teachers detailing findings from this study.
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