What Do You Mean By Guided Pathways? A Discursive Analysis of State-Wide Implementation in California Community Colleges

• In Event: Research as Repair: Advancing Educational Justice Through the Critical Study of Policy Implementation

Abstract

In the California Community Colleges (CCC) system, the Guided Pathways framework is described as a tool to advance equity, transform institutions, redefine college and career readiness, and redesign supports. Given that three-quarters of the 1.8 million students enrolled in the CCC system are students of color, Guided Pathways represents a clear opportunity to advance racial equity across CCCs and rethink how existing structures, programs, and practices align with the needs of students of color.
This study examines how, if at all, CCCs prioritize the needs of students of color in implementing Guided Pathways. We aim to uncover the racial discourse in Guided Pathways by exploring how community colleges use explicit language to describe their approaches, decisions, practices, and next steps to recognize and address the inequities experienced by students of color through campus initiatives. Our study answers the following research questions:
How are California community colleges implementing Guided Pathways to explicitly identify, address, and serve racially minoritized students?
In what ways do SOAA reports describe equity-minded and race-conscious approaches to implementing Guided Pathways practices?
We conducted a discursive analysis of the 2021-2022 Guided Pathways Scale of Adoption Assessment (SOAA) reports submitted to the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. In doing so, we analyzed the statewide implementation of Guided Pathways by building the work of Bensimon and Dowd (2014) and race-consciousness in policy implementation (Felix, 2021).
We operationalize race-consciousness as an active approach to implementing policies in ways that a) acknowledge the racialized nature of higher education (McCambly & Colyvas,2023); b) use explicit language that prioritizes racially minoritized communities (Felix & Trinidad, 2020); c) include strategies to address root-causes of racial inequity experienced by students (Jones & Nichols, 2020); d) (re)direct material resources to the areas and groups with the greatest need (Bensimon, 2018). Conversely, a race-evasive approach to Guided Pathways ignores systemic inequities that perpetuate racial equity gaps by focusing on overall student success.
Our findings identified five types of discourse across the four pillars: All Students, Deficit-Oriented, Equity, Proxy, and Racial. Highlighting race-conscious efforts, we focused on institutions that shared Pathways practices centered on racially minoritized students and racial equity. Only 45 of the 115 reports used race-conscious descriptors, such as Black students, Indigenous, Racism, and Racial Equity. Campuses with a higher percentage of students of color were more likely to use race-focused and equity-oriented language. Equity-based language was the most prevalent, while deficit-oriented language was the least common. We also highlight race-conscious efforts in redesigning institutional pathways to be student-relevant, onboarding and first-year experience programs, and centering the needs of students of color in career readiness and workforce preparation.
Our findings reveal how Guided Pathways, as a race-neutral policy, requires the intentionality and leadership of community college practitioners to achieve racial equity. Our contribution to the field includes synthesizing the race-conscious approaches implemented under Guided Pathways and sharnig out exemplars to serve as ways forward for community colleges to redesign and restructure their organization in ways that acknowledge, honor, validate, and serve students of color.

Authors

• Carlos A Galan, California State University - San Bernardino

• Eric R. Felix, San Diego State University

• Citlalli Franco Aguilar, San Diego State University