Organizing Schools/Classrooms With a College-Going Culture for Latina/o Students: Cultural Capital, Comportment, and Complexity

• In Event: Organizing High Schools and Classrooms for Latina/o Student Educational Success: College-Going Cultures/Resources and Instructional Scaffolding

Abstract

Objectives
Given low college-going rates for Latina/o students in the U.S., this paper asks: How do innovating high schools organize to create a college-going culture for first generation college-going Latina/o students? What school and classroom level factors support college-going among Latina/o youth? What complexities arise in enacting such a culture?

Perspectives
We draw on a framework about organizational and classroom contexts highlighting cultural capital for Latina/o youth. Cultural capital is cultural knowledge that confers power and status as embodied in what is considered legitimate school knowledge, curriculum, and teaching practices (Bourdieu, 1977). We highlight capital as it is exchanged within organizational contexts, rather than embodied by individuals (Coleman, 1988). Frequently, students from non-dominant cultural and linguistic communities experience a mismatch between, on the one hand, home and community ways of doing, speaking, and interacting--and, on the other hand, the expectations, often unstated, of how to interact and function effectively in school (Dyson, 2008; Heath, 1983). Thus schools would need to be reorganized to make explicit hidden codes and provide access to cultural capital to enhance educational opportunities for youth from nondominant cultural/linguistic communities (Delpit, 1988).

Methods
The paper draws from a program of research on innovating high schools that have documented success with Latina/o students. This paper foregrounds a two-year study of one critical high school case study in California (98% Latino), drawing on: leadership, teacher, student, and parent interviews and focus groups; schoolwide surveys; videotaped classroom observations and student work; observations of school and professional activities; and school documents. Analysis involved examining interactions between school and classroom level factors linked to student outcomes.

Results
First the study reveals how the school organizes cultural capital to foster a college-going culture. This is reflected in a recurring phrase from school stakeholders, “culture before curriculum.” The school factors promoting college going include: (a) school mission and a graduation requirement of acceptance to college; (b) linking college-going aspirations to ganas (desire), a value in Latina/o homes; (c) school leadership commitment and practices that focus on fostering school culture; (d) rules/norms requiring students to look and act like “college-going professionals” through comportment, uniforms and ritualized interactions; (e) discourse on college in schoolwide activities and symbols; and (f) a climate of urgency and intensity. Second, it highlights how school norms are associated with classroom instructional interactions: (a) classroom comportment and rituals; (b) lesson routines of intensity and press; (c) teacher role modeling about college; and (d) code-breaking regarding talk about college. Third, the paper reveals the tensions of school versus home culture and the degree to which the school promotes dominant cultural capital and multicultural capital (Achinstein & Aguirre, 2008), which draws on both dominant and non-dominant cultural resources, and supports students to not just accommodate but critique dominant structures.

Significance
This paper is significant for educators who seek to foster school and classroom cultures that promote college-going for Latina/o youth and researchers seeking to understand interactions between organizational and instructional factors that promote educational attainment.

Authors

• Betty Achinstein, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Rodney T. Ogawa, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Steven Z. Athanases, University of California - Davis