This study focused on understanding how "familismo," rurality, schooling experiences, and racial identity affect the postsecondary education journey of rural Latina/o/x students in the Southwest. Furthermore, the dynamic regarding Latina/o/x college access and opportunity was introduced with an emphasis placed on minoritized experiences…

This study tests theories of social learning and strain to explain non-medical prescription drug use (NMPDU) among Latino college students at a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). Logistic regression analyses indicate social learning and negative stressors help explain such usage, while refined models suggest that Latinos use of NMPD is primarily…

Introductory chemistry courses tend to suffer from high failure rates. Success in an introductory course has been linked to how students approach learning. The aim of this study was to explore how students' learning approach was related to their success in the introductory chemistry courses measured by the ACS exam and the final course grade.…

This dissertation examines the perceptions of Latinx sense of belonging in a Midwest community college and how their academic and social experiences are impacted. Sense of belonging is meaningful to community college students because Latinx students are historically underserved in postsecondary education. The goal is to better understand the…

With the continued racism and anti-immigrant rhetoric targeted at the Latinx population, there is a need to further explore the impact that racism has on Latino students' social-emotional health and academic performance. Ample scholarship highlights the ways in which racism in education manifests in the forms of racial microaggressions and toxic…

This narrative study investigated the experiences of three Hispanic students in South Texas who participated in after-school robotics programs in secondary school and discover the role these experiences had on their academic and life skills. Data were collected through individual semi-structured interviews with one female participant and two male…

This study sought to identify best practices incorporated by secondary school counselors in California high schools that promote, support, and increase college-going identity and foster a supportive college-going environment for Latino male students. The researcher used a phenomenological qualitative study to capture the best practices and…

Is underrepresentation of Black students, Latinx students, English learners (EL), and students from economically challenging communities in gifted programs due to inequality in early academic achievement or bias in the gifted identification process? Using three-level multilevel logistic models, we examine the degree to which the disparities in…

This descriptive qualitative study aims to understand the perceptions of K-6 English Language Learner parents in South Florida about additional barriers they faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, which limited the support they provided to their children's education. Ten Hispanic parents were recruited and interviewed using semi-structured questions…

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…

This research investigates whether teachers' unions influence student academic achievement in Southern states that prohibit collective bargaining. Our data are from the School and Staffing Survey and the Stanford Education Data Archive. We measure the strength of teachers' unions by union membership rate and meet-and-confer status of a district…

Parental and community supports are important factors for Latino student academic success. The purpose of this paper is to explore the parental and community activism surrounding the "San Antonio v. Rodriguez" school finance case in order to better understand how historic means of activism relate to the contemporary ways that Latino…

This study examined whether optimism is a unique predictor of fourth and fifth graders' academic performance. The few studies that have examined this relationship with students in middle childhood have ignored relevant covariates and have focused on higher socioeconomic White students. In the present study, we examined the relationship between…

Abstract This study investigated the association between bicultural competence and academic adjustment (i.e., engagement, efficacy, achievement) among 193 Latino youth (65.3% female; 89.1% U.S.-born) followed from their senior high school year (M[subscript age] = 17.58 years, SD = 0.53) to their fifth college semester (2016-2019). Latent growth…

The Latinx population is currently the largest ethnic minority group in the USA. Moreover, studies demonstrate that Latinx youth are at a higher risk for exposure to community violence and for negative school outcomes compared to their non-Latinx white peers. Though more attention has been devoted to understanding negative school outcomes, there…