Antonette Aragon

Understanding Profiles of Preservice Teachers With Different Levels of Commitment to Teaching in Urban Schools

Understanding the beliefs of preservice teachers is an important area to investigate in the teacher education process. This article examines the relationship between preservice teachers’ beliefs pertaining to diversity and urban schooling and how these inclinations contribute to a commitment to teaching urban students. Canonical correlation analysis was used to identify profiles of preservice teachers who exhibited varying degrees of interest to teach in urban schools. The statistical analysis provides a range of positive and negative attitudinal inclinations toward urban teaching. It is important to examine preservice teacher beliefs to benefit students in urban schools especially in light of prevailing teacher attrition.

Mentoring Experiences and Latina/o University Student Persistence

This study examined the experiences of 17 Latina/o students who participated in a university mentoring program that included academic and cultural resources, involvement, and leadership opportunities. The goal was to understand their lived experiences and their own perceptions of their academic success and persistence. An interpretive phenomenological analysis was used with one-on-one interviews, revealing the following emergent themes: (a) common experiences providing benefits of mentoring, (b) common challenges, and (c) lessons learned.

Examining Collaborative Learning Modalities (CLM): Critical Multicultural Education Online?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a very difficult, yet all important and ongoing research question – how do we best use online collaborative learning modalities (CLM) to supplement conversations in multicultural education courses?Design/methodology/approach – This qualitative study examined emergent themes in asynchronous threaded discussions created by 23 students within a Masters level multicultural education course at a large land‐grant university in the USA.Findings – Engagement in threaded discussions fostered student understanding of a systems perspective of social realities. Power, privilege, and oppression related to race, gender, and economics in the USA were explored through student use of real world, concrete examples – something that does not always occur in face‐to‐face classroom encounters constrained by time and the pacing of curriculum.Research limitations/implications – Researchers would like to see more empirical research in using technologically mediated, CLM to ...

Teaching in the borderland: critical practices in foundations courses

Using first-person accounts of classroom experiences, five professors examine the intersection of social foundations and borderland theory and their efforts to move students through resistance to understanding and affirmation of sociocultural diversity. The authors present this paper in two parts, the first providing examples of using a borderland approach within the classroom and the second providing illustrations moving these borderland strategies beyond the classroom. In each case, authors show the interwoven nature of pedagogy, identity, knowledge, and experience as they work to connect theory and practice. All of the institutions represented have majority white populations, and many do not reflect the diversity of the communities in which they are situated. The need for borderland practices in social foundations courses is urgent in these areas. These pedagogical reflections, although not meant to be recipes for success, provide examples of practices that can serve to meet the growing demands from schools and communities for culturally competent, socially aware teacher–leaders, and reaffirm the critical importance of social foundations in teacher education.

Participation in Construction Management Student Competitions: Perceived Positive and negative Effects

In the discipline of construction management (CM) student competitions are well thought of and typically have good construction industry support. However, little published research is available addressing them. This study provides empirical research documenting the positive and negative effects of CM competition participation. Data was collected via interviews and a survey. Using a grounded theory design eleven positive and four negative themes emerged including: confidence, connecting all the dots, industry involvement, leadership, motivation, presentation skills, problem-solving, real world experience, teamwork, and time management. The negative effects include: false expectations, resources, scoring methods, and time. As a grounded theory study, a three step coding process was used. The first step, open coding, identified the specific positive and negative effects. Construction industry involvement was identified as the central phenomenon through the second step, axial coding. Selective coding, the third step, then identified a cyclical pattern showing a connection between the positive effects, leadership, key CM graduate competencies, and construction industry involvement to tell the story of the phenomenon of student construction management competitions. This study found that the positive effects of competition participation outweigh the negatives and that competition participation should be encouraged for as many students as possible.

Achieving Latina students: Aspirational counterstories and critical reflections on parental community cultural wealth

ABSTRACT In this study, six Latina students shared perceptions of their parental influence on their educational aspirations. CRT, LatCrit, and community cultural wealth provide the tripartite framework for analyzing issues of race, class, gender, language, culture, and immigration by examining their roles in society through counterstories. Learning in an after-school program about educational advancement, these participants navigated against deficit ideology. Messages of aspirational hope, navigational inspiration, Spanish language guidance, familial kinship, social networking, and resistant intelligence enabled these students to build a foundation of personal emancipation to disrupt the systemic sociopolitical and sociocultural nature of oppression.