The Florida Department of Education requires that student teachers complete the Florida Teacher Certification General Knowledge (GK) Exam for certification. As of 2021, the Florida pass rate for the GK exam, the first of the required exams, is 63% and the pass rate at FIU is a similar 62%. There were also 28,517 GK retakes statewide that year. As…

The mastery learning pedagogical approach recognizes that mastery is not always achieved on the first attempt, and learning from mistakes and perseverance is fundamental to learning. Research has suggested that mastery learning can have a positive influence on underrepresented engineering students' learning and course performance. Yet, there is a…

School safety could be a meaningful cause of educational opportunity gaps if racially minoritized and historically marginalized students are more likely to feel unsafe in school than their White peers. Feeling unsafe can be a product of attending dangerous schools and discrimination within school. This study explores the extent to which high…

California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) continues administering its five-year grant, "Promoting Excellence in Graduate Education and Increasing Hispanic STEM Related Degree Completion," that began in the Fall of 2019 to strengthen the STEM program support for students of Latino origin and develop a Graduate School-Going culture…

In this paper the author compares the impact of two proposals: one in the Shapiro administration's budget plan and one by the PA Schools Work (PASW) campaign for a down payment on fair and full funding of K-12 schools regarding how far they go in reducing the state's inequitable and inadequate school funding for school districts on the basis of…

This study examined communal goal mismatch among a large sample of White and LatinX STEM students. Drawing on goal congruity and the cultural mismatch theories, we created a mismatch score, the difference between student perceptions of communal opportunities afforded in STEM and their personal endorsement. We hypothesized that LatinX STEM majors…

We highlight how community colleges implement equity-oriented reform to address inequities facing Latinx students. Through counterstorytelling, we provide lessons learned on the implementation and impact of equity-oriented reform in community college. Key findings revealed that the reform is necessary, but not sufficient to improve racial equity…

Informed by Bronfenbrenner's ecological model of development, this mixed-methods study's aims are to: (1) describe rural Latino/a adolescents' (N = 62) narratives and lived social experiences in the context of rurality, and (2) examine their personal networks to better understand their social interactions (subset of 30 adolescents). Rural Latino/a…

Given the need for Latinx/a/o health care providers in the United States, understanding how students choose these fields is critical to achieving more equitable systems. This study uses community cultural wealth to investigate how Latina first-generation college students choose and pursue health care careers. Findings show that women employed…

While there has been an emphasis within the Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) literature on decentralizing university governance to allow for antiracist decision-making, there has been less focus on the lack of inclusive representation within faculty governance, particularly for historically excluded groups. Guided by testimonio as methodology…

Leadership development provides students with the opportunity to acquire the interpersonal competence and networking skills they will need to be successful both in college and beyond. Despite having arrived at college less prepared, some economically challenged undergraduates perform extremely well and achieve academic excellence. However, many…

Despite recent gains, Latinx students still lag behind other subgroups on measures of academic attainment. Explanations for this gap have ranged from pernicious deficit ideologies to deterministic frameworks which emphasize differences in human capital. While culturally responsive pedagogies are promising alternatives, there are few studies that…

Past research demonstrates that familial and community support can aid the academic success of Latino/a students. However, few studies explore how older siblings influence their younger siblings' education trajectory including primary, secondary, and post-secondary education. Drawing on 25 in-depth interviews with Latino/a first-generation college…

Drawing on ethnographic methods, this study employed a community cultural wealth framework to analyze the successful trajectories of 27 Latinx engineering/computer science students at a research-intensive HSI. Our findings uncovered four types of community cultural wealth leveraged by participants--aspirational, linguistic, social, and…

Purpose: Diverse undergraduate students can play a critical role in increasing the number of culturally competent clinicians in the future. However, exploring how these students develop cultural and linguistic awareness is crucial. This study examined the development and assessment of cultural and linguistic awareness among a diverse group of…