Transforming La Comunidad: Latinx Community College Students in the Path of Conocimento

• In Event: Making Mundo Nuevo: Advancing an Anzaldúan Theorization of Latinx Resistance in Educational Research

Abstract

Objectives
By employing the concept of conocimiento (Anzaldúa, 2002), this paper examines how Latinx community college students experience their educational trajectory. This path effectively leads first- and second-year students in the community college setting into learning about social inequities and applying social justice solutions. With the use of their knowledge and strengths, students are empowered and able to build deeper community connections. By navigating into the path of conocimiento, which unfolds within the oppressive contexts of the educational institution that marginalizes them and was not built for them, students obtain a deeper perception of social issues and marginality with the assistance of sociological concepts of the sociological imagination (Mills, 2000) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991). Through these tools, Latinx community college students can envision a better world for themselves and their communities.

Theoretical Framework
With the Anzaldúan theory of conocimiento, this paper explains how Latinx community college students navigate oppressive educational institutions and situate personal issues, connecting them to greater societal injustices. Conocimiento effectively allows for community college student leadership development and stronger community roots.

Methods & Data Sources
Through content analysis, 10 Latinx final course projects were examined by the original creators, fellow students, and the course instructor of record. Additionally, some of these final projects were launched through social media and other information platforms to share at a larger scale with their communities to promote social change.

Findings
The path of conocimiento framework allowed for a deeper understanding of how Latinx community college students make sense of the problems that surround their communities and the solutions they develop based on their strengths and knowledge. Latinx students used their strengths in music, poetry, visual arts, and speech to develop community solutions in fields such as architecture, nursing, psychology, alcohol and other drug studies, social work, and fine arts to call for social change.

Significance
Latinx community college students made sense of the problems and injustices their communities, families, and themselves face, and they actively sought and applied functional and beneficial solutions to challenges. By positioning these students as agents of change, this paper also disrupts deficit frameworks surrounding this minoritized group.

Author

• Samantha Prado Robledo, Merced College