Making Sense of College Readiness in a Low-Performing Urban High School: Perspectives of High-Achieving First Generation Youth

Duncheon, Julia C.

doi:10.1177/0042085918756712

Cited by 23 publications

(29 citation statements)

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“…Such actions may be particularly impactful for students from families less endowed with academically relevant social or cultural capital. Indeed, qualitative work has found high school counselors to be instrumental in encouraging the ambitions of academically talented low-income youth (Duncheon, 2018; Hébert & Reis, 1999; Reid & Moore, 2008). Counselor contact increases postsecondary participation, particularly for racial minorities and lower socioeconomic status (SES) students (Belasco, 2013; Hurwitz & Howell, 2014; Muhammad, 2008; Robinson & Roksa, 2016).…”

Section: Prior Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dream Adjusters: High School Counselors in a Low-Income School District

Monaghan

Hawkins

Hernandez

2019

Education and Urban Society

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Prior research has discussed high school counselors’ role in students’ experience, but counselors’ understandings of their work and of students has received little commentary. We interviewed counselors in a high-poverty, low-performing urban school district in which two structural elements shape how counselors make sense of their work. First, counselor “success” is contingent on convincing students to act in (what schools see as) students’ own best interest, and many students do not do so. Second, resource constraints severely limit planned one-on-one counseling. We find that counselors see students as both victims of crushing circumstances and as agents actively undermining their own opportunities, as holding ambitions misaligned with performance and as vulnerable to despair. Counselors’ strategies follow from these conceptions: building self-efficacy, emphasizing the importance of goals, and nudging plans toward realizability while maintaining hope. We discuss how counselors cope with the rarity with which they experience professional “success,” given student outcomes.

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Section: Prior Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dream Adjusters: High School Counselors in a Low-Income School District

Monaghan

Hawkins

Hernandez

2019

Education and Urban Society

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“…As scholarship continues to emerge on the pre‐college factors shaping the postsecondary pathways of Latinx youth, research agendas must be situated within PreK‐12 contexts (for examples, see Carey 2016; 2018; 2019; Duncheon 2018; Knight‐Manuel et al 2019). Accounts from adults reflecting on pre‐college influences have added critical understandings about impactful college access practices (Brooms 2020; Cabrera and Padilla 2004; Rodríguez et al 2013).…”

Section: Future Directions and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foregrounding Family: How Salvadoran American Boys Formulate College‐Going Mindsets at the Nexus of Family, School, and the Self

Carey

2021

Anthropology & Edu Quarterly

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I investigated how two U.S.-born Salvadoran eleventh grade boys formulated college-going mindsets at the nexus of family-based cultural influences, adolescent development, masculinity, and academic self-appraisals. With asset-based theories, findings show how immigrant families encouraged college going by shielding their sons from noneducational responsibilities and conveyed educational messages with words and deeds. Participants formulated mindsets by interpreting family-and school-based messaging and weighing college going against gender-based responsibilities. Implications for educational anthropologists and practitioners are provided.[Latino males, urban education, Latino families, college access, Salvadoran Americans] Like a strong individual? His family is strong. If your family is strong, then what do Hispanics honor the most? It's family! -Perdido (17-year-old, U.S.-born Salvadoran American boy, May 16, 2014 Interview) So by going to college, you can change that; you start changing, like the future generations of your family. -Lucas (17-year-old, U.S.-born Salvadoran American boy, June 12, 2014 Interview)These quotes, which I gathered during a nearly schoolyear-long ethnographic study, show that for Perdido and Lucas (pseudonyms they chose), a strong Latino selfhood is rooted in a strong family, a family whose well-being would be transformed in futurities by their choice to attend college. When considering college going, adolescent Latino boys engage in complex negotiations at the nexus of masculinity, familial concern, and selfappraisals (Carey 2019). The views of Perdido and Lucas here, and throughout this article, amplify the often-unheard voices of low-income Latino adolescent boys, challenge deficit portrayals of them and their families (see Conchas and Hinga 2016;Noguera et al. 2013;Sáenz et al. 2016), and reveal the nuanced ways they foreground family in their collegegoing mindsets.College-going mindsets, here, reflect both the psychological and social attitudes individuals hold for their postsecondary education (see Han et al. 2017). These mindsets drive not only students' college ambitions but also their engagement in the "college preparation processes" (Griffin and Allen 2006), or the development of academic skills and knowledge that facilitate their college choice and readiness. Norms of adolescent development and culturally distinctive familial values also govern how Latinx ("Latinx" is used here and elsewhere when reflecting phenomenon linked to not just boys or men) teenagers formulate college-going mindsets (Savitz-Romer and Bouffard 2012). Social cognitive theory (Bandura 1986(Bandura , 2012 brings this developmental point to bear by illuminating how the observable actions of family members prime adolescents for discerning their own paths to achieve college goals while forming their own "anticipatory outcomes" (Bandura 2012;Carey 2018Carey , 2019.

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“…Schools with strong college-going cultures provide students with the skills and knowledge required for postsecondary success beginning in the ninth grade (Tierney et al., 2005). Developing a college-going culture is especially crucial in low-performing high schools that serve primarily low-income students of color (Achinstein, Curry and Ogawa, 2015; Duncheon, 2015; Nunez and Kim, 2012), who may not have access to information about higher education outside the school (McKillip et al., 2012 Duncheon and Relles, 2019).…”

Section: Background Literature and Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Broadening conceptions of a “college-going culture”: The role of high school climate factors in college enrollment and persistence

Knight

Duncheon

2019

Policy Futures in Education

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As workforce participation increasingly requires a college degree, ensuring that more students from traditionally underrepresented populations have the opportunity to enter and complete college is an equity imperative. To that end, high school reforms have promoted “college-going cultures” in low-performing high schools through interventions such as rigorous course offerings and college counseling. College access research has focused on issues specific to academics and college-going processes. Yet this research has tended to ignore broader school climate factors such as school safety and extracurricular programming, which may play a critical role in postsecondary opportunity, especially for historically underserved students. The current study applies hierarchical generalized linear modeling to the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 to 2006 to examine the role of college-going culture and high school climate characteristics on college enrollment and persistence. We find that while some components of college-going culture are associated with the likelihood of college enrollment and persistence, that relationship is moderated by school climate factors. We conclude that efforts to implement a college-going culture may struggle if extracurricular opportunities, school safety, and overall school climate issues are ignored.

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Making Sense of College Readiness in a Low-Performing Urban High School: Perspectives of High-Achieving First Generation Youth

Cited by 23 publications

References 50 publications

Dream Adjusters: High School Counselors in a Low-Income School District

Dream Adjusters: High School Counselors in a Low-Income School District

Foregrounding Family: How Salvadoran American Boys Formulate College‐Going Mindsets at the Nexus of Family, School, and the Self

Broadening conceptions of a “college-going culture”: The role of high school climate factors in college enrollment and persistence

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