Charting a New Course: Understanding the Sociocultural, Political, Economic and Historical Context of Latino/a Education in the United States

The work of addressing the challenge of the education of Latinos/as has begun through, among other efforts, the National Latino/a Education Research and Policy Project, or NLERAP. Beginning in 2000 as a national initiative of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos at Hunter College, NLERAP's go...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of the Association of Mexican American Educators Vol. 6; no. 3; pp. 1 - 50
Main Authors Cammarota, Julio, Cannella, Chiara, Garcia, Emmanuel, Gonzalez, Maria, Irizarry, Jason G, Moll, Luis C, Nieto, Sonia, Pedraza, Pedro, Perez, Beatrix, Quinones, Sandra, Rivera, Melissa, Romo, Harriett, Valenzuela, Angela
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Association of Mexican American Educators 2012
Subjects
Academic Achievement
Action Research
Activism
Advisory Committees
Citizen Participation
Economic Factors
Educational Attainment
Educational History
Educational Needs
Educational Research
Guidelines
Hispanic Americans
Participatory Research
Political Influences
Research Methodology
Social Influences
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Summary:The work of addressing the challenge of the education of Latinos/as has begun through, among other efforts, the National Latino/a Education Research and Policy Project, or NLERAP. Beginning in 2000 as a national initiative of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos at Hunter College, NLERAP's goal has been to add multiple Latino/a perspectives to the type of educational research needed to meet the needs of the communities throughout the U.S. After hosting a series of regional meetings around the country that invited educators, community activists, university scholars, and others within the broader Latino/a community to comment on the pressing educational needs of Latinos/as, the NLERAP National Advisory Board developed and published a research agenda. The Agenda articulated a framework for using participatory and collaborative research results to influence the outcomes of schooling for Latino/a youth. In this document, the authors address the context of education for Latino/as on the three levels enunciated in the Agenda documents (i.e., interpersonal, instructional, and institutional). They envision the review as a critical synthesis of the literature, intended for both professional and scholarly audiences. The intent is to provide a useful tool for researchers, practitioners, advocates, and administrators undertaking studies relating to the improvement of education for Latino/a students in their local areas. A major purpose is to contextualize the framework and approaches that have been used previously by others to analyze schooling problems found in different Latino/a communities around the country. The document begins with a description of the NLERAP approach to research on the education of Latinos/as in the U.S. with a focus on sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts, and a description of Participatory Action Research, or PAR, an approach to pedagogy and research that shows great promise in both promoting achievement and encouraging civic engagement. This is followed by a brief general overview of the education of Latinos/as, including both historical and demographic data and an articulation of some of the foremost challenges concerning educational attainment among the various Latino/a communities. (Contains 2 footnotes.)