This article conceptualizes community cultural wealth as a critical race theory (CRT) challenge to traditional interpretations of cultural capital. CRT shifts the research lens away from a deficit view of Communities of Color as places full of cultural poverty disadvantages, and instead focuses on and learns from the array of cultural knowledge, skills, abilities and contacts possessed by socially marginalized groups that often go unrecognized and unacknowledged. Various forms of capital nurtured through cultural wealth include aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial and resistant capital. These forms of capital draw on the knowledges Students of Color bring with them from their homes and communities into the classroom. This CRT approach to education involves a commitment to develop schools that acknowledge the multiple strengths of Communities of Color in order to serve a larger purpose of struggle toward social and racial justice.

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Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth

After reviewing the state of student retention research and practice, past and present, the author looks to the future and identifies three areas of research and practice that call for further exploration. These concern issues of institutional action, program implementation, and the continuing challenge of promoting the success of low-income students.

Research and Practice of Student Retention: What Next?:

Using critical race theory as a framework, this article provides an examination of how racial and gender microaggressions affect the career paths of Chicana and Chicano scholars. This paper reports on open-ended survey and interview data of a purposive sample of six Chicana and six Chicano Ford Foundation Predoctoral, Dissertation, and Postdoctoral Minority Fellows. There are three objectives for this study: (a) to extend and apply a critical race theory to the field of education, (b) to ''recognize,'' ''document,'' and analyze racial and gender microaggressions of Chicana and Chicano scholars, and (c) to ''hear'' the voice of ''discrimination's victims'' by examining the effect of race and gender microaggressions on the lives of Chicana and Chicano scholars. Three patterns of racial and gender microaggressions were found: (a) scholars who felt out of place in the academy because of their race and or gender, (b) scholars who felt their teachers professors had lower expectations for them, and (c) scholars'...

Critical race theory, race and gender microaggressions, and the experience of Chicana and Chicano scholars

Arthur Chickering is Distinguished Professor of Higher Education at Memphis State University. On leave from the Directorship of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Memphis State, he is Visiting Professor at George Mason University. Zelda Gamson is a sociologist who holds appointments at the John W. McCormack Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education at the University of Michigan.

Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education: Faculty Inventory. Institutional Inventory.

Migrants are one of the most academically vulnerable groups in the United States, constantly faced with economic, health, and work-related problems that translate into lower academic achievement and higher dropout rates. These hardships make it difficult for schools to effectively negotiate the parental involvement terrain and promote academic success for this group. Because of the paucity of literature on effective parental involvement practices for migrants, we sought to fill this gap in the literature. Using a qualitative approach, interviews and observations were conducted in four effective migrant-impacted school districts throughout a 5-month period. Findings suggest these schools were successful at involving parents because they aimed to meet parental needs above all other involvement considerations. In other words, schools were successful not because they subscribed to a particular definition of involvement, but because they held themselves accountable to meet the multiple needs of migrant parents...

Redefining Parental Involvement: Lessons From High-Performing Migrant-Impacted Schools

Over the Ivy Walls: The Educational Mobility of Low-Income Chicanos. Patricia Gandara. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. 151 pp.

Over the Ivy Walls: The Educational Mobility of Low-Income Chicanos.

The intent of the authors in preparing this paper is to compare and contrast the roles of Institutional Research in informing decision making and governance in higher education. Using a case study format the authors will provide an example of a research project conducted within each of the following sectors of United States higher education system: private 4-year not for profit, public major research institutions/private specialized institutions, and a pubic state university system. The first case study from the private sector will feature a mixed methodology study that used data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and student focus groups to explore student engagement at this institution and inform faculty development. The second case study will compare the use of data for decision making from the standpoint of large public research institutions and private specialized institutions. The third case study from a state university system focuses on recent initiatives in the public sector to inform the public, the institutions, the State, and the federal government using data from institutional research offices, student engagement surveys, and student learning assessments shared through consortia and national associations. These examples will be discussed within the structure of decision making and governance in higher education.

Marsha Hirano-Nakanishi

Papers

Over the Ivy Walls: The Educational Mobility of Low-Income Chicanos.

Sector differences in the role of institutional research in informing decision making and governance in higher education