Racializing Latina/o/x Students' Academic Help-Seeking: Exploring the Role of Community Cultural Wealth, Sense of Belonging, and Campus Climate (Poster 10)

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Using QuantCrit and race-reimaging approaches in my dissertation, I examine how Latina/o/x college students’ perceived community cultural wealth, sense of belonging, and campus climate function as antecedents to their academic help-seeking tendencies. While most scholars believe that Latina/o/x students underutilize academic services and attribute deficit- oriented reasons for this behavior, my dissertation research explores asset-based perspectives for the racialized process of help-seeking. By employing Yosso’s Cultural Wealth model to help enrich the understanding of help-seeking experiences through a Latina/o/x perspective, I tell a counternarrative documenting the cultural (community cultural wealth) and environmental (sense of belonging, campus racial climate) factors that support or hinder Latina/o/x students’ help-seeking behaviors and perceptions, as well as, their overall academic achievement. To do so, I employ rigorous quantitative approaches such as structural equation modeling with survey data from a sample of 400 Latina/o/x students enrolled at a Hispanic-Serving Institution in Texas. Findings from my dissertation may inform implications for transforming White-centric understanding of help-seeking and self-regulated learning and for directing educational practice to foster help-seeking in more culturally-sustaining ways.

Author

• Cassandra Gonzales, Texas State University
  Presenting Author