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Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees of any nation globally, and the influx of Syrian refugees has placed massive strain on the Turkish education system. In response, the Promoting Integration of Syrian Children to the Turkish Education System (PICTES) program was implemented to help strengthen the Turkish public-school system and increase education access for Syrian refugee students. This chapter uses Bacchi’s (2009) method of policy analysis to look deeply at the underlying assumptions in the PICTES program. This analysis reveals that while the PICTES program has made great strides toward helping refugee students gain more long-term and sustainable access to education, it reflects cultural deficit thinking and focuses more on what refugees’ lack and need than on what they already have. The author argues that the PICTES program needs to be revised to change the current deficit approach and emphasize recognizing and leveraging refugees’ cultural wealth.

Rural education research has historically been cast in a deficit lens, with rural places characterized by their problems or shortcomings, as if the way of understanding rural itself is to compare it to nonrural locales. These intransigent and narrow perceptions of rurality hinders recognition of the assets and possibilities of rural places. The purpose of this paper is to apply community-empowering, transgressive knowledge to analyses of rural communities to advance rural education research and practice.

In this conceptual paper, the authors propose an asset-based, conceptual framework to ground rural research and education practices: rural cultural wealth.

The authors describe and explore the concept of rural cultural wealth within the context of education. Furthermore, the authors discuss the dynamics of rurality and propose four constructs that comprise the rural cultural wealth framework, rural resourcefulness, rural ingenuity, rural familism and rural community unity, and consider implications for future research and practice.

The goal of this paper is to advance a rural cultural wealth framework aimed to interrupt social reproduction of educational inequities that impact rural students.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the literacy practices of the families and communities of first-generation college students in Latin America, and how community and family literacies can inform the understanding of first-generation college students’ identity and cultural values.

This transnational ethnography was conducted in local communities around three public universities in Mexico, Colombia and Costa Rica. Participants included nine fist-generation college students and more than 50 people in their families and communities (i.e. relatives, parents and friends). Data gathering occurred at the university outside the formal space of the classroom, at home, and in the community. Data were interpreted through the lens of the community cultural wealth framework.

The author found that first-generation college students and their families and communities engaged in rich literacy practices that have been overlooked in policy, research, and media. It is argued that the concept literacy capital is necessary to acknowledge the critical literacy practices communities engage in. Literacy capital was manifested in these communities to preserve cultural traditions, to sponsor literacy practices and to question and resist unjust sociopolitical circumstances.

The findings of this study should inform a culturally sustaining pedagogy of academic literacies in higher education. Beyond asset-based approaches to academic literacies in Latin America, critical perspectives to academic literacies teaching and learning are needed that acknowledge the Latin American complexities.

These findings are significant because they unveiled how people in local communities were informed about the sociopolitical dynamics at the national and international scale that affected or even threatened their local culture, and how they used their literacy capital to react critically to those situations.

Recent figures show that half the world’s refugees are children, with young people now representing more than 50 percent of victims of global armed conflict and displaced persons. Increasing numbers of refugee youth are entering their host nations’ compulsory and postcompulsory educational systems having experienced frequent resettlements and disrupted education, which in turn, pose major barriers for educational and future employment. The consequences of these experiences raise pressing equity implications for educators and educational systems. However, the picture is not uniformly bleak. Employing Bourdieu’s thinking tools of habitus, field and capital, Yosso’s concepts of community cultural wealth and photovoice methods, this chapter draws on studies of refugee youth of both genders from diverse ethnic and faith backgrounds, conducted in regional Australia. It examines how everyday spaces for learning, for example, church, faith-based and sporting groups and family can play a crucial role in enabling young people to build powerful forms of social and cultural capital necessary to successfully access and negotiate formal education and training settings. Its findings suggest first that everyday spaces can act as rich sites of informal learning, which young refugee people draw upon to advance their life chances, employability, and social inclusion. Second, they suggest that how one’s gender and “race” intersect may have important implications for how refugee youth access social and cultural capital in these everyday spaces as they navigate between informal learning and formal educational settings.

This study involves a content analysis of research published from 2000 to 2018 about American Indian students with the principal aim to identify investigations addressing the supportive factors that contribute to student academic success. Secondary aims involved better understanding the parameters of the investigations, such as sample tribal affiliations and journal outlets.

Out of 6,341 total articles published in PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO and Education Resources Information Center over the time period, 86 articles covering the pre-school to college age years were identified, almost evenly distributed between pre-college (n = 42, 48.8%); and college age samples (n = 44, 51.2%). The 86 articles account for a mere 1.4% of all published articles over the 19 year period. A community cultural wealth approach (Yosso, 2005) was used as a framework for understanding the myriad of strengths students bring to their school experiences and was used as a lens for interpreting the study findings.

When disaggregated, the most common supports for pre-college age youth were culturally-sensitive schooling, personal/intrinsic qualities along with family and social support. For college age students, the most common supports were university personnel, community-based supports and student intrinsic factors. Further results, study limitations and implications are discussed.

This research is original.

This paper aims to examine the role of school stakeholders (e.g. advisory board members, school administrators, parents, teachers and school board members) at a 99% black academy in promoting the achievement and broadening participation of high school black students in engineering career pathways.

The authors followed a qualitative case study design to explore the experiences of school stakeholders (e.g. students, district and school personnel and community partners) associated with the implementation of the career academy (Stake, 2006; Yin, 1994).

The authors found that the school relied heavily on the support of the community in the form of an advisory board – including university faculty and industry leaders – to actively develop culturally responsive strategies (e.g. American College Test preparation, work-based learning opportunities) to ensure the success of black students interested in pursuing career pathways in engineering. Thus, school stakeholders in the academy of engineering served as authentic leaders who inspired academy students by serving as role models and setting examples through what they do as engineering professionals. It was quite evident that the joy and fulfillment that these authentic leaders gained from using their talents directly or indirectly inspired students in the academy to seek out and cultivate the talents they are good at and passionate about as well (Debebe, 2017). Moreover, the career academy provided environmental or sociocultural conditions that promoted the development of learners’ gifts and talents (Plucker and Barab, 2005). Within that context, the goals of career academy school stakeholders were to support students in the discovery of what they are good at doing and to structure their educational experiences to cultivate their gifts into talents.

It is also important to acknowledge that this study is not generalizable to the one million career academy students across the nation. Yet, the authors believe researchers should continue to examine the career academy advisory board as a source of capital for engaging and preparing diverse learners for success post-high school. Further research is needed to investigate how advisory boards support students’ in school and postsecondary outcomes, particularly for diverse students.

The authors highlight promising practices for schools to implement in establishing a diverse talent pipeline.

On a theoretical level, the authors found important insights into the possibility of black students benefiting from a culturally responsive advisory board that provided social and cultural capital (e.g. aspirational, navigational and social) resources for their success.

While prior researchers have studied the positive impact of teachers in career academies as a contributor to social capital for students (Lanford and Maruco, 2019) and what diverse students bring to the classroom as a form of capital Debebe(Yosso, 2005), research has not identified the role of the advisory board (in its efforts to connect the broader community) as a vehicle for equipping ethnically and racially diverse students who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds with social capital. Within that sense, the authors believe the advisory board at Stanton Academy relied on what the authors term local community capital to provide resources and supports for black students’ successful transition from high school into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-related college and career pathways.

In order to review and distill the small pool of relevant scholarship, four foundational concepts must be acknowledged as the crux of this study. First, race and gender are inextricably linked (Collins, 2000; Hull, Scott, & Smith, 1982; Winkle-Wagner, 2009). Second, gender differences among Black students at predominantly White institutions are apparent and unable to be ignored. Third, academic advising literature and academic support programs specifically for undergraduate Black females are scarce. Fourth, deficiency models are antiquated distractions from excellence models such as community cultural wealth, which was used to frame this study (Yosso, 2005).

Higher education and leadership educators have long been tasked to develop the next generation of leaders both in the classroom and outside of the classroom. Many educators use the Social Change Model of Leadership to highlight a nonhierarchical and collaborative approach to leadership while upholding the idea that everyone can be a leader regardless of the position they hold. However, the Social Change Model overlooks concepts of power and oppression and perpetuates whiteness in the process. With educators being tasked now more than ever to prepare students to solve complex social issues, this paper adds on new values to the Social Change Model of Leadership, using Yosso’s model of Community Cultural Wealth, to ensure that racially minoritized and other students from marginalized groups can tap into their capital and locate themselves within the model to make impactful and meaningful social change.

In this chapter, we present critical race theory (CRT) with a focus on Latino critical theory (LatCrit) and its impact on Latinx educators, Latinx youth, and Latinx communities. We focus on identity inclusion and Latinidad as a way to increase critical consciousness of educators and Latinx youth, language rights, and feminist pedagogies of resistance. LatCrit frameworks are used as transformational resistance and afford a productive platform for developing critical understandings of the educational experiences of Latinx youth. We discuss relationships and community through the alignment of LatCrit and critical pedagogy and the application of critical theory and community-responsive pedagogy in increasing equitable outcomes in educational settings that support Latinx youth and families. We provide recommendations to address the challenges Latinx youth face and how Latinx educators can continue to support youth through a LatCrit framework, and a summary of possible solutions to consider. We close with some reflection and dialogue questions.

The purpose of this paper is to give voice to the experiences of women with disabilities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) who have accessed employment, to highlight the structural barriers to employment and to identify the skills they used to obtain work.

This is a phenomenological study conducted in KSA. Themes from the interviews of women with disabilities were explored using Yosso’s (2005) cultural capital conceptual framework.

The participants had work and career aspirations, persisted in their job search, navigated barriers, and had familial support and emotional support from their social networks, but lacked instrumental assistance in accessing work. KSA policies to support women and people with disabilities to obtain employment are not adequately enforced, and negative attitudes toward people with disabilities are widespread.

The sample size is small, but these preliminary findings justify the necessity for additional research and policy development specifically focused on women with disabilities.

There is an urgent need for existing policy enforcement and a need for a national strategy promoting the employment of women and the needs of women with disabilities should be specifically included in this agenda.

There is no extant research or policy literature regarding employment and women with disabilities in the KSA. This study applies Yosso’s (2005) theory of cultural capital to women with disabilities, demonstrating its applicability outside of race/ethnicity studies and suggests that “community” is not an essential factor in building employment success.