Static Structures, Changing Demographics: Educating Teachers for Shifting Populations in Stable Schools

Portes and Smagorinsky examine the degree to which stable schools and authoritarian instruction accommodate the needs of learners exhibiting difference, with special attention to Spanish-speaking English Language Learners in a Southern setting. They find that the influx of immigrant students in Southern schools lays bare the normative institutional structures and instructional practices that go unchallenged until a new cultural group enters the school and reveals that what is normative to some is alien to others. (Contains 5 notes.)