The Future is Present: An Ethnography of College-Bound Urban Youth's Multiple Worlds

Michelle Knight-Manuel

Increasing demographic shifts and policy changes in high stakes testing and college admissions and remediation have evoked debates at the national, state, and local levels over promoting access to postsecondary institutions. Many argue that these policy changes will promote excellence for all youth in K-16 reform efforts. Yet, others contend that these policy changes limit access to four-year campuses and the completion of college degrees for Black and Latino/a youth from under-resourced urban communities. In order to create more equitable structures for postsecondary access, schools have begun to reform their policies and practices and must move towards understanding the multidimensionality of students’ identities and lives. As part of the necessary school change, educators must examine both the intersections of youth’s identities as students, workers, raced, gendered, classed, and second language learners and the ways youth are making sense of college focused reform efforts and policies in and out of school contexts. Documentation and analysis of poor and working class, Black and Latino/a youth’s perspectives of college-going processes can inform and shape future K-16 policies and practices to support youth development and promote greater access to postsecondary institutions. This two-year ethnographic study investigates a cohort of 24 poor and working class, Black and Latino/a tenth grade students to examine youth’s identities, educational opportunities and achievement in the daily dynamic interplay of school and social contexts (e.g. family, peers, and work). I utilize a multi-methods approach consisting of individual interviews, focus groups, observations and written documentation to address the following questions: 1) Who and what factors in and out of a systemic college-focused school context influence the college-going process? 2) How do youth’s interpretations of the interactions of their identities, school contexts, and their multiple social worlds influence their college-going process? Drawing on a multicultural feminist and critical theoretical framework, this study will contribute to the educational literature on school reform efforts. This contribution will eventually impact the implementation of more equitable systemic college-focused school structures, practices, and policies to improve the educational experiences of Black and Latino/a youth in urban under-resourced communities.

About Michelle Knight-Manuel

Michelle G. Knight is an assistant professor of urban education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She earned a master’s degree from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and holds a Ph.D. from University of California, Los Angeles in curriculum and teaching. Her research interests center around urban education, youth studies, and qualitative research methodologies. Recent publications include “(In)(Di)Visible youth identities: Insight from a feminist intersectional framework” and “Ethics in qualitative research: Multicultural feminist activist research.” She is currently co-editing a special issue of Equity and Excellence in Education on preparing social justice educators. The National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship supports research to examine poor and working class, Black and Latino/a youth’s understandings of college-going processes in and out of an urban public high school in New York. Dr. Knight teaches graduate courses on urban education, school change, youth and adolescents, the doctoral core, and feminist and critical methodologies and pedagogies. She recently received the AERA Women Educators Award for Research on Women and Girls.