During the past generation, the public, industrial, educational, and medical sectors have focused on increasing participation by students in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields to improve individuals’ living standards and the US economy in general (Liana Landivar 2013). Meanwhile, the US Latino/a population has been growing rapidly, accounting for more than half of the population growth in the last decade, and reaching a total of 55 million in 2014 (Krogstad and Lopez 2015). Latinos are expected to increase from 16.4 to 25.7 % of the total US population by 2050 (Mareshah Jackson 2013). In other words, more than 1 in 8 Americans will be Latina women in a generation’s time. Clearly, if the educational and economic goals of increasing STEM participation are to be met, Latinas must be brought into these fields.

Unfortunately, this is not where we stand as a nation. Latinas face the dual obstacles of ethnic/racial stereotypes and gender expectations, both of which discourage their participation in STEM. The number of women working in STEM fields has multiplied since 1970; however, they are still severely underrepresented in the computer and engineering fields, which make up to 80 % of STEM careers (Landivar 2013). Additionally, Latinos, both male and female, continue to be underrepresented in STEM fields (National Science Foundation 2015).

Although a small number of Latina professionals enjoy success in STEM fields, their problematic underrepresentation in STEM in the US is deep and persistent (Deborah Santiago 2008). Only 3 % of Latinas currently work in STEM fields (Torres, Peña, Camacho and Silva 2014) and this disproportionately small number is not being addressed by the educational pipeline (Flores and Claeys 2010/2011). According to statistics from the NSF, despite the fact that Latinas are 8 % of our national population, in 2012 they accounted for less than 1.5 % of master’s degrees awarded in the physical sciences, mathematics, engineering, and computer science (National Science Foundation 2015).

For this reason, our research team’s attention was drawn to examine a few of the small number of Latinas who are pursuing an education in STEM fields and investigate the sociocultural conditions and characteristics that have allowed their success in these male-dominated fields, where Hispanics are underrepresented, and Latinas are a double minority. In particular, we feel that it is essential to understand the development and enactment of Latinas’ resiliency in confronting obstacles by highlighting the positive contextual mitigating factors (CMFs) that contribute to their resiliency.

We build our understanding of CMFs by extending Paulo Freire’s (2000) critical sociocultural perspective. Freire (2000) refers to limit-situations as obscured and often overwhelming factors that inhibit the oppressed. His focus was on developing a means for the oppressed to understand and overturn these factors. We expand this notion of limit-situations to assert that all interactions, especially teaching and learning, are mitigated by often hidden but powerful factors, both negative and/or positive. Thus, for example, CMFs include enduring positive or negative “macro issues of equity and diversity” such as “gender, socioeconomic status, and race” that contribute to or inhibit “learning opportunities, resources in schools, and time to develop meaningful education experiences” (Gallard, Mensah and Pitts 2014, p. 10). Positive CMFs are associated with resiliency, and therefore, have a potential of becoming tools of liberation.

It is known that one of the most important characteristics of successful people is the ability to enact resiliency in pursuit of their goals. In the past, scholars have defined resiliency as a pattern of behaviors individuals undertake in order to rise above unfavorable situations (Masten and Powell 2003), and their capacity to perform in new socio-cultural, linguistic, and economic contexts (Henry Trueba 2002). However, for us, resiliency is not simply something one has to overcome adversity, but rather it is a filter that is developed and used as needed, resulting from an awareness of the power dynamics that continuously (re) position individuals while interacting in the socio-cultural, political, and historical contexts. In other words, it is the development of a critical consciousness that individuals enact to allow for success when experiencing negative CMFs.

Language, identity, and culture

We understand identity as a set of politically negotiated characteristics and ways of talking, acting, and interacting that defines the role an individual enacts in order to be recognized by others as a specific sort of person (James P. Gee 2006). The way a person speaks, her choice of words, intonation, and accent impact how she is perceived within a social context. Thus, identity is socially constructed and language is “one of the strongest symbols and boundary markers in having a group, regional, cultural or national identity” (Colin Baker 2011, p. 398). For this reason, linguistic anthropology understands language as an essential factor in “the cultural production of identity” (Bucholtz and Hall 2004, p. 369). Cultural identity, thusly conceptualized, “stems from the dynamic relationship between what we inherit and what we acquire,” and language is used to construct the cultural worlds wherein we are permanent learners (Paulo Freire 2005, p. 124). Young people consistently recognize and use the power of language to define themselves, as shown by Django Paris (2010) in his study with high school, urban multiethnic youth.

Children learn cultural patterns from their family and community by enculturation through language (Ovando, Combs, and Collier 2006). Ovando et al. (2006) base their conceptualization of cultural transmission on Margaret Mead’s (1978) process, which identified three kinds of cultural transmission. Ovando et al. (2006) argue that in some situations, the adult members of a community transmit values and traditions to their children, which are followed with minimum modifications; other times, these traditions are negotiated between parents and children, incorporating new learned cultural traits from growing up in the United States. The last condition is when parents experience American culture through the eyes of their children. Children many times act as language brokers for their parents in different social contexts (Morales and Hanson 2005). Through all these processes, heritage language plays a very important role not only in the transmission of values, beliefs, and traditions, but in the creation of the cultural identity of immigrant minorities.

Support from and interactions with parents and peers of the same ethnicity, often in their heritage languages, plays an important role in the preservation of ethnic and racial minority adolescents’ cultural identities (Phinney, Romero, Nava and Huang 2001). For example, Sandra Schecter and Robert Bayley’s (1997) research with four Mexican-descent families demonstrated that all the children, even those who were not fully proficient in Spanish, valued bilingualism and considered Spanish as playing an important role in maintaining their cultural traditions and “in the formation of cultural identity” (p. 536). Cultural identities and heritage languages of immigrant students can only be maintained when they are “protected and promoted by parents and family, ethnic communities, and schools in the host society” (Seong Park 2013, p. 49).

When Latinos adhere to their culture and language with pride, they can freely and purposely use their bilingual, and sometimes multilingual, linguistic resources, including personal ways of expression that project their home and community culture, as a means to make sense of their context (Stevenson 2013) and to facilitate their interactions in a wide variety of social settings. This assertion, grounded in a Vygotskian (1978) perspective, emphasizes language as the most common and effective means of facilitating communication and collaboration toward understanding any particular socio-historical moment.

We believe that students’ cultural, linguistic, and experiential background can contribute to the development and enactment of resiliency and, in turn, academic achievement. Therefore, we are motivated to learn about and expand our conceptualization of resiliency among successful Latinas in STEM, and how the preservation of their heritage language contributes to creating and maintaining support networks that assist them to accomplish their academic goals. This can shed light on the way they have overcome negative CMFs that might have prevented them from fully participating in science learning and pursuing a STEM career. This is the guiding question for this study: What is the role of heritage language in STEM Latinas’ development of resiliency and academic success, particularly in regions where Latinos are a relatively small and novel community?

Situating the study

This question was not part of a preconceived research hypothesis, but rather it emerged from the analysis of data from a larger study. That study, ongoing in Georgia and Texas, is examining how Latina students who are successfully engaged in STEM fields develop the resiliency and inner strength necessary to overcome the multiple obstacles in their paths. This paper looks at how Georgia Latina participants’ heritage languages served as a source of support and strength along their route to STEM academic success.

Georgia is part of the New Latino Diaspora (Wortham, Murillo and Hamann 2002) regions, and thus, unlike Texas, Latinos and the Spanish language are not long-standing features of the state. In fact, in response to the growing diversity of the state during the past generation, Georgia has implemented multiple educational policies hostile toward immigrants and linguistic diversity, particularly Latinos (Beck and Allexsaht-Snider 2002), that echo through the state’s schools, curricula, and teacher attitudes today (Beck and Stevenson 2015). In this unsupportive context, the personal choices of our Latina participants regarding their families’ heritage languages must be understood as an important element of their process of self-identity construction in response to larger socio-cultural pressures and expectations.

Who were the participants?

The three Georgia Latina participants featured in this study attended a small-town high school where only 4 % of the students were Latino (Governor’s Office of Student Achievement 2016). They were bilingual (Spanish/English) and high school upperclassmen (named here with pseudonyms). All spent part of their childhood in central Mexico before immigrating to the U.S. Two of them were comfortable expressing their thoughts in English and one of them, Amelia, was more comfortable speaking in Spanish since she had only been in the U.S. for 3 years. Table 1 below shows the participants’ profiles.

Table 1 Participants’ profiles
Full size table

All three were purposely chosen based upon their remarkable success in science at the high school level, as reported by their teachers. All described their interest in STEM fields as long-standing and persistent. For example, Amelia spoke of how her Mexican teachers supported her interest in computers, “[Mis maestros] me daban los libros para que los leyera o mirara, me daban discos como veían que me interesaban las computadoras…” (My teachers gave me books to read or look at them and compact disks because they noticed that I was interested in computers…) (Amelia 2012).

Using case studies

Case study methodology was used in our data collection and analysis. Following Robert Stake’s (2005) case study methodology, intrinsic, multiple case studies were used to deepen our understanding of the role of the participants’ heritage language in their development and enactment of resiliency. Stake (2005) argues that case studies provide valuable information that can be used for future investigations. By using multiple case studies we were able to identify commonalities, differences, and patterns between the three cases using cross-case analysis examination (Robert Yin 2009) to make our findings stronger.

Data were collected via three individual, semi-structured interviews with each participant, yielding a total of nine interviews. Following James Spradley’s (1979) guidelines for ethnographic interviews, questions were asked informally, in the science classroom at the high school where all three participants attended. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and supplemented with the researchers’ observations regarding pragmatic cues such as the participants’ tone of voice and expressions during their interviews. Data from these interviews were recursively read, organized, coded and analyzed using an interpretive approach (Denzin and Lincoln 2005) in order to identify salient and emergent themes. These themes were reclassified and are being used as headings in the following sections to discuss our data analysis.

Resiliency, identity and heritage languages

As we have previously stated, we define resiliency as a modality which is developed, enacted, and practiced as a conscious reaction to the power dynamics in our society that continuously (re)position the individuals while interacting in the different social contexts. For our participants, resiliency was a filter or mode developed by parents or primary caregivers during their daily interactions. This ability was used every time they had to negotiate their cultural identities and positions:

My parents did encourage it [to be strong] in me; they would also say um, “You shouldn’t worry what other people have to say about you at school, you’re at school to learn not to worry about what people think about you” (Dalia 2012).

Ever since we were little, he [dad] just told me not to listen to what other people had to say; do what I think is correct, and try my best because it’s my future and I’m stuck with it (Laurita 2012).

“Mis abuelos me decían que no hiciera caso…” (My grandparents used to tell me not to pay attention… [to what people said]) (Amelia 2012).

Early in the data analysis process, it became clear that the three Latinas participants developed resiliency from their own self-identity—customs, beliefs, values, and family and community traditions and relationships—and experiential background.

The Latinas in this study confirm their values and identities in various social contexts—home, community, and school—where they use their language to ratify their culture. For example, while interacting, negotiating, and using their bilingual linguistic resources to help their elders navigate the dominant culture; they consolidate their solidarity with mutual support from their family members. Such interactions simultaneously reinforce their familial relationships and thereby contribute to the development of their individual resiliency. The Latina participants used their heritage language to develop cultural identities (Baker 2011) reinforced by the values, beliefs, and traditions transmitted by their families and community (Ovando, et al. 2006). For this reason, our argument in this paper is that our Latina participants’ heritage languages served to ratify their values and cultural identity in different social contexts, which in turn facilitates the enactment of resiliency, allowing them to overcome barriers that might otherwise stifle their aspirations.

All of the participants spoke of specific cultural elements of their personal identities. For example, as will be exemplified later, Amelia placed great value upon the traditional consejos she received as a child in Mexico. When asked what identifies her as a Latina, Dalia responded, “the traditions and customs we have” (Dalia 2012). When we asked the same question, Laurita rushed to reply, “The traditions, I just love them. And it’s nice to hold on to them here… I still hold on to my traditions because it makes me feel closer to the place I grew up… and definitely the language” (Laurita 2012). She clarified that it was critically important to her to preserve all her family’s languages including Otomí, an indigenous language of central Mexico which is her parents’ native language. She elaborated as follows,

I really would love to learn to speak it [Otomí] before it dies out. I know one word and it’s miche, which is what we call our cat. I would definitely hold on to that. It’s tiny little insignificant things that make a difference, you know. So hold on to traditions and the language because that’s what my parents grew up hearing (Laurita 2012).

For the Latina participants, their languages, traditions, and customs, are important elements of their cultural identity (Ovando et al. 2006). As Laurita demonstrated, it is difficult to visualize language separated from cultural identity and is, therefore, a vital component in her efforts to cultivate and preserve her family heritage. She talked with pride about her parents’ indigenous heritage language, which she barely knew, but considered important to learn. For Laurita and the other Latina participants, their culture and traditions are important aspects to their Latina identity, and language is a vital factor in the production of cultural identity, similar to findings in other research such as the aforementioned Schecter and Bayley (1997) study.

Family and community relationships: Consejos, language brokering, and support networks

An important part of why the preservation of their heritage language is true for our Latina participants is that, outside of school, they speak mostly Spanish at home and in their community. Their parents and grandparents are not proficient in English; therefore, the participants considered Spanish and/or other heritage languages not only as part and parcel of their identity, but as a primary means of building and preserving family and community relationships. These relationships create support networks that nourish their inner strength. In this way, our Latinas develop and enact the resiliency needed to succeed academically.

For example, Amelia spent a good portion of her early years in Mexico living with her grandparents. Part of her upbringing were frequent talks, consejos (Concha Delgado-Gaitan 1994), with her grandparents wherein they gave her advice regarding how to overcome adversity and to continue excelling at school. Her grandfather’s consejos are still especially important to Amelia “porque siento que él [grandfather] podía expresarse en las palabras que yo podía entender” (because I feel he was able to express himself with the words I was able to understand) (Amelia 2012). As we will demonstrate later, her grandfather’s ways with heritage language words carried great weight over the years and thousands of miles apart.

Laurita also spoke of the value of her father’s Spanish-language advice: “Sometimes he’ll give me his advice … He’s my relaxation person ‘cause I can just go to him and he’ll be like ‘you know what, you’re too stressed out, take a break’ … and that’s what we do.” She described how, despite their limited formal education, her parents’ unconditional support (Brkich, Gallard, Stevenson, Pitts, Claeys, and Flores in press), and the wisdom conveyed through dichos are valuable to her in her academic tasks. Laurita shares, “I always use their stories in some of my school work. If I don’t understand a concept, they’ll [my parents will] use some old saying or something from their native [language, Otomí, to help me]” (Laurita 2012).

Another way our participants articulated re-affirmation of their family values was evident in their sensitivity to act as language brokers for their parents (Morales and Hanson 2005). Their sense of responsibility went beyond utilitarian helpfulness as youthful translators for their parents in English-dominant settings such as a school or store. For example, one participant, Amelia, explained how her mom, although feeling comfortable and welcome in a teacher’s class, sometimes resisted visiting that teacher because of her lack of English proficiency. She told us that she helped her mom in that kind of situation, as follows.

Researcher: ¿Tu mamá te lo pide? (Does your mom ask you to do it?)

Amelia: Yo lo hago… (I do it…) Veo que tiene la necesidad…entonces siento que es lo que debo hacer: apoyarla…asi como ella me apoya (I realize that she needs it…then I feel that it is what I have to do: to support her…the same way she supports me) (Amelia 2012).

Thus, for Amelia, serving as a translator for her mother was not just a transaction that exchanged simple meanings, but an essential element of her mother-daughter relationship. A sense of responsibility that demonstrates her gratefulness for all that her mother has done and will do for her –a confirmation of mutual support. Dalia placed her language brokering in a larger context by stating, “It is a big community thing in the Hispanic community to try to help out your loved ones” (Dalia 2012). Thus, using and preserving heritage languages is part of the sense of commitment Latina/os feel towards their families and communities (Stevenson 2015).

Although there is some evidence that children who act as language brokers for their parents sometimes develop tensions with them (Tilghman-Osborne, Bámaca-Colbert, Witherspoon, Wadsworth and Hecht 2015), in the case of our participants, serving as language brokers has been a means to strengthen their familial relationships, re-affirm their support networks, and build their sense of efficacy as problem-solvers. Our Latinas use their heritage languages—in the form of remembered consejos and dichos or as translators—to overcome difficult situations, and thereby develop resiliency which they can enact in facing future challenges.

Latinas’ heritage languages: Rejecting deficit perspectives

The participants’ positive personal and familial associations with their heritage languages, however, did not shelter them from the xenophobic and stereotyped attitudes of local Georgians. All three young women spoke of their disappointment and frustration with discriminatory acts encountered with teachers, classmates, and/or community members. Often assumptions were made on the basis of their appearance, Spanish fluency, and English capacity, and as a result were treated as English Language Learners. Dalia discussed her experiences with teachers:

When I moved schools my teacher didn’t think I spoke English and she sent me to a special class and I looked at her like she was crazy because she treated me like I didn’t know anything” … “they put [me] in the ESL class because they thought I couldn’t speak English and that I needed extra help on my tests and stuff, and I didn’t need extra help (Dalia 2012).

Furthermore, Dalia spoke of how teachers assume that all Latino newcomers need a translator: “I’ve seen it when teachers see any Hispanic student come to school, they try to place them by me … but they usually get what the teacher is trying to teach.” Dalia continued, “I don’t think the teachers or anyone should stereotype people.” Other evidence of low expectations occurs when Latinos are enrolled in lower grade level courses and are ‘jokingly’ teased by their peers to consider non-college career tracks. Laurita (2012) shares, “We do housekeeping, me and my mom, so they’re [peers say] like, Oh, are you going to grow up to be a housekeeper?” (Laurita 2012).

These deficit assumptions are not surprising since the pervasive monolingualism of the local Georgia community frames linguistic diversity as an obstacle and deficit to be confronted, rather than as an asset to be celebrated (Stephen Krashen 1996). However, this deficit thinking based on race and ethnicity (Richard Valencia 2012) is unacceptable, restrictive, and even destructive construct imposed upon Latina identity. When educational practices “reinforce language hierarchies and subordinate students’ existing identities and language practices, schools can become sites of institutional denigration of the learner’s sense of self” (Leeman, Rabin, and Román-Mendoza 2011, p. 482).

Amelia similarly articulated her perception of one of her first teachers in the U.S., “el [the teacher] de biología nunca me puso atención” (the biology [teacher] never paid attention to me). She was also excluded by classmates who followed the teacher’s lead. When asked which peers did not accept her, she replied, “las personas que no conozco, las que piensan que no puedo hablar inglés” (The people I do not know, those who think I cannot speak English). Amelia continued, in tears, talking about a student who threatened her and other Mexican–American students, “nos dijo que nos iba a denunciar” (She said that she was going to turn us in [to be deported]. Rather than give up or retreat, Amelia enacted resiliency by relying in the educación (Guadalupe Valdés 1996) conveyed through her grandfather’s consejos to persist and succeed.

Researcher: But you didn’t let it stop you, why do you think at such a young age, you are so strong, so able to say ‘forget you?

Amelia: No sé de donde viene, creo que la educación que me dieron (I do not know where does it come from, I believe it is the [moral] education they gave me.)

Researcher: ¿Tu educación en tu casa de tus abuelos?… me imagino que los valores continúan (Your education in your grandparents’ home?…I imagine the values endure.)

Amelia: Continúan los mismos valores (The same values endure).

Researcher: ¿Cuáles valores? (Which values?)

Amelia: El respeto; que no importa lo que los demás digan, uno tiene que ser uno mismo. (Respect; it does not matter what everybody says, one has to be oneself) (Amelia 2012).

Thus, notwithstanding the rejection and marginalization they experienced, the Latina participants used their heritage languages and the traditions and culture with a sense of pride, and as the means to reinforce their resilient abilities.

What did we learn?

In 2014, a speech by a 10-year-old Mexican girl, Natalia López, captured the hearts and minds of Latino social media across the hemisphere. Her YouTube video (Armando Sánchez 2014) demonstrated the power of heritage languages to build strong families and resilient children. Moving between Náhuatl, the language of the Aztecs, and Spanish, she spoke with pride about her indigenous origins, culture, and her parents’ humble jobs. During her speech, Natalia stated:

Mis raíces son de origen indígena…Yo soy Natalia y hablo lengua náhuatl porque mi madre me enseña, pero siento una gran pena no conocer el totonaca que mi padre lleva en el corazón. Soy feliz porque sé que soy parte de las grandes raíces de México (My roots are of indigenous origin… I am Natalia and speak the Nahuatl language because my mother taught me, but I feel a great sorrow not to know the Totonacan language, the language my father carries in his heart. I am happy because I am part of Mexico’s grand heritage).

Natalia is enriched through her mutually-supporting family values, cultural identity, and heritage languages—the CMFs that have allowed her to achieve academically, against all odds.

In the same way, our Latina participants’ proud adherence to their culture and heritage languages accomplished multiple tasks. Lev Vygotsky (1978) asserted that language is not only the means to cognitive development, but it is a way to reinforce personal relationships and learn through interactions. This is clear from our examination of our participants’ lives. Our Latina participants’ heritage languages were always present every time they had to interact in various social contexts. Their heritage languages allowed them to participate in cultural traditions that are central to their identities and thereby develop and enact the resiliency they needed for academic success.

By maintaining their communication with their families and communities they were able to engage in a set of positive CMFs, interactions, and relationships that formed the support networks necessary for them to be resilient enough to overcome the negative CMFs of being a double minority in STEM. With a solid sense of pride in who they are, our Latina participants negotiated meanings, facilitated interactions, and re-affirmed their cultural identities, thereby facilitating the enactment of the resiliency that has enabled their success in STEM fields.

Final thoughts

This study highlights the importance of the preservation of heritage languages among minority groups. As a counter resistance, the adolescent participants presented here adhered to their heritage languages as a means to maintain their relationships with their family, community, culture, and thereby preserve their own identities. In turn, these linguistically and culturally-rooted identities served as positive CMFs, affording them opportunities to develop resiliency to push beyond limiting expectations and stereotypes, and achieve academically. Heritage languages have been identified as a cohesive source that creates support networks among our Latina participants. These supports allowed them to develop and enact the resiliency necessary to successfully continue along their trajectory towards careers in STEM fields.

Our findings suggest that teacher professional development at the middle and high school levels should encourage socio-culturally responsive pedagogical approaches (Geneva Gay 2010) in science education that acknowledge the cultural traits of immigrant and minority students and value their heritage languages as assets rather than obstacles. The findings in this article are drawn from data collected from only three adolescent Latina participants; for this reason, we suggest that is necessary to conduct research on a larger group of Latinas to examine the role of heritage languages in the creation of essential support networks, the development and enactment of resiliency, and the achievement of academic and professional goals in STEM fields.