Exploring educational marginalization: from individual voices to structural inequities

Session Submission Type: Group Panel

Description of Session

In recent decades, the international community has rallied around the goal of providing a high-quality education for all. However, there has been uneven progress towards this goal and many groups continue to experience differences in educational opportunities based on race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, and other characteristics. Describing and understanding these inequalities is critically important to overcoming the educational marginalization many groups face. As such, this panel will explore instances of educational marginalization and inequality across multiple regions and contexts. The first paper will examine the relationship between the level of equality in the distribution of school inputs on the academic achievement of students who belong to racial and economic minorities in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. The second paper uses a textual analysis of program materials to explore higher education programs on the Thai-Burma border and the narratives, values, and beliefs that their language conveys. The third paper will discuss the achievement gap between Asian American students and white students in American secondary schools for the past decade and address some possible reasons for the existence of this gap. Using a gender perspective, the final paper will explore how, if at all, Chinese women’s educational experiences in China have influenced their self-perceptions.

The panel is motivated by a desire to better understand the conditions and implications of marginalization in diverse educational settings. The quantitative studies are united by a shared interest in understanding the conditions that contribute to a differential in the academic achievement of minority students. The first qualitative paper enriches this conversation by considering how the rhetoric of education providers may reflect, or even reinforce, the marginalization of certain students. Finally, the fourth paper adds to this conversation by focusing on individual voices, shedding light on the experience of minorities within and beyond school systems.

The papers use a variety of theoretical and methodological frameworks for analysis. The first quantitative study performs a statistical analysis on the UNESCO Latin American Laboratory for Assessment of the Quality of Education, which provides both data on student achievement, as well as teacher and student surveys. The qualitative study of rhetoric in higher education programs on the Thai-Burma border utilizes brochures, reports, and other program materials and draws on literature from theories such as frame analysis that emphasize the power of language. The third paper utilizes statistical models in order to examine the achievement gaps between Asian American students and white students, while the final paper uses a feminist theoretical lens to analyze in-depth open-ended interviews. The diversity of methods and theories represented in this panel will offer several perspectives through which to understand the issue of educational marginalization.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Madelyn Gardner, Stanford University

Individual Presentations

• Inequality in educational inputs and its effect on the educational outcomes of minority populations in Cuba and the Dominican Republic - Laurel Staab, Stanford University

• Refugees, representations, and the UN: Exploring the relationship between international actors' discourses and educational programs for refugees - Madelyn Gardner, Stanford University

• Can parental involvement explain the academic excellence of Asian American students? - Ying Tang, Stanford University

• A narrative study of Chinese women's educational experience - Peng Wu, Stanford University