“Wait,What Do You Mean by College?” A Critical Race Analysis of Latina/o Students and Their Pathways to Community College

ABSTRACT

As a group, Latina/o students are more likely to experience a substandard K–12 education complete with underresourced schools, high teacher turnover, and fewer college-preparatory courses. It is this same inferior education that denies many Latina/o high school students the opportunity to engage in college-choice—leading to their disproportionate enrollment in community colleges over 4-year colleges or universities. In California alone, approximately 75% of Latina/o students in higher education can be found in the community college sector—making this an important pathway for many Latina/o students. This qualitative study incorporated a Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Education framework to focus on the racialized K–12 experiences of four Latina/o graduate students who started their postsecondary career at a community college. This study was undertaken to better understand what led Latina/o students to enroll in community colleges after high school. Exploring the pathways of Latina/o students from high school to community college is imperative to community college practitioners (i.e., faculty, staff, and administrators) when considering best practices for their large Latina/o student body, as is found in California. The initial findings suggest that racism in K–12 in the forms of tracking, limited college information, and low expectations from academic personnel had a direct impact on the postsecondary experiences and opportunities available to Latina/o students. Lastly, the findings challenge prevailing portrayals where Latina/o students passively accept their marginalized position in education by highlighting their voice, resiliency, and agency in the face of systematic racism, as evidenced by their successes in academia.     

Pa’lante,siempre pa’lante: pedagogies of the home among Puerto Rican college educated families

Research focused on Latinas/os in higher education often examines patterns of failure, while neglecting factors that contribute to Latina/o generational familial success. This article focuses on intergenerational strategies taught within college-educated Puerto Rican households that assist in academic achievement and success in higher education. Delgado Bernal theorized pedagogies of the home to explain co-constructed cultural knowledge within Chicana/o households to challenge deficit perspectives. Through analysis of educational oral histories of four college-educated Puerto Rican families, pedagogies of the home are extended. The Puerto Rican college-educated children demonstrate sin pelos en la lengua (without mincing words), contradictions among college completers, and pa’lante siempre pa’lante (always moving forward) as strategies employed in navigating higher education. In rearticulating, pedagogies of the home for the Puerto Rican community, institutions of higher education can better respond to the various experiences of Latinas/os.     

Academic Engagement and Achievement Among Latina/o and Non-Latina/o Adolescents

This article presents an exploratory study of the relation between academic engagement and academic achievement for Latina/o and non-Latina/o adolescents attending a predominantly low-income, Latina/o urban middle school in Southern California. A sample of 61 students (37 Latinas/os and 24 non-Latinas/os) participated in the study. The Latina/o students’ mean grade point average was lower than the non-Latina/o students’ mean grade point average. The study results revealed a significant interaction between academic engagement and grade point average for Latina/o students but not for non-Latina/o students. Findings are discussed in regard to the promotion of Latina/o adolescent achievement through increased levels of academic engagement.     

Networks of Encouragement: Who’s Encouraging Latina/o Students and White Students to Enroll in Honors and Advanced-Placement (AP) Courses?

Using affiliation network data collected at a large high school, this study examined differences between who encourages Latina/o and White students to enroll in advanced courses. Previous research has shown a positive association between emotional support and academic achievement, and thus, this study shifts the focus from who informs students to who encourages them. This study revealed that on average, Latina/o and White students have different networks of encouragement.     

A Curriculum of the Borderlands: High School Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies as Sitios y Lengua

Drawing from a nine-month critical teacher inquiry investigation, this article examines the experiences of eleventh and twelfth grade students who participated in a year-long Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies course in California shortly after the passing of Arizona House Bill 2281 (HB 2281). Through a borderlands analysis, I explore how these students describe their experiences participating in such a course, and in doing so, debunk some of the myths upon which HB 2281 was constructed. I find that these classroom experiences served as sitios y lenguas (decolonizing spaces and discourses; Pérez in The decolonial imaginary: Writing Chicanas into history, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1998) in which high school students were able to reflect on the ongoing transformation of their social, political, and ethnic identities, and developed a relational ontological base. This article explores the physical and metaphorical borders (Anzaldúa in Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco 1987) that Chicana/o and Latina/o youth navigate and challenge while simultaneously working for social change in their communities. Lastly, it conveys what we stand to lose if the decolonizing spaces and discourse constructed in Ethnic Studies courses become casualties of xenophobic policy.     

Healing Images and Narratives: Undocumented Chicana/Latina Pedagogies of Resistance

This article draws from a longitudinal study of 38 in-depth testimonio interviews with 10 undocumented Chicanas/Latinas from 2008 to 2014, first as college students and then as professionals. A Chicana feminist theoretical perspective in education was utilized to explore how undocumented Chicana/Latina ways of knowing emerged in the ways they worked with and for immigrant communities as professionals. The study found that participants drew from their multiple identities, social locations, and life experiences as undocumented Chicana/Latina women to engage in pedagogies of resistance—everyday forms of teaching and learning that challenge the subjugation of undocumented communities, and are shaped by personal and collective experiences, knowledge, and identities. The study found that participants utilized mestiza consciousness, convivencia, and bodymindspirit to employ these pedagogies of resistance in their professional work with and for immigrant communities.     

Exploring Resilience in Latina/o Academic Outcomes: A Latent Class Approach

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between various protective factors with academic outcomes of Latina/o high school students. We use two groups of protective influences, individual and family, and their relationship to 12th grade mathematics achievement, dropout rates, and enrollment in post-secondary education. Latent class analysis was used to identify academic protective profiles, or latent groups/classes, among high school Latina/o students (N?=?1610) and assess group differences with respect to gender, SES, immigrant status, student’s native language, preschool attendance, and 10th grade mathematics. Results indicated the presence of four academic protective groups, which differed with respect to academic discussions with parents, and attitudes about mathematics. The four classes are compared with respect to academic outcomes and differences are discussed as well as implications for practice.     

Extraordinary conversations in public schools

This article reviews two ethnographic studies in which "disruptive pedagogies" are engaged in public schools, designed to enable youth to work across categories of difference toward a grounded sense of social critique and participation. Respectfully challenging/extending the premises of reproduction theory, it is argued that educational researchers not only need to theorize the means of (re)production by which public schools insure class, race, ethnic and gender stratification, but also to theorize how counter-hegemonic moments in school, in which educators undertake disruptive pedagogies, affect social consciousness and community.     

Between a “ROC” and a School Place: The Role of Racial Opportunity Cost in the Educational Experiences of Academically Successful Students of Color

Despite numerous reform efforts, schools have not achieved equitable academic outcomes for all students. To better identify where schools have failed, research has sought to understand the complex role the school environment plays in mediating academic success, particularly for students of color. In this article, we forward the concept of racial opportunity cost and then use it as a lens to encapsulate the price academically successful students of color pay in their pursuit of school success. Through individual and focus group interviews, 18 African American and Latina/o students revealed nuances of the costs their academic achievement brought in the racialized, White-normed spaces that often permeated their school cultures. The purpose of this article is to provide theoretical support for the racial opportunity cost concept using existing interdisciplinary scholarship and to describe the racial opportunity costs that emerged from our analysis of student interviews.     

Examining the Success Factors of High-Achieving Puerto Rican Male High-School Students

This article works to dispel the myth that Latino urban high-school students are not capable of performing at high academic levels. Whereas much educational research emphasizes the academic underachievement of urban Latino students, this article counteracts this research by describing the four success factors that three working-class Puerto Rican male high-school students attribute to their high academic achievement. These success factors are: (a) the acquisition of social capital through religiosity and participation in school and community-based extracurricular activities, (b) having a strong Puerto Rican identity, (c) the influence of these students' mothers/sisters on their academic achievement, and (d) the potential for caring and sincere teachers and other school staff to influence high academic achievement. These findings have implications for Latina/o education and recommendations are provided.     

“Whoa. You Speak Mexican?”: Latina/o High School Students’ Sense of Belonging in Advanced Placement and Honors Classes

This qualitative study explored Latina/o students’ sense of belonging in majority White and Asian Advanced Placement (AP) and honors classes in a diverse suburban high school. Using self-determination theory as a framework, I focused on three aspects of sense of belonging: social belonging, teacher–student relationships, and academic belonging. Ten Latina/o tenth- and eleventh-grade students participated in classroom observations, guided journaling sessions, and interviews to capture their sense of belonging in AP and honors classes. Although all of the participants expressed a lack of sense of belonging, they reported that they leveraged their experiences to motivate themselves, increase their engagement, and build resilience.     

In the Service of Self-Determination: Teacher Education,Service-Learning,and Community Reorganizing

Influenced by Third World Liberation social movements in the United States and abroad, this article applies a serve-the-people concept to service-learning in education. Rooted in pedagogies more traditionally associated with ethnic studies and community organizing, and informed by sociocultural and critical frameworks in education, this article offers insights from school community spaces that serve K–12 youth from different urban working-class neighborhoods. Transformative opportunities for grassroots collaboration, learning, agency, and community reorganizing are explored with implications for students, teachers, teacher educators, and community workers concerned with social justice.     

The writing on the wall: enacting place pedagogies in order to reimagine schooling for Black male youth

This ethnographic case study examines how Black educators at an urban middle school enacted critical place pedagogies in order to create a sense of community – that is, a sense of belonging to the place of school – and mutual nurturing between people and space in an attempt to transform how their Black males experienced school. Educators at Starks Middle School did this in order to subvert the failure narrative that describes negative schooling experiences and the ultimate failure of Black boys across this nation. Place pedagogies of Starks Middle School – the signs, symbols, text, pictures, and affirmations used to educate, encourage, and inspire students – were enacted in order to reimagine school space for their Black male students.     

The influence of techno-capital and techno-disposition on the college-going processes of Latina/o college students in Central Texas

Latina/o students are one of the least likely populations to access technology and possess the techno-capital necessary to succeed in postsecondary education. This phenomenological qualitative research study used interviews with 20 Latina/o college students in Central Texas to examine how techno-capital and techno-disposition interact in complex ways to influence their college-going processes. Preliminary findings suggest that Latina/o students held varying levels of cognizance about the digital gap that were heavily dependent upon their socioeconomic backgrounds, that techno-disposition could be leveraged to access and attain more techno-capital, and that gender differences exist between how Latina/o students think about, approach, and utilize technology in their college experiences.     

Examining Latina/o Students’ Experiences of Injustice: LatCrit Insights from a Texas High School

We used Latina/Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) to re-analyze survey and interview data from earlier research in which we found that Latina/o students reported less positive experiences than other students in this high school. We found racial injustice in class enrollments, in students’ experiences with stereotypes and prejudice, in student-teacher relationships, and in school policies and norms. LatCrit principles illustrate interconnections among racism, interest convergence, and colorblindness that create racial injustice for Latinas/os. We argue that counterstorytelling could emerge to resist that injustice and that educators must understand how racism functions in their schools and interrogate relevant policies and norms.     

Exploring Factors That Promote Online Learning Experiences and Academic Self-Concept of Minority High School Students

The rapid growth of online education at the K-12 level in recent years presents the need to explore issues that influence the academic experiences of students choosing this method of learning. In this study, we examined factors that promote/hinder the learning experiences and academic self-concept of minority students attending an online high school. Qualitative interviews were conducted with twenty-four African American, and sixteen Hispanic high school students. The results showed that collaborative learning activities, access to resources, time convenience, student-teacher interactions, student-student interactions, improved academic behavior, and parental support helped to enhance online learning experiences and academic self-concept of the minority students. On the contrary, the lack of social presence, and the lack of cultural inclusion in course content constrain online learning experiences and academic self-concept of the students. The findings revealed some similarities between factors that influence minority students learning experiences online, and in face-to-face setting. The study also highlighted the need for teachers of online courses to understand the cultural backgrounds of minority students, and to use their knowledge to improve the learning experiences and academic self-concept of these students. Implications for teaching minority high school students in an online environment, as well as suggestions for future research are provided. (Keywords: minority students, K-12 online school, factors, online learning, self-concept)     

Considering the Ordo as Pedagogical Context for Religious Education With Christian High School Youth

The Duke Youth Academy for Christian Formation attempts to join Freirean educational theory on contextual pedagogies with ancient Christian practices of the ordo toward the formation and theological education of Protestant Christian high school students. This article describes and reflects on the character and ultimately the success of this odd coupling. While attempting to demonstrate how the ordo as pedagogy may be made inviting to adolescent contexts and to evoke and value the particularities of their experiences, including their experiences of difference, this article also asserts that the ordo provides the additional benefit (sometimes absent from contextual pedagogies utilized by religious educators) of offering ample resources for theological formation, reflection, and construction.     

Latinas/os succeeding in academia: the effect of mentors and multiethnic coursework

Academia often devalues diverse identities, cultures, and languages through emphasis placed on academic values. To ascertain how established and new Latina/o academics achieved success in academia, the author conducted interviews with ten Latina/o academics; they noted mentoring and multiethnic coursework as influential in their success as academics. The author suggests mentoring practices and multiethnic courses should be receptive and sensitive to the complexities and varieties of cultural and linguistic identities, thereby identifying a balance between recognizing diverse language and cultural practices in academia while avoiding generalizations and assumptions about ethnic groups. The author offers implications for practice and research.     

Those Who Left,Those Who Stayed: Exploring the Educational Opportunities of High-Achieving Black and Latina/o Students at Magnet and Nonmagnet Los Angeles High Schools (2001–2002)

Being that educational disparities, manifested through socioeconomic instability, were a major contributing factor to the Los Angeles riots, it is important to examine how public high schools are now shaping the postsecondary opportunities of underrepresented students. Using opportunity-to-learn (OTL) and bounded rationality as frames, this article examines the college preparatory experiences of Black and Latina/o students at a magnet and standard urban high school, specifically focusing on the experiences of high achievers. Findings indicate that students at the two schools had equally high college aspirations, but experienced very different college preparatory environments. Magnet students had access to more college-going resources and greater opportunities to learn, manifested directly from opportunities offered at their school and indirectly from the collective college-going culture shaped by the school, peers, and parents. Bounded rationality allowed students at the underresourced urban school to perceive their school's resources positively and stay motivated, but limited their efforts to pursue additional resources to enhance their opportunity-to-learn.