Asset Pedagogies in Latino Youth Identity and Achievement

Nurturing Confianza

Francesca A. López

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138911413
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317434122
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Asset Pedagogies in Latino Youth Identity and Achievement explores the theory, research, and application of asset-based pedagogies to counter approaches that fail to challenge deficit views of youth. Presenting details on the role of teachers' knowledge about students' language and culture as strengths as opposed to deficiencies, Francesca A. López connects classroom practices to positive outcomes, preparing teachers to use asset pedagogies to promote academic achievement and implement asset-based teaching practices. Making thorough use of examples from research both in and out of the classroom and concluding with concrete applications from experienced educators, this book provides future teachers with a critical understanding of how to support Latino youth.

1

Introduction

Francesca A. López

By casting Latino students as bearers of valuable assets—language and ­cultural knowledge—we may find that they have as much or more to offer as students who have traditionally garnered success in US schools. Perhaps we could even “relabel” Latino students in a way that also allows them to believe in their own potential.

(Patricia Gándara, 2015, p. 460)

The United States has a long, lamentable history of marginalizing Latino ¹ youth. Even with numerous education reform efforts ostensibly aimed at aggressively addressing achievement disparities, Latino students continue to be underrepresented in a vast array of achievement outcomes. Whether we are examining data on K–12 achievement trends, high school graduation rates, college matriculation, or any other criterion, we seem to have failed in making any progress in closing the so-called “gap” for Latino students. In other words, disparities between Latino and higher achieving White students remain, and, unfortunately, this enduring gap is often interpreted as evidence that Latino achievement has not improved at all. Yet, contrary to the discourse that suggests there has been no improvement in educational outcomes among Latino students, there have been substantial real gains across various metrics over the past several decades—with Latino student growth often surpassing that of White students (see Gándara, 2015). One example is Latino students’ performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in reading and mathematics, which demonstrates that they have steadily increased performance across both grade levels and subjects (see Figures 1.1–1.4 ² ). It is because White students have also made gains over the course of forty years, however, that disparities remain. So why is it that educational outcomes have improved over time, but not in ways that reduce disparities? The answer lies in the fact that educational outcomes are not a product of educational rigor alone. While we may attribute some or much of the overall gains students of all backgrounds have experienced over the past several decades to more rigorous standards, higher standards alone cannot address disparities.

FIGURE 1.1 Average scale scores for reading, grade 4, National Assessment of Educational Progress.

FIGURE 1.2 Average scale scores for reading, grade 8, National Assessment of Educational Progress.

FIGURE 1.3 Average scale scores for mathematics, grade 4, National Assessment of Educational Progress.

FIGURE 1.4 Average scale scores for mathematics, grade 8, National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Social Equity Theory

There are many theories that help explain why historically marginalized students remain underrepresented in gifted education, Advanced Placement courses, high school completion, college matriculation, and so on. Although there are various theories ³ that explain how stratification originated and has been ­maintained (e.g., the role of power, privilege, and access, and how these phenomena maintain the marginalization of some groups as they create more access for others), most are beyond the scope of this book. This is not to say the theories and knowledge undergirding them are irrelevant—quite the contrary, understanding the source of stratification and how it is maintained is the very kind of knowledge I am not alone in asserting that teachers must have to be successful (as explained in more detail in Chapter 4). But other scholars have already provided us with invaluable information in ways I would not attempt to match, much less surpass. I will leave it to readers to seek out the compelling work of David Berliner, Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis, Antonia Darder, Lisa Delpit, Patricia Gándara, Gene Glass, Norma Gonzalez, Jay Gould, Ian Haney Lopez, Douglass Massey, Jeannie Oakes, Guadalupe Valdés, Angela Valenzuela, and many others whom I am sure I have failed to name. Instead, I decided to describe a theory that I believe helps explain why disparities in achievement between historically marginalized and White youth persist despite multiple reform efforts to “close achievement gaps.” The theory helps elucidate the kinds of dynamics that take place in classrooms that affect some students but not others—knowledge and behaviors that those of us who are teacher and leader educators have much more immediate, direct access to help transform—which are the essence of this book.

Social Equity Theory (SET; see McKown, 2013) rests on the premise that we are social beings who infer information from our surroundings, and that by inferring and internalizing socially transmitted messages, our performance is affected in a myriad of ways. These socially transmitted messages fall into two broad categories: those that affect everyone and anyone, regardless of background (known as direct influences), and those that affect individuals based on membership to a particular group (known as signal influences). By understanding these two types of socially transmitted messages, we can begin to see why we continue to see achievement disparities for Latino youth, as well as other historically marginalized youth (see Figure 1.5).

FIGURE 1.5 Average scale scores for reading, grade 4, National Assessment of Edu­cational Progress (NAEP).

Direct influences. There are many kinds of direct influences that play a role in the academic trajectory of youth. Some of the direct influences that are beyond the scope of this book involve aspects of neighborhoods and parenting. It is likely to be no surprise that where children live (their home and neighborhood) as well as the resources available to caregivers (both in terms of materials and time) provide experiences that either hinder or support youth as they progress through school. While the issue of inequitable distribution of resources is of the utmost importance given the ever-increasing number of children who live in poverty, the focus of this book compels me to focus on the kinds of socially transmitted messages that take place in classrooms. And it turns out that there is an abundance of direct influences that transpire in classrooms; they involve “the quality of instruction and the quality of student–teacher relationships” (McKown, 2013, p. 1123), which have a robust history in education research (e.g., Brophy & Good, 1984; Good, 2014). To summarize this vast body of research (which is described in more detail in Chapter 4), we know that there is a link between teachers’ expectations and how teachers reflect their beliefs in their behaviors (e.g., providing information, eliciting information, pacing of instruction), and we know that behaviors that reflect high quality of instruction are associated with students’ academic identities and improved student achievement. The prominence of this research can be discerned from its presence in licensure standards for teacher preparation (e.g., Council of Chief State School Officers, 2011) and widely used teacher quality evaluation assessments (e.g., Danielson, 2013; Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008). In fact, this research is so very institutionalized in teacher preparation and evaluation that it is rare to find non-educators, let alone teachers, who have not heard of the “self-fulfilling prophecies” and the role they play in promoting or hindering student success.

It is important to acknowledge the role of direct influences in student achievement: quality of instruction, along with other direct influences, collectively explain all disparities—but only until around the time students are in second grade (see Figure 1.6). Let us recall that direct influences, including behaviors that reflect high quality instruction, are not contingent on students’ ethnicity; the quality of the educational environment is a direct influence that affects all students. All students (albeit to varying degrees) will exhibit the consequences of ill-­prepared teachers, just as all students’ performance will improve if standards become more rigorous (including the curriculum and the extent to which teachers are prepared). This assertion is supported with evidence of the correlation between increased educational standards and the general improvement on NAEP for all student groups regardless of grade level or subject—but particularly for mathematics (as shown in Figures 1.1–1.4). Quality schools, quality teachers, and rigor, however, are less accessible to historically marginalized students (Oakes, 2005). This is the reason statistically controlling for these and other direct influences explains achievement disparities. But what happens after students are about eight years of age, when we see disparities once again increase even when controlling for various direct influences? Why does the combination of neighborhoods, parenting, and quality instruction explain all the disparities for children only until about third grade? The answer lies in signal influences.

FIGURE 1.6 Visual representation of achievement disparities for historically mar­ginalized students after controlling for “direct influences” across time.

Signal influences. There are socially transmitted messages that are contingent on ethnicity, known as signal influences. Whereas direct influences affect all students, signal influences affect historically marginalized youth with “social events that signal to members of negatively stereotyped groups that they are devalued because of their group membership” (McKown, 2013, p. 1125). Notably, children become keenly aware of stereotypes and biased behaviors by around the age of eight—the same time we begin to see disparities climb after statistically controlling for direct influences. In other words, we can statistically explain disparities due to direct influences until children are developmentally capable of perceiving and internalizing signal influences. The source of increasing disparities, then, is that historically marginalized youth discern signal influences that their White peers do not. Unfortunately, the insidiousness of signal influences is that they are abundant in classroom settings: they are transmitted through dynamics such as group composition (e.g., the paucity of student representation in accelerated, gifted, and/or advanced courses), curricular materials (see Figure 1.7), and teacher behaviors. Thus, whereas increased rigor, quality teachers, and quality schools provide direct influences ⁴ that affect all students but are less accessible to historically marginalized students (Oakes, 2005), signal influences accumulate in childhood and influence the identity and achievement of youth belonging to devalued groups. This is why no amount of direct influences in the form of rigor and quality schools and teachers has ameliorated dispa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword by Norma González
• Foreword by Amado M. Padilla
• 1 Introduction
• PART I A Macro-to-Micro Overview of the Context for Latino Youth
• PART II Theories and Research
• PART III Teacher Perspective on Asset-Based Pedagogy
• Index