The dismissal of students' backgrounds by the educational system has a deep effect on communities of color, perpetuating a system that sets them up for academic failure. Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) created terminology for the process of systematic fragmentation, which she describes as an act of dismissal on a macro-level. This article…

In response to the banning of Mexican American Studies in Tucson, students in the newly formed Chican@ Literature, Art, and Social Studies program displayed their resiliency in the face of the oppressive actions of the Tucson Unified School District and the state of Arizona. This article serves as a platform for the voices of these dedicated youth…

The article discusses a legislation that would effectively terminate Mexican American Studies programs in k-12 was passed in Arizona in 2010. In this article, the author traces how this legislation drew from discourses of anti-Americanism and wickedness initiated by the state's superintendent of public instruction against Mexican American Studies…

Public school curriculum battles offer great examples for illustrating how politics saturates education policy, particularly in the State of Texas. However, Arizona has emerged as another peculiar contender in contemporary battles to control high school curricula. Curriculum battles have deep historical roots in Arizona and elsewhere that go…

Following the seminal writing of James Coleman (1988), a number of scholars have suggested that inequality in child and adolescent development reflects differences in social capital among families from different backgrounds (e.g., Sampson, Morenoff, & Earls, 1999; Crosnoe, 2004; Kao, 2004). By "social capital," Coleman referred to…

Launched in 1985 at Arizona State University, the Hispanic Research Center's (HRC) efforts to promote Latino and Chicano art and issues have flourished in recent years. In 2004, the HRC hosted the Arizona International Latina/o Arts Festival in collaboration with the Mesa Southwest Museum. The HRC has also founded a mentoring institute for…

This descriptive study investigates the bases used to support judgments of artworks by preservice art teachers at two large universities. Bases art teachers might use to judge artwork range from personal preferences, to cultural expectations, to criteria drawn from values of various artworlds. The 26 preservice teachers in this study used a…

This article provides, first, a brief review of literature concerning the education of Hispanic American (Latino/a) students at the secondary and postsecondary levels and, second, the results of questionnaire research conducted with Latino/a and Anglo-American (White) students at a large university in the Southwest regarding classroom…

This booklet provides Arizona educators with classroom resources in multicultural education and sources of training for educators. Resources include: (1) media materials and speakers on various humanities topics including contributions of different cultures to Arizona; (2) curriculum units and instructional materials on Arizona's American Indians…

Resources about Arizona for children in kindergarten through eighth grade are listed. Materials include fiction and non-fiction and are mostly English language titles. Books listed have generally been published since 1977, although classic titles distinguished by literary or artistic merit are included, as are bibliographies published before 1977.…