Catherine R. Cooper

Cultural brokers: helping Latino children on pathways toward success.

Latino children in elementary and middle school not only experience developmental changes and confront the risks and adventures held by neighborhoods, they must also juggle the values and expectations of two cultures as they navigate their own pathways toward success. Integrating the results of a series of studies focused on the children of Mexican-American immigrants in California, this article discusses ways that teachers, parents, siblings, and program staff can help young Latino students succeed in U.S. schools and live according to their parents values.

Multiple Selves, Multiple Worlds: Three Useful Strategies for Research with Ethnic Minority Youth on Identity, Relationships, and Opportunity Structures

Cooper, C. R., Jackson, J. F., Azmitia, M., & Lopez, E. M. (1998). Multiple selves, multiple worlds: Three useful strategies for research with ethnic minority youth on identity, relationships, and opportunity structures. In V. C. McLoyd and L. Steinberg (Eds.), Studying minority adolescents: Conceptual, methodological, and theoretical issues. (pp. 111-125). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Skill in Peer Learning Discourse: What Develops?

In recent years, the significance of children’s experiences with one another has been taken increasingly seriously by social scientists. Once focused on parent-child (especially mother-child) and teacher-child interactions as the key mode of socialization, scholars are now actively documenting the contribution children make to one another’s development, not just in the traditionally studied areas of sex and aggression, but also in cognitive and moral domains of development as well (Hartup, 1983). In post-Piagetian times, it is fashionable to focus on the degree to which we have underestimated the competence of the younger child, and in the discussion of peer learning it is also tempting to make claims that children can offer one another the equivalent or at least the analogue of what adults offer. However, this chapter examines the nature of children’s peer learning discourse, including the ways that it changes across development, in order to consider the changing contributions of children’s peer experiences to their development. Our central argument is that understanding developmental and within-age differences in peer learning involves understanding development in several distinct categories of capacity.

Capital, Alienation, and Challenge: How U.S. Mexican Immigrant Students Build Pathways to College and Career Identities: Capital, Alienation, and Challenge

This article considers how the global academic pipeline problem constrains immigrant, low-income, and ethnic minority students pathways to higher education, and how some students build pathways to college and career identities. After aligning theories of social capital, alienation/belonging, and challenge and their integration in Bridging Multiple Worlds Theory, we summarize six longitudinal studies based on this theory from a 23-year university-community partnership serving low-income, primarily U.S. Mexican immigrant youth. Spanning from childhood to early adulthood, the studies revealed two overarching findings: First, students built pathways to college and career identities while experiencing capital, alienation/belonging, and challenges across their evolving cultural worlds. Second, by giving back to families, peers, schools, and communities, students became cultural brokers and later, institutional agents, transforming institutional cultures. Findings highlight the value of integrating interdisciplinary theories, research evidence, and educational systems serving diverse communities to open individual pathways and academic pipelines in multicultural societies.