By Pierre Bourdieu (London: Routledge, 2010), xxx + 607 pp. £15.99 paper. A combination of social theory, statistical data, illustrations, and interviews, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judg...

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

Subtractive Schooling: US-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring: A. Valenzuela

The Latino threat: constructing immigrants, citizens, and the nation : Leo R. Chavez, Stanford University Press 2008. 272 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0804759342 ()

Going to College tells the powerful story of how high school students make choices about postsecondary education. Drawing on their unprecedented nine-year study of high school students, the authors explore how students and their parents negotiate these important decisions. Family background, finances, education, information-all influence students' plans after high school and the career paths they pursue, as do the more subtle messages delivered by parents and counselors which shape adolescents' self-expectations. For high school guidance counselors, college admissions counselors, parents and teachers, and public policy makers, this book is a valuable resource that explains the decision-making process and helps adults to help students make appropriate choices. The authors identify predisposition, search, and choice as the three stages in the student decision-making process. Predisposition refers to the plans students develop for education or work after they graduate from high school. The search stage involves students discovering and evaluating a variety of colleges and universities. In the choice stage, students choose a school to attend from among a list of institutions that are being seriously considered. Understanding exactly how students move through the predisposition, search, and choice stages of the college decision-making process can help students and parents prepare themselves for this process and consider a wider array of options. For education professionals, understanding this process can lead to new initiatives to guide students and families effectively-by providing better incentives for college savings, for example, or devising more effective early information programs about postsecondary education. Going to Collegeis the first book to seriously study over an extended period the decisions that have a pervasive and lasting impact on individual careers, livelihoods, and lifestyles. The authors conclude with important recommendations for improving academic support, exploring various financial options, providing early encouragement-in other words, for recognizing the factors that influence students' decisions, and knowing when to pay attention to them.

Going to College: How Social, Economic, and Educational Factors Influence the Decisions Students Make

Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class. Mary Patillo-McCoy. Chicago, 1L, and London, UK: The University of Chicago Press, 1999. xii. 276pp. (Cloth US$25.00; PaperUSS15.00)

Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class

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Addressing Information Gaps: Disparities in Financial Awareness and Preparedness on the Road to College

Past research suggests that community after-school programs (ASPs) are crucial sites for culturally relevant programming for minority and immigrant youth; yet, we know little about how ASPs address language in their programming. Using an ethnographic fieldwork approach, we examine the goals and practices of ASP workers serving immigrant youth with diverse ethnic and language backgrounds in San Francisco, California. We find that, despite the best intentions regarding culturally relevant programming, ASP workers faced funding mandates, capacity issues, and increasingly diverse youth populations, and they adopted English-only policies or simply placed little priority on native-language usage. Ultimately, we observed competing processes related to English dominance: a lack of support for English language learners (ELLs) and bilingual youth, and the use of English as a bridge language across racial and ethnic lines. While staff sought to support and empower immigrant youth, ELL youth were often left on the si...

“We Only Speak English Here”: English Dominance in Language Diverse, Immigrant After-School Programs

How do educators reconcile the growing college-for-all norm—the notion that all students should pursue college—with the diverse needs of students in urban settings? What is the impact on Black stud...

“You’re Supposed to Help Me”: The Perils of Mass Counseling Norms for Working-Class Black Students:

As alternatives to mainstream institutions, local non-profit organisations (NPOs) are important sites for immigrant civic engagement; yet, there is little research on how immigrants negotiate the benefits of NPOs. We use ethnographic fieldwork and multiple in-depth interviews with 39 NPO staff and Latina immigrants in San Francisco, California. We offer new insights about how undocumented, low-income, Latina mothers – a group constrained by multiple barriers – negotiate direct assistance and civic engagement in NPOs. Although NPOs provide both direct services and civic engagement opportunities, we find that moral judgments within the broader anti-immigrant and anti-welfare climate impact how Latinas feel the need to ‘give back’ or ‘ration’ services in NPOs. Additionally, the expectation that direct services are an entree for civic engagement has consequences for how Latinas negotiate deservingness and work to preserve their self-worth. For some, these expectations depress further engagement or dri...

Moral or civic ties? Deservingness and engagement among undocumented Latinas in non-profit organisations

A number of studies identify racial and class differences in disciplinary actions and teacher-student interactions; however, scholars place less emphasis on how race and class intersect to shape cl...

Melanie Jones Gast

Papers

Addressing Information Gaps: Disparities in Financial Awareness and Preparedness on the Road to College

“We Only Speak English Here”: English Dominance in Language Diverse, Immigrant After-School Programs

“You’re Supposed to Help Me”: The Perils of Mass Counseling Norms for Working-Class Black Students:

Moral or civic ties? Deservingness and engagement among undocumented Latinas in non-profit organisations

“They Give Teachers a Hard Time”: Symbolic Violence and Intersections of Race and Class in Interpretations of Teacher-student Relations: