"I was born here, but I'm not an American": Latino students' perceptions of the US history curriculum

 
 
 
 

"I was born here, but I'm not an American": Latino students' perceptions of the US history curriculum

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Title: "I was born here, but I'm not an American": Latino students' perceptions of the US history curriculum
Author: Rierson, Stacy Leigh
Description: The purpose of this investigation was to explore Latino students’ perceptions of the US History curriculum at one high school in the Eastern United States. The ultimate objective was to understand if the US History classes are serving the perceived needs of Latino students. Data were collected for six months. Data sources included observation notes, interview transcripts from students, teachers, administrators, and a State Board of Education member, the researcher’s journal, and document analysis of the State Social Studies Standards and a practice version of the State Graduation Test. This study was influenced by Latino Critical Theory. LatCrit builds on the five themes of Critical Race Theory while adding perspectives unique to Latino experiences in the United States such as language acquisition, cultural background, gender, ethnicity, immigration status, and colonial experience. A major finding of this study was that the US History curriculum is or is not meeting student participants’ needs in different ways. The students in Group One stressed the basic need to learn English. Group Two student-participants wanted their culture to be present so that White students would learn about them. Group Three students wanted to learn in more interactive ways, with groups and flashy videos. Students at Crawford did not have an adequate framework around which to make sense of race, racism, and racial tensions. The presence of how race was talked about, and the absence of how race was not talked about, led to negative stereotypes against Latinos based upon ethnicity, immigration status, and native language. The student-participants in all Groups wanted to talk about race. They wanted to talk about their “positive invisibility” at Crawford—that is, the absence of affirmative constructions around their ethnicity, country of origin, and language. The findings suggest that there is a need for more studies with Latino students that focus on the aspects of Latino Critical Theory.
Permanent Link: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1148330036
http://hdl.handle.net/2374.OX/5336
Date: 2006

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