Research Brief - 8 - Educational and Mothering Discourses and Learner Goals: January 2012 Mexican Immigrant Women Enacting Agency in a Family Literacy Program

Oct 15, 2026

Educational and Mothering Discourses and Learner Goals examines how Mexican immigrant women in a family literacy program use mainstream discourses of mothering and parent involvement to pursue personal and academic objectives. Findings show tensions between Mexican mothering ideals and program expectations, alongside strategic use of family literacy narratives to gain support, prestige, and momentum toward equitable gender relations. Participation also supports children’s academic success as women blend U.S. and Mexican meanings of good mothering.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages4

Reading Time10 min

AccessFree to download

Key Findings

Key Implications

Introduction

Literature Review

Methods

Research Brief \#8 Educational and Mothering Discourses and Learner Goals: January 2012 Mexican Immigrant Women Enacting Agency in a Family Literacy Program Blaire Willson Toso Key Findings Family literacy programs promote certain ideas about literacy and parenting. This study examined how Mexican immigrant women in a family literacy program used mainstream ideas, or discourses, of mothering and parent involvement in education to pursue their own personal and academic goals. The findings revealed that women were at times faced with the dilemma of choosing between Mexican ideas about mothering and those embedded in the family literacy program. However, they also used family literacy discourses to justify their educational pursuits, gain power and prestige in their nuclear and extended families, work toward more equitable gender relationships in the home, set goals, expand their identity, and participate in mainstream society. Furthermore, participation in family literacy classes helped to support their children’s academic success. Lastly, participants combined U.S. and Mexican discourses to reflect their ideas of good mothering and demonstrate their mothering abilities. Key Implications This study suggests that practitioners should identify how societal norms concerning mothering and literacy shape family literacy programming, teaching, and their understandings of learners. This study helps identify how learners use these discourses to expand their identities, take advantage of new opportunities, and achieve goals. These immigrant mothers actively used academic and social knowledge (tacit knowledge constructed through community and personal experiences) to make decisions or set goals, indicating that program and learner goals need to be aligned. These findings can assist curriculum developers and teachers to align class content to learner goals and identify benefits and conflicts for learners in achieving stated program goals. Viewing adult learners as having to interact in a variety of settings (e.g., school, home, public institutions, workplace) can help practitioners determine what tools learners use or need to negotiate educational opportunities and societal expectations. Chiefly, this means including learners indecision making about curricula and other programmatic matters. Furthermore, explicitly teaching and discussing social norms could enable learners to make more informed decisions about how they interact in their new U.S. communities and to understand how mainstream U.S. discourses might conflict with their own cultural discourses. Classroom discussions on these topics may clarify apparent contradictions such as learners wanting to advance their education to support their children, but missing classes to stay home with their husband. Introduction This study examined how Mexican immigrant women enrolled in a family literacy program used mainstream ideas of mothering and parent involvement in education to pursue their own personal and academic goals. Like other adult learners (Perry & Purcell-Gates, 2005), these mothers appropriated dominant parenting and educational discourses in the [U.S. to](U.S. to) justify furthering their education, to support their future goals, to create new identities, and to demonstrate their mothering abilities. Participants negotiated multiple identities such as mother, wife, and woman by combining discourses of raising a literate child and being a good mother. At other times these identities conflicted with achieving some of their goals. The study offers adult education scholars and practitioners alternative ways of understanding learners, their goals, and pathways to achieving these goals. Literature Review Research indicates that educational programs convey norms and ideas about topics such as schooling, identity, and parenting behaviors (Foucault, 1980; Smythe & Isserlis, 2002). These discourses shape how educators view learners and their goals, views that may or

FAQs

What dilemma do participants face in the family literacy program?

Participants sometimes face a dilemma between Mexican ideas about mothering and the discourses embedded in the family literacy program.

How do the women use family literacy discourses to advance their goals?

They use family literacy narratives to justify educational pursuits, expand identity, gain power and prestige within families, and work toward more equitable gender relationships.

What research questions does the study address in the methods section?

The study asks how participation shapes women’s enactment of agency and how women use, negotiate, or disrupt mothering and literacy discourses to connect with or distinguish themselves from program ideals.

Oct 15, 2026

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