Addressing the Need for Explicit Evidence on the Role of Culturally Responsive Teaching and Achievement Among Latino Youth

Francesca Lopez

Despite numerous educational reform efforts aimed at aggressively addressing achievement disparities, Latinos continue to be among the most at risk for school failure. Researchers citing evidence that achievement disparities among Latino youth who are English Learners (ELs) are most pronounced often focus on ways to remove language as a barrier to achievement. Nevertheless, there is seemingly contradictory evidence that Latino youth who are members of the first or second generation have higher achievement outcomes than their English-proficient counterparts who are members of the third generation and beyond.In sharp contrast to the belief that the inordinate achievement disparities among Latino students stem from deficiencies, some researchers assert that culturally responsive teaching (CRT) improves academic achievement because it views students’ culture and language as strengths. The research examining the role of CRT in promoting achievement, however, is faulted as lacking an explicit link to achievement, which prevents its consideration among policymakers.The teacher expectancy literature has already established that teacher expectations are related to students’ perceptions of ability and their subsequent performance. Therefore, it is likely that explicit evidence supporting the role of CRT in promoting achievement can be established given that one of the domains in CRT is high academic expectations. Unknown is how other CRT domains—particularly those explicitly concerned with culture—contribute to students’ achievement. We know students confronted with discrimination have lower levels of both ethnic identity and perceptions of academic ability, but do students incorporate CRT’s positive views of their culture in terms of ethnic identity, exclusively? Or does CRT also inform students’ achievement identity? If ethnic identity and achievement identity both mediate CRT’s effect on achievement, are the effects moderated by generational status? The specific research questions I will examine are: (1) Is CRT directly related to students’ perceptions of discrimination? (2) Is CRT indirectly related to Latino students’ achievement through perceived discrimination? (3) Is CRT indirectly related to Latino students’ achievement though ethnic identity and achievement identity? (4) Does generational status moderate the process by which CRT affects various facets of student identity?To address these questions, I propose to use the NAEd/Spencer postdoctoral fellowship to collect and analyze Latino student (EL and non-EL) and teacher measures, augmented by interviews, classroom observations, and curricular materials in 3rd through 8th grade classrooms across four schools varying degrees of CRT. Each question provides an opportunity to make a unique contribution to the literature, addressing pervasive limitations that have prevented a more forceful consideration of CRT in educational policy.

About Francesca Lopez

Francesca López began her career in education as a bilingual (Spanish/English) elementary teacher, and later as an at-risk high school counselor, in El Paso, Texas. After completing her PhD in Educational Psychology at the University of Arizona (2008), she served on the faculty of the Educational Policy and Leadership department at Marquette University (2008-2013) and is currently an associate professor in the Educational Psychology department at the University of Arizona. Her research is focused on the ways educational settings promote achievement for Latino youth and has been funded by the American Educational Research Association Grants Program and the Division 15 of the American Psychological Association Early Career Award. She has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment and is currently an associate editor for Reading and Writing Quarterly.