Employing Intersectionality for Examining Student Experiences in Ethnic Studies High School Classes in the Southwest

• In Event: Unprecedented Times Call for Unprecedented Solutions: Critical Ethnic Studies as a Call to Action and Resistance

Abstract

Objective

After five decades of the establishment of ES courses, studies have shown that taking these courses reduced inequality (Bonilla, Dee & Penner, 2021; Dee & Penner 2017; Cabrera et al., 2014). Less is known about using classroom based participant observation and interviews with high school students in a large public district, this paper explores the transformational impact of these courses by utilizing intersectionality or attention to the impact on students according to their unique race-gender-class origins. How can we know the impact of ethnic studies unless we utilize intersectionality as inquiry and praxis to understand how it reduces inequalities for students by intersectional social location, race, gender, ethnicity, immigrant status, parent/guardian educational attainment as a simultaneous category of experience?
Data & Methods
We draw on high school classroom based participation, interviews and administrative data from a large public urban school district in the U.S. Southwest.
Theoretical Framework
We employ intersectionality or attention to the mutual constitution of race, gender, class, ethnicity, disability, nativity and citizenship as analytically distinct and simultaneous statuses in systems of power, oppression and resistance. Employing intersectionality as inquiry and praxis in a given sociohistorical context, is a powerful and transformational lens for deepening our understanding of what constitutes a transformative environment for Latino students:   “When it comes to social inequality, people’s lives and the organization of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes that work together and influence each other…Intersectionality as an analytic tool gives people access to the complexity of the world and themselves (Collins & Bilge 2016, p. 2).” 
Initial Findings
Our study shows the urgency of practicing intersectionality as inquiry and praxis for creating a more complex picture the impact of ethnic studies on student experience. We find that intersectionally conscious critical reflexivity, pedagogy and community engagement are some of the mechanisms contributing to student success in high school ethnic studies classrooms (Boveda and Weinberg, 2020; Gill, 2022; Castillo, 2023).
Significance
Removing barriers to student success for Latinx, Black, Indigenous and other marginalized students, requires illuminating intersectional inequities as a first step for advancing transformational equity at the individual, institutional and structural levels across institutions of higher education.
Conclusion & Recommendations
Narratives and representations of “the problem” affect distribution of resources to impacted communities. It is imperative that we adopt intersectionality as inquiry and praxis for interrogating and eliminating inequities in education. Reporting metrics by race alone, gender alone or parent/guardian educational status alone is not sufficient for assessing reducing inequality through ethnic studies. We imagine the possibilities if intersectionality becomes a new good standard for pedagogy, community engagement and reporting student outcomes.

Authors

• Nancy López, University of New Mexico

• Sade Bonilla, University of Pennsylvania

• Florence Emily Castillo, Texas Christian University

• Magdalena Vazquez Dathe, University of New Mexico

• Michelle J Drummond, Albuquerque Public Schools