Unsettling College Choice Through Writing

• In Event: Division J Vice Presidential Session: Challenging Colonial College Access for Historically Marginalized Student Populations: Toward Decolonizing College Choice

Abstract

Over the last generation, higher education experts have expanded the discourses and practices of effective college outreach for historically underrepresented students. Pre-college preparation programs for high school students have been touted as one of the most effective ways of expanding these students ‘choices’ into colleges and universities (Perna, 2002). Most traditional college preparation programs emphasize activities that enhance academic skills and, recently, more of these programs are also leveraging the role of culture (Villalpando & Solorzano, 2005), the role of families (Tierney & Auerbach, 2005) and the role of peers (Tierney & Colyar, 2005). However, much of the literature on college choice pathways and practices does not consider the unique nuances of college ‘choices’ for Indigenous students. There is an even wider paucity of research on how Indigenous high school from urban contexts engage college choices since most of the research on educational attainment of Indigenous students focuses on students from reservation schools. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to unsettle traditional college choice practices often used with Indigenous students from large urban contexts. This paper presentation begins with a brief synthesis of selected literature outlining the inadequacies of engaging traditional college choice models with Indigenous populations. I pay special attention to the common discourses and practices in college preparation programs that reinforce education as a settler colonial project. Next, I present multimodal forms of writing I used with twenty female Indigenous high school students as a methodological tool to collectively generate epistemologies and practices that can unsettle the violences of settler colonialism that emerged in these college choice practices and discourses. Culturally Responsive (Castagno & Brayboy, 2009) recommendations for crafting college choice practices will be provided based on the data from this study of a college preparatory program for Indigenous high school students in an urban context. Considering the systemic barriers that exist for Indigenous students in accessing a higher education, I argue that a Critical Culturally Sustaining/ Revitalizing (McCarty & Lee, 2014) epistemology is needed that better represents the complex process that Indigenous students endure in college choice pursuits generally and in their writing specifically. Thus, I conclude with some reflections on the opportunities for developing different college choice models and programs that draw on Indigenous projects of Refusals and Indigenous Elsewheres (Grande, Forthcoming).

Author

• Nora Cisneros, UCLA