Pushing the Boundaries: Education Leaders, Mentors, and Refugee Students

Abstract

Purpose: In this study, we trace the work of refugee student–family mentors (mentors) in an Arizona school district who work across school–family boundaries. Utilizing boundary spanning theory, we examine how education leaders—teachers, school principals, assistant principals, and district administrators—work with the mentors. We document the interactions between the school leaders and the mentors and compare them with the interactions between the refugee families and the mentors. Research Methods/Approach: We draw on data collected in a 3-year ethnography of refugee networks and on a related set of extended interviews with refugee parents. Data includes interviews with refugee mentors, school leaders, and refugee parents, as well as interviews with staff members of refugee support organizations, resettlement agencies, and state programs. Observational fieldnotes and documents were also collected. Data analysis included emergent coding and theme comparison across all data. Conclusions: We demonstrate that the refugee parents respect and depend on the mentors, while school leaders often treat them as “helpers.” We analyze how the mentors are delegitimized by the actions of education leaders in schools, and also by their marginalization in the school district. We recommend additional research be conducted on how school districts interact with refugee students and families. We suggest that education leaders better support the work of staff who work with refugees and other culturally and linguistically diverse students by taking a resource inventory, clarifying staff roles, including parents in decision making, and making a commitment to build inclusive school communities.

Boundary Spanning in Local Governance: A Scoping Review

“…Examples of the first category include school principals (L. K. Bradshaw, 1999), central office administrators (Honig, 2006), and frontline workers (Lindsay et al, 2021). The second category –created roles – includes positions such as “health brokers” (Harting et al, 2011), “care sport connectors” (Hermens et al, 2017), and “refugee-student family mentors” (Koyama & Kasper, 2021). The final category contained leaders who demonstrated specific boundary-spanning qualities in carrying out their work (Dudau et al, 2018), and emergency service personnel or managers who demonstrated boundary spanning capabilities during the course of a crisis (Gil-Garcia et al, 2016).…”

“…Alvinius et al (2016) point to the spontaneous links created by family members or off-duty professionals embedded within the local context who end up taking on boundary spanning roles between health care and the community: “The municipality nurses running to the hospital to fetch medicines or going to the pharmacy to pick up patients’ prescriptions, which they do in their free time because they’re ‘nice’…” (p. 157). Embeddedness in a local context shaping the nature of boundary-spanning efforts is also identified by Koyama and Kasper (2021) who describe the importance of the informal interactions of the boundary spanner in community settings. In a somewhat similar vein, Miller (2008) and Van Hulst et al (2012) refer to the deep relationships boundary spanners develop as a result of being embedded within their communities.…”