1st Edition

U.S. Latinos and Education Policy Research-Based Directions for Change

    252 Pages
    by Routledge

    252 Pages
    by Routledge

    With the American dream progressively elusive for and exclusive of Latinos, there is an urgent need for empirically and conceptually based macro-level policy solutions for Latino education. Going beyond just exposing educational inequalities, this volume provides intelligent and pragmatic research-based policy directions and tools for change for U.S. Latino Education and other multicultural contexts.

    U.S. Latinos and Education Policy is organized round three themes: education as both product and process of social and historical events and practices; the experiences of young immigrants in schools in both U.S. and international settings and policy approaches to address their needs; and situated perspectives on learning among immigrant students across school, home, and community.

    With contributions from leading scholars, including Luis Moll, Eugene E. Garcia, Richard P. Durán, Sonia Nieto , Angela Valenzuela, Alejandro Portes and Barbara Flores, this volume enhances existing discussions by showcasing how researchers working both within and in collaboration with Latino communities have employed multiple analytic frameworks; illustrating how current scholarship and culturally oriented theory can serve equity-oriented practice; and, focusing attention on ethnicity in context and in relation to the interaction of developmental and cultural factors. The theoretical and methodological perspectives integrate praxis research from multiple disciplines and apply this research directly to policy.

    CONTENTS

    Foreword
    Sonia Nieto

    Editors’ Introduction

    Section I: Policy Concerns about Praxis and Cultural Capital Preservation

    Chapter 1
    National Myopia, Latino Futures, and Educational Policy
    Pedro R. Portes & Spencer Salas

    Chapter 2
    Thinking through the Decolonial Turn in Research and Praxis:  Advancing New Understandings of the Community-School Relation in Latina/o Parent Involvement
    Patricia Baquedano-López, Sera J. Hernandez & Rebecca A. Alexander

    Chapter 3
    Cultivating a Cadre of Critically Conscious Teachers and “Taking this Country to a Totally New Place”
    Angela Valenzuela & Patricia D. López

    Section II:  Children of Immigrants in Schools:  Global and U.S. Policy Research

    Chapter 4
    Immigration and the American School System:  The Second Generation at the Crossroads
    Alejandro Portes

    Chapter 5
    Divergent Paths to School Adaptation among Children of Immigrants: New Approaches and Insights to Existing Data
    Cecilia Rios-Aguilar, Manuel S. Gonzalez Canché, & Pedro R. Portes

    Chapter 6
    Recommendations from a Comparative Analysis of Educational Policies and Research for the Achievement of Latinos in the U. S. and Latin Americans in Spain towards Smarter Solutions      
    Martha Montero-Sieburth & Lidia Cabrera Perez

    Chapter 7
    Development and its social, economic, and educational consequences: The case of the Zimapán Hydroelectric Project
    Sergio Quesada Aldana

    Chapter 8
    Transnational Mobility, Education and Subjectivity:  Two Case Examples from Puerto Rico
    Sandra Soto-Santiago & Luis C. Moll

    Section III:  A Closer Look at Families, Classroom Learning, and Identity Development

    Chapter 9
    Finding a Place: Migration and Education in Mixed-Status Families
    Ariana Mangual Figueroa

    Chapter 10
    Talking the Walk: Classroom Discourse Strategies that Foster Dynamic Interactions with Latina/o Elementary School English Learners
    Ruth Harman

    Chapter 11
    Changing the Pedagogical Culture of Schools with Latino English Learners: Re-culturing Instructional Leadership
    Noni Mendoza Reis & Barbara Flores

    Chapter 12
    Beyond Educational Standards? Latino Student Learning Agency and Identity in Context
    Richard P. Durán

    Afterword
    Eugene E. García

    Contributors

    Biography

    Pedro R. Portes is The Goizueta Foundation Distinguished Chair in Latino Teacher Education and Executive Director of the Center for Latino Achievement and Success in Education (CLASE), University of Georgia, USA.

    Spencer Salas is Associate Professor, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA.

    Patricia Baquedano-López is Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley, USA.

    Paula J. Mellom is Assistant Research Scientist, University of Georgia, USA.

    "This edited book offers a near comprehensive view on the challenges Latino students face throughout various levels of the US education system.  A series of well-articulated contributions communicates a seamless experience for readers.  Critical issues (e.g., societal identity, public policy, pedagogical practices, individual learning needs) carry readers through three interdependent sections...Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections."-

               G. Moreno, Northeastern Illinois University, in CHOICE, January 2015

    "… an important and timely contribution that forces readers to rethink taken-for-granted discourse, policy, and practice in the field. This volume proposes not only to correctly frame the ways in which the policies addressing the needs of Latino/a students have failed and in many cases have served to reproduce marginality, but a different approach grounded on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research that can inform meaningful policy changes."

              Jaime Grinberg, Montclair State University, USA

    "Two elements distinguish this volume: its laser focus on policy, and its interdisciplinary and multinational nature…. The sum effect…is to offer a more hopeful vision of education for Latinos/as while at the same time recognizing the difficult struggle that lies ahead."

              Sonia Nieto, University of Massachusetts Amherst (Emerita), From the Foreword