Postsecondary access and preparation across the Americas: Experiences of historically marginalized and underrepresented students

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday II)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Education for underserved populations around the world

Proposal

While diverse in terms of populations, cultures, and political regimes, countries across the Western Hemisphere share a similar history regarding colonization. As more Europeans “claimed” these spaces as their own, Eurocentrism, i.e., “White” logic took root (Andraos, 2016; Maeso & Araújo, 2015). Forced assimilation to this logic was accomplished through dehumanization, violence, displacement, and exclusion (Campbell, & Kean, 2012; Van Den Berghe, 1963). While our goal is not to reiterate this well-known and documented history, we wish to express how this assimilationist logic is still present and expressed in schooling environments across this geographic space and shapes access to postsecondary opportunities.

As Eurocentrism took root, primary, secondary, and postsecondary schools were established, but were reserved for the elite-white men with resources. Formal education was typically not accessible to women or individuals from colonized/marginalized communities (Spring, 2010); women were not systematically granted access to universities throughout Europe, the U.S., and Latin America until the 19th century (Palermo, 2006). Yet patriarchy and elitism continued to be supported and reproduced through exclusionary and stratified education systems, resulting in inequitable access to education and policy, practices, and curricula that promoted deficit views of indigenous communities and historically marginalized peoples across the Americas.

While education systems have adapted and evolved in the Western Hemisphere, and access and curricula have been expanded, a deeper look reveals that many education systems remain inequitable, disproportionately impacting marginalized populations (Apple & Weis, 1983; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Giroux, 1992; Valencia, 1997). This is evident in the financial costs associated with schooling, the lack of access to quality schools in many areas and for many populations, and admissions requirements for institutions of higher education, to name a few (Harper & Griffin, 2010; Perna & Jones, 2013). And, in spite of programs that center the experiences of marginalized populations (i.e., Ethnic Studies programs, Social Justice majors, and specific departments dedicated to the study of marginalized populations like Chicano Studies or American Indian Studies), these are still tweaks to a larger system deeply rooted in colonization and elitism.

With this foundational history in mind, this paper aims to begin to broadly, but critically examine the literature on postsecondary access and preparation across the Americas; centering the experiences of historically marginalized and underrepresented students in North America, Central America, and South America. Drawing on interdisciplinary and comparative international literature from both the secondary and postsecondary perspectives, this paper is guided by the following questions: What are the distinct and shared postsecondary access and preparation experiences of historically marginalized and underrepresented students in the Western hemisphere? How do national and political contexts shape these students’ postsecondary access and preparation experiences? What policies, practices, and structures provide for increased access and equity to a postsecondary education? How can findings inform secondary and postsecondary school leaders in the Americas? We aim to explore these questions further by sharing a draft of this paper in a roundtable session at the 2019 CIES Conference to gain valuable insight from international scholars who similarly engage in postsecondary access and preparation research.

Authors

• Melissa Ann Martinez, Texas State University

• Leslie Ann Locke, University of Iowa

• Maria Magdalena Ureta Viroga, Texas State University