Asset-Based Pedagogies and Latino Students' Achievement and Identity

• In Event: Researching Race and Ethnicity in the Study of Motivation in Educational Contexts

Abstract

The overarching theme in my research has been to examine the ways contexts shape Latino students’ identities and achievement. In addition to using large scale data sets to examine how policies contribute to the experiences of Latino students in classrooms and their academic outcomes, I have conducted several studies in different “types” of classrooms (bilingual, dual language, mainstream) with teachers who have varying levels of training to work with both Latino English-proficient youth and Latino English learners. The overarching findings in my work indicate that “good teaching” alone is insufficient to address the needs of traditionally marginalized students.

Scholars have argued that there are unique competencies that are essential to the effective teaching of traditionally marginalized students. Among these are practices at times referred to as Asset-Based Pedagogy (ABP); however, considerations of ABP are largely missing in educational psychology. Moreover, reviews of research of ABP repeatedly point to a need for empirical evidence. To address these limitations, I have proposed a framework that reflects prior models used in educational psychology that capture the interrelationships among students’ backgrounds, teachers’ beliefs, and students’ outcomes as well extant work that has established evidence about how teacher beliefs and behaviors inform students’ identities and their achievement. It builds on prior work, however, by considering scholarship based on ABP that while prominent in the teacher education literature, is largely missing in educational psychology.

ABP, at times known under the more broadly-encompassing term multicultural education, views students’ culture as a strength, countering the more widespread view that inordinate achievement disparities stem from deficiencies in the child and/or child’s culture. The framework includes considerations of teacher beliefs that include critical awareness (teachers’ understanding the historical context of traditionally marginalized students, the discrepancy between what is typically validated as knowledge in classrooms and the challenges to those assumptions, and the ways the curriculum in schools serves to replicate the power structure in society); teacher behaviors, which include high expectations (a focus on high-level skills), cultural knowledge (constructivist views of learning where students culture and prior knowledge are viewed as assets), and cultural content integration (the incorporation of students’ culture into the curriculum); and student identity (academic and ethnic identity).

I applied the framework in a 2-year study, which resulted in support for the importance of considering ABP in to classroom dynamics theories. Consistent with the assertions in extant literature that ABP is related to students’ outcomes, I found that discrete ABP domains were positively related to Latino students’ reading outcomes (with effects ranging between .60 to 1.70 SD). My work presents a way to operationalize ABT and to study its effects in a particular context; however, more work is needed to refine the theories about the ways students’ identities are shaped in the context of classrooms.

Author

• Francesca López, University of Arizona