We examine how the community-driven leadership (CDL) of farmworker mothers challenged deficit practices of the local school board, which decided to close the school in the community. CDL is the ability of mothers to activate their community cultural wealth to mobilize their resources in search of better educational opportunities. The mothers…

While recent literature advocates a translingual approach to pedagogy, the implications of such an approach for teacher identity development has been little explored. This article presents case studies of two English-dominant California teachers who learned Spanish: a Filipino-American teacher of Spanish, and an Anglo-American teacher of ESL. Both…

This story explored the educational experience of a 20 year-old man who came to California from Michoacan, Mexico with his parents and siblings when he was 10 years old. Using qualitative research methodology and testimonio, he and his parents were interviewed to hear and document their stories of his academic journey from the early years in…

In this article, I explore how discriminatory adult practices disproportionately involve Latino boys in the juvenile justice system. I use the critical methodologies of critical ethnography, critical discourse analysis and Critical Race Theory (CRT) to provide a race-centered analysis of decision-making in student discipline. My findings reveal…

Multilayered disciplinary policies including sophisticated surveillance mechanisms and harsh punitive practices increasingly characterize schools in the United States. Researchers contend that these modalities funnel students into prisons and produce "prison-like" conditions and/or militarized spaces. Most studies have examined the…

This article presents a case study that examines how undocumented youth reject notions that, as students, they are more deserving of state-granted rights (e.g., citizenship, but also temporary rights through DACA). It highlights the use of what I call undocumented pedagogy as a form of everyday activism for greater immigrant rights. This…

Individual and family stories of homelessness that focus on the transition out of homelessness remain comparatively unexplored. Using hermeneutic inquiry and microstoria analysis to orient the inquiry and design the narrative, this case study involves the story of a woman overcoming homelessness with her family, and her participation in, and…

This article describes an expanded case study methodology that was used to explore the value that art therapy processes have in expression and understanding of the complications of immigration and acculturation. Data collected from two art therapy groups of Hispanic/Latino youth and immigrant women at an urban parish were analyzed to develop an…

The purpose of this study was to investigate, through narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), the leadership evolution of five female superintendents in California with longevity of 5 or more years in their current school district positions. The research question addressed was, "How do California female superintendents evolve to…

This article reports on a qualitative case study that explored the literacy and disciplinary experiences of 4 Taiwanese/Chinese students learning to write in a US graduate TESOL program. A combination of writing research methods was employed--case study techniques of interview and document collection, combined with discourse and text analysis of…

The present paper explores middle-class fathers' educational work by studying how they and their partners are involved in their children's education at home, in school, and how they investigate school options and make decisions about educational issues. Drawing on data from an ethnographic study of 30 dual-earner couples in the Greater Los Angeles…

Given the challenges of the workplace and the historic exclusion of women and people of color from positional leadership, this dual case study explores women's experiences in two graduate programs designed to support transformational learning of educational leaders. Data included participants' structured reflections on learning about leadership,…

Narrates what makes Calexico, California unique in the educational continuum. States that despite low income of the majority of its Latino citizens, the dropout rate in high schools is low, achievement on tests is high, and a significant number of graduates go on to two- and four-year colleges. Discusses some of the classes offered in Calexico…

For the past half-century, a racetrack outside San Diego has recruited educators for jobs during the summer break. But earning extra cash is not the only reason these seasonal employees return every year. Del Mar in San Diego, which was opened in 1937 after being bankrolled, in part by Bing Crosby, remains among the best-attended tracks in the…

Anchored on the Vietnamese American Project (VAP), this essay presents the documentation of the Vietnamese American Experience through the voices of ethnic Vietnamese in Orange County, California, home to the largest concentration of this ethnic group outside Vietnam. Groundbreaking in its approach and method, VAP is an open forum that enables…