“We Are Bridges”: Bilingual Latina Teachers as Cultural Mediators in Family–School Partnerships

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Abstract

The abstract clearly presents the objectives and approaches of the study, but could benefit from greater concision. It is suggested to synthesize the key ideas to facilitate reading, eliminating repetitions and highlighting the main implications.

Introduction

The introduction is well grounded in current literature and adequately states the problem. However, it could improve in expository clarity, especially in delimiting the conceptual focus between “schoolcentric” and “familycentric”. It would be useful to introduce more directly the role of Latina bilingual teachers at the outset.

Theoretical framework

The use of the “Funds of Knowledge”, “Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies” and “Parent Knowledge” frameworks is relevant and well argued. The integration of current literature is appreciated. Still, some sections could avoid redundancies and better articulate the connections between the frameworks.

Method

The qualitative design using narrative analysis is clearly described. Transparency regarding sample and context is appreciated. As a suggestion, a table with general information about the participants could be added to facilitate their characterization.

Results

The presentation of the results around the four central themes is coherent and rich in nuances. However, it is recommended to lighten some parts to avoid repetitions and strengthen the synthesis between testimonies and categories.

Discussion

The discussion provides a critical and transformative view of the teaching role. The committed tone of the analysis is appreciated. To strengthen it, we suggest a better link between the results and the theoretical frameworks, and to explain more clearly how the research question is answered.

Implications and conclusion

The practical and educational policy proposals are pertinent and well stated. The recommendation to integrate family engagement training courses into initial teacher training is particularly relevant. The conclusion, while powerful, could be synthesized to close the article more directly and clearly.

Style and writing

The language is fluent and appropriate, although some sentences are excessively long or repetitive. A stylistic revision would help to improve the clarity and rhythm of the text.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

Thank you for your thoughtful and constructive feedback. I appreciate your careful reading and insightful suggestions, which have significantly strengthened the clarity, focus, and coherence of the manuscript. Please find below my point-by-point responses, detailing the revisions made in response to your comments. All changes are marked in red in the updated manuscript.

Abstract
Reviewer comment: The abstract clearly presents the objectives and approaches of the study, but could benefit from greater concision. It is suggested to synthesize the key ideas to facilitate reading, eliminating repetitions and highlighting the main implications.
Author Response:
I have revised the abstract to improve concision by reducing it from 213 to approximately 150 words. I also moved the key implication, regarding the integration of family engagement training into teacher education, closer to the purpose statement, as suggested. Redundant phrases have been removed to ensure greater clarity and focus.

Introduction
Reviewer comment: The introduction is well grounded in current literature and adequately states the problem. However, it could improve in expository clarity, especially in delimiting the conceptual focus between “schoolcentric” and “familycentric”. It would be useful to introduce more directly the role of Latina bilingual teachers at the outset.
Author Response:
I have revised the first paragraph of the Introduction for greater clarity and flow, especially in distinguishing the “schoolcentric” versus “familycentric” perspectives. I also now introduce bilingual Latina educators and their significance earlier in the Introduction to better frame the study’s focus from the outset.

Theoretical Framework
Reviewer comment: The use of the “Funds of Knowledge”, “Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies” and “Parent Knowledge” frameworks is relevant and well argued. The integration of current literature is appreciated. Still, some sections could avoid redundancies and better articulate the connections between the frameworks.
Author Response:
I have tightened several sentences in this section to reduce redundancy and clarify distinctions between the three frameworks. I also added transitional phrases to better highlight how they relate to one another in shaping the analysis.

Results
Reviewer comment: The presentation of the results around the four central themes is coherent and rich in nuances. However, it is recommended to lighten some parts to avoid repetitions and strengthen the synthesis between testimonies and categories.
Author Response:
I revised several passages across the Results section to remove repetitive language and improve flow. I also strengthened the integration between participant reflections and the analytical categories by clarifying links between the data excerpts and the core themes in each subsection.

Discussion
Reviewer comment: The discussion provides a critical and transformative view of the teaching role. The committed tone of the analysis is appreciated. To strengthen it, we suggest a better link between the results and the theoretical frameworks, and to explain more clearly how the research question is answered.
Author Response:
I have added a bridging paragraph at the beginning of the Implications section to explicitly connect the findings to each theoretical framework: FoK, CSP, and Parent Knowledge. In addition, I included a two-sentence summary outlining how the study answers Research Questions 1 and 2, both in the Implications and again briefly in the Conclusion.

Implications and Conclusion
Reviewer comment: The practical and educational policy proposals are pertinent and well stated. The recommendation to integrate family engagement training courses into initial teacher training is particularly relevant. The conclusion, while powerful, could be synthesized to close the article more directly and clearly.
Author Response:
The conclusion has been shortened from 450 to approximately 250 words. Repetitive language was cut, and third-person calls to action were consolidated. The final two forward-looking sentences remain.

Style and Writing
Reviewer comment: The language is fluent and appropriate, although some sentences are excessively long or repetitive. A stylistic revision would help to improve the clarity and rhythm of the text.
Author Response:
I carefully revised key sections, including the Introduction, CSP subsection, and Conclusion, to shorten long sentences and remove redundancies. These changes were made throughout the manuscript to enhance clarity and improve pacing, while maintaining the original tone and depth of analysis.

Once again, thank you for your insightful feedback. It has been invaluable in refining the manuscript and ensuring its contributions are communicated more clearly and effectively.

Author

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review this study. I enjoyed learning about this important research, which offers much needed asset-based perspectives on Latina teachers and the work that they do to engage families. I found that the findings offered me valuable insights in this area, and I hope that my comments help you to further strength this manuscript as you move it towards publication.

Contextualization of the current study

 The choice of guiding theories are particularly strong and highly appropriate for the topic. I also appreciated that you were able to summarize each theory succinctly, and then provide further elaboration connecting theory to practice through examples of empirical studies. Further, you concluded each section with a clear link to how the theory was used to guide aspects of this research project.

Each of these descriptions of theory and research, however, focus on what is known about the impact of funds of knowledge, CSP, parental knowledge of the educational experiences of students and their families. What seemed to be missing for me was a consideration of the research on how teachers learn to leverage funds of knowledge, use culturally sustaining pedagogy, and engage parent knowledge. Given that this study focuses on the role of teachers learning about these ideas in a parent engagement course, I strongly recommend that you consider including more information about research on teacher learning and practice in these areas. This will help you to strengthen your arguments about the unique ways in which bilingual Latina educators engage in practices related to the three theories you selected.

Minor comment:

You reference the CHANCE program, and I assume that it is further described in Bennett et al. (2020), but those unfamiliar with this article will not know what you mean when you say, “programs like CHANCE”. Can you provide a bit of an overview of the key features of the program that you’re trying to draw attention to?

Research Design, Questions, Methods

As I understood them (from the last paragraph of section 1), you are research questions are: (1) How do bilingual Latina educators mediate cultural, linguistic, and systemic barriers between schools and families? And (2) How do they challenge deficit narratives about Latinx families by recognizing and uplifting the often invisible ways these families contribute to their children’s education?

Both of these questions assume that bilingual Latina educators will mediate barriers and challenge deficit narratives, but how did you know that would necessarily be the case? If you went in with these assumptions, I wondered if you considered ways in which teachers may not be able to do these things (e.g., what challenges did they face in doing so?). I wonder if you might need to further refine your research questions to clarify your assumptions and what you looked for in your focus on exploring experiences and perspectives of your participants. (This also relates to my comments about your findings). My suggestions below about how to offer additional detail about the steps of analysis you outlined could also help with this.

Your selection of qualitative methodologies is appropriate for exploring questions of “how”, and as you describe, the narrative analysis is especially promising for exploring experiences and perspectives of your participants. I would have liked a bit more detail about some of the steps you described in your analysis process. For example, when you say you examined “use of metaphors, analogies, and other narrative devices”, what did you examine them for? How did you know that those narrative devices connected personal experiences to course concepts? The same could be asked for many of the steps that you list. Illustrative excerpts could be helpful in helping me better understand how you interpreted data at each step and you made methodological decisions during the analysis process.

Findings - coherent, balanced and compelling (supported by evidence)?

I saw your themes relating to your research questions as follows:

• How do bilingual Latina educators mediate cultural, linguistic, and systemic barriers between schools and families?

They mediate through relational translation (Section 4.1). Although the answer to this research question seemed clear to me initially, as I read your elaboration of the findings in Section 4.1, I found myself wondering how some of the descriptions you elaborated on where findings about the teachers’ mediation. For example, the paragraph that begins “The feeling of entering unfamiliar territory is a recurring them in the teachers’ narratives…” on page 6 seemed to me exclusively about parents entering unfamiliar territory, with citations from relevant literature and not as much from your data. In this paragraph, it was hard to for me to see how this information provided elaboration on how the teachers were serving as mediators through relational translation. Perhaps this is more about teachers’ perspectives’ of immigrant families and how those perspectives influence the way they want to be in relation with families? But, that does not fully align with how the research question was framed.

Section 4.3 provided very clear insights in to the ways in which teachers’ experiences helped them serve as relational translators – through the relationships that they formed with families. Although some parts of this section helped me understanding how the teachers challenge deficit narratives (e.g., the example about putting aside biases during home visits), I found this section most helpful for deepening my understanding of the teachers’ experiences mediating between schools and families through relationships with families.

• How do they challenge deficit narratives about Latinx families by recognizing and uplifting the often invisible ways these families contribute to their children’s education?

They reject deficit narratives by being aware of them and working to dismantle them by elevating the funds of knowledge of families. It was easier for me to see how the paragraphs in section 4.2 further elaborated on findings about how the teachers challenged deficit narratives. Even so, I’d recommend that you consider separating your findings from the discussion of your findings in relation to the literature in a way that makes it clearer to your reader which claims are supported by evidence from your analysis and which claims are grounded in other literature in the field.

 Although I found the findings in section 4.4 very compelling and important, it was hard for me to see how they clearly linked to the two research questions you proposed. I’m not suggesting that you cut this section, but instead, I think some clarification of your research questions as they relate to what you explored in terms of teachers’ experiences and perspectives would strengthen coherence across the manuscript.

Presentation of findings

I found the presentation of the findings to be clear. I especially appreciated your introductory paragraph in section 4 (which gives an overview of the findings), and then the clear identification of the four themes in the second paragraph. The structure of the findings sections then clearly links to these four themes and helps to clarify how you are providing evidence from the data to address the research questions.

There are some changes that I would recommend, however, to promote greater clarity in this section. First, I recommend that you more clearly trace the connections between the research questions (more clearly stating these), theory and how it guided analysis (by elaborating on the details of analysis), and findings (which should follow once the research questions are clarified). I also strongly recommend that you distinguish between your findings and discussion of your findings based on extant literature. As I mentioned above, it was not always clear to me when your claims were supported by data and when they relied on other research literature.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

Thank you so much for your generous and insightful feedback. I greatly appreciate the time and care you took in reviewing my manuscript and offering suggestions to strengthen its clarity, coherence, and scholarly contribution. All changes are marked in red in the updated manuscript.

Regarding your minor note about the CHANCE program, I’ve now included a brief description of its key features in the manuscript. This added context will help readers unfamiliar with Bennett et al. (2020) better understand the relevance of this program to the current study.

You raised an important point about the framing of the research questions. I revisited these and refined the language to better reflect the exploratory nature of the study, ensuring they invite complexity rather than assume specific outcomes. I also revised the findings section to more clearly show how participants both enacted and sometimes struggled with these practices.

To address your request for more detail about the data analysis, I elaborated on how I analyzed narrative devices like metaphors and analogies, including what I looked for and how these elements connected to course concepts. I also included illustrative excerpts to clarify how interpretations were made during each step of the analysis.

In the findings section, I clarified the connections between the themes and the refined research questions. I revised Section 4.1 to better explain how teachers’ own perspectives about immigrant families shaped their mediating roles. In Section 4.2, I clarified when claims were grounded in participant data versus supported by literature. I also revised Section 4.4 to strengthen its alignment with the research questions or signal where it extends beyond them to capture participants' broader learning experiences.

Finally, I made structural changes throughout the findings section to better distinguish between data-driven findings and interpretive discussion. I also improved the links between theory, research questions, and analysis to make the overall argument more coherent and transparent to readers.

Thank you again for your thoughtful engagement with my work. Your comments greatly contributed to improving the clarity and depth of the manuscript.