This qualitative study counters deficit narratives about first generation Latinx students by exploring multi ple forms of community cultural wealth (CCW; Yosso, 2005) that 25 students leveraged and increased during service activities and homestays in Costa Rica. Through longitudinal data and with CCW as a conceptual framework, three key themes emerged First, s tudents were able to leverage their linguistic and familial capital to connect quickly and meaningfully with locals. Additionally, students drew upon their linguistic, familial, aspirational, and resistant capital while abroad to deepen their engagement. Finally, student interaction with their forms of CCW appeared to deepen their bicultural identities, strengthen their resistance to injustice, and instill a strong desire to inspire other Latinx students to pursue international education. Implications fo r practice include an integrated approach to recognizing and rewarding students’ CCW related capital in the advising, application and preparation processes. Implications underscore the importance of using strengths based pedagogies in the design of educat ion abroad programs.
In late 2018, our editorial team set out on a multi-component project to provide a historical reference of established scholarship from Frontiers on diversity, equity, and inclusion in education abroad and to and solicit and present a set of new works in this Special Issue on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion of Frontiers.
We began by creating a special “virtual” issue of existing Frontiers articles centered on diversity, equity, and inclusion which accompanied our call for papers for this Special Issue on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. In our introduction to the virtual issue we highlighted three gaps in past scholarship on these topics. We noted (a) limited focus on equity and success, (b) a dramatically changed student demographic, and (c) a need for critical examination of education abroad practice in order to make significant strides toward equity. In our process with this virtual issue we were pleased to see many new initiatives from masters’ and doctoral students and from those we corresponded with during this process.
With this January 2020 Special Issue we endeavored to push beyond discussions of access and representation in the field, to critically examine inclusion throughout the education abroad process, and to consider equity in outcomes. We hope that the articles we are presenting as the culmination of our work in this Special Issue on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Frontiers will move theory, practice, and scholarship forward.
The Guest Editors introduce their virtual issue on Diversity and Inclusion in Education Abroad, which curates past articles published in Frontiers on the topic.
Click on the links beside each selected article in the REFERENCES section below to read the full article.
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