The educational plight of Latino students in the U.S. is an increasing concern given the low achievement and attainment status of this population. Although many risk factors associated with underachievement are difficult to alter, parent educational involvement has been shown to positively impact learning outcomes. In this study, parental home- and school-based involvement practices and educational aspirations were compared in a large (n = 6085), nationally representative sample of Latino (n= 1,313) and non-Latino white (n = 4,772) first grade students. The role of these forms of involvement in predicting student achievement in third grade was then assessed. Findings indicate that Latino parents had higher educational aspirations for their children but were less involved at home and school than non-Latino white parents. Multiple hierarchical regression analysis showed that socioeconomic status and parental aspirations, respectively, were the most significant predictors of achievement among Latino and non-Latino white students, even when controlling for SES. While higher levels of school-based and lower levels of home-based educational involvement significantly predicted achievement among non-Latino white students, educational participation was not predictive of achievement among Latino students. Language status served as a meaningful barrier to Latino parent involvement. Findings suggest that educators should harness Latino parents' high aspirations for their children by making greater efforts to communicate and engage them in their native language. Future research should assess non-traditional forms of Latino parents' educational involvement and explore involvement practices that are culturally sensitive and meaningful to Latino parents. / School Psychology

Immigration is a highly politicized topic increasingly on the forefront of the nation’s consciousness. Though news media and academia have drawn attention to evidence of physical health needs of undocumented immigrants being compromised due to their documentation status, relatively less attention is brought to their mental health needs. The purpose of this paper is to review literature about the mental health care needs of immigrants and refugees to the United States, with a particular focus on recent adult immigrants from Latin America and their youth, who may directly or indirectly suffer trauma related to deportation, violence, family separation and/or loss. This paper serves to provide ethical arguments for increased awareness, education and resources towards trauma-informed, culturally sensitive mental health care for immigrants and refugees to the United States. The ultimate aim of this paper is to provide its readers with essential information regarding the impact of trauma and cultural identity in the mental health care (or lack thereof) of Latinx immigrants. / Urban Bioethics

Beginning with a brief historical analysis of how the education system came to be and an analysis of culture, themes came forth demonstrating the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) roots of education no longer align with the diversity of society. Parental engagement in education has been veered as a pillar of overall success; however, it was consistently view through a nonculturally responsive lens and geared toward early childhood and elementary education, leaving out high school as an equally important facet of a child’s development. Synthesizing the themes of cultural responsiveness, parental engagement, and positive relationships, a culturally responsive guide emerges to create a starting point for public high schools to serve their uniquely diverse populations in creation and promotion of parental engagement.

[pt] Esta pesquisa procura demonstrar o papel e a importância da relação de relevância entre Teologia e História na fase inicial da Teologia da Libertação. A partir da análise do conteúdo dos encontros de San Lorenzo del Escorial (1972) e da Cidade do México (1975) busca-se verificar a interpretação da História, da Teologia e de sua relação. Constata-se que nestes encontros a Teologia e a História são interpretadas a partir de uma perspectiva fundamental que configurará metodologicamente a Teologia da Libertação. Para os primeiros teólogos da libertação a Teologia e a História desempenham uma relação de recíproca relevância. Esta relação tem papel e importância significativos para o método da Teologia da Libertação. Buscar uma Teologia que seja relevante para a História latino americana implica considerar esta História relevante para o fazer teológico. A Teologia nasce dos desafios, anseios e questões fundamentais que emergem da inserção, engajamento e compromisso dos cristãos na transformação libertadora da História. Trata-se de uma Teologia comprometida com as urgências, desafios, tensões e anseios da História concreta da América Latina em condição de opressão, dependência e subdesenvolvimento. Para atingir seus objetivos a pesquisa é composta de 6 capítulos. Nos dois primeiros busca-se situar a gênese e nascimento da Teologia da Libertação em seu contexto social, político, cultural, econômico, religioso, eclesial e teológico. Nos capítulos 3-6 busca-se verificar a interpretação proposta nos encontros sobre a Teologia, a História e a importância e o papel de sua relação de relevância recíproca para o método de uma Teologia libertadora. / [de] Diese Forschung versucht darzustellen die Rolle und Wichtigkeit des Verhaltnis der Relevanz zwischen Theologie und Geschichte am Anfang der Theologie der Befreiung. Laut der Analyse des Inhalts des Treffens von San Lorenzo del Escorial (1972) und der Stadt Mexiko (1975), versucht man die Interpretation der Geschichte und der Theologie festzustellen. Fur die ersten Theologen der Befreiung, spielt die Theologie und die Geschichte eine Beziehung gegenseitiger Relevanz. Dieses Verhaltnis hat eine Wichtigkeit und spielt eine grosse Rolle fur die Methode der Theologie der Befreiung. Eine Theologie, die fur die lateinamerikanische Geschichte relevant ist, fordert die Relevanz dieser Geschichte fur das Machen der Theologie. Die Theologie entsteht von den Herausforderungen, Streben und Fragen, die von der Einfugung, Engagement und Kompromiss der Christen durch die Verwandlung und Befreiung der Geschichte auftaucht. Es handelt sich um eine Theologie, die sich mit Notwendigkeit, Herausforderung, Spannung und Streben der konkreten Geschichte des Lateinamerikas, unter der Bedingung von Unterdruckung, Abhangigkeit und Unterentwicklung festlegt. Um das Ziel zu erreichen, entsteht die Forschung von 6 Kapiteln. Im ersten und zweiten Kapitel wird die Genese und Geburt der Theologie der Befreiung in ihrem sozial, politisch, kulturell, wirtschaftlich, religiose, ekklesial und theologisch Kontext dargestellt. Die 3 - 6 Kapiteln versuchen die vorgeschlagene Interpretation bei der oben gennanten Begegnungen uber die Theologie und die Geschichte darzustellen. Es wird auch versucht zu analysieren die Wichtigkeit und welche Rolle, die die gegenseitige Relevanz fur die Methode einer befreiende Theologie spielt.

School cultures, curriculum, and instruction are too often created through a monocultural lens, which excludes Black and Latino/a/x students both socially and academically, and perpetuates the false notion that these students are inherently less capable of achieving academic success when compared to their White counterparts. This is visible across all content areas, but especially in secondary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classes, which means that our Black and Latino/a/x students are continually denied preparation for the critical, high demand careers in the STEM field. Just as critical, with the dominance of White teachers in the classroom, out Black and Latino/a/x students often do not have access to teachers who share their lived experiences or who understand the nuances of their home cultures. However, teachers and school instructional leaders can change course by focusing their efforts to develop a rich cultural consciousness, and by focusing on the utilization of culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) and related instructional strategies with great intentionality in the classroom. This mixed method, single site, exploratory case study was conducted to examine Black and Latino/a/x students' perceptions of their culturally responsive STEM teachers' cultural consciousness, and culturally responsive STEM teachers' perceptions of culturally responsive practices and their Black and Latino/a/x academic abilities. The results provide a clear discrepancy between STEM teacher and Black and Latino/a/x student perspectives that emphasizes a tension between them. This tension must be further explored and highlights a critical need for STEM specific professional development that encompasses both culturally responsive practices and opportunities to develop a critical consciousness.

Purpose: Hispanic or Latino older adults in the US are 1.5 times more likely to have Alzheimer’s and related dementias (ADRD) than white older adults. Nearly one third of all skilled home health (HH) patients and nearly one half of hospice patients have ADRD diagnoses. In ADRD’s long trajectory of decline, patient care transitions bring risks for poor outcomes. Minoritized patients are at high risk for live discharge from hospice, but little is known about those who transition from hospice to skilled HH, the fastest-growing long-term care setting in the US. Aims: to determine demographic and diagnostic variables among patients with ADRD who transition from hospice to skilled HH. Methods: We used Medicare claims data and descriptive statistics including Chi-Square to determine demographic differences in frequency of care transitions from hospice to skilled HH for (a) older adults with ADRD and (b) older adults with co-occurring ADRD and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Results: In N = 272,323 hospice episodes, we found that Hispanic or Latino older adults with co-occurring ADRD and CVD had significantly higher rates of care transitions from hospice to skilled HH (P=0.037) than other racial and ethnic groups with both diagnoses. Conclusions: This is the first study to our knowledge that provides evidence on disparities in care transitions from hospice to skilled HH for Hispanic or Latino older adults with ADRD and CVD. Multiple factors may impact this result. Implications include policy change and greater coordination across systems of care, with specific attention to health equity.

A strong therapeutic alliance is consistently related to successful outcomes in couple therapy. However, most of the research done on therapeutic alliance has been done among non-Latino White individuals and couples, failing to account for other ethnic minorities like Latinos. Latinos tend to share certain commonalities as opposed to non-Latino clients that may alter the relationship between alliance quality and relationship quality. This exploratory study was designed to understand whether Latino clients have higher initial levels of alliance and a stronger alliance-outcome relationship in couple therapy when compared to non-Latino White couples. The sample consisted of 567 couples seeking therapy to improve their relationship (99 Latino and 468 non-Latino White couples). A multigroup moderation model was used to test whether Latino ethnicity moderates the association between alliance quality at session four and relationship quality at the final session. Similar findings of the association previously established between alliance quality and relationship quality were found. Results indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between Latinos and non-Latino Whites on initial levels of alliance quality nor on the relationship between alliance quality and relationship quality.

The purpose of this thesis is to create a collection of short stories that are influenced by the author’s own upbringing. experiences, and heritage. This short story collection is about a community of characters that are influenced by their relationships with each other, their culture, and their faith. Each short story is a window into the lives of this Tampa community. This collection's purpose is to offer a glimpse at the struggle between faith and desires. It depicts the pitfalls and benefits of blind faith and its effects on marriage, the agony of Alzheimer's and the toll it takes on a family. It casts a new light on a Tampa tradition, and it shows how loss affects people in different ways. Most importantly, it is meant as an attempt to cliscove1: what forms an identity and makes an individual and a community special.

Thesis advisor: C. Patrick Proctor / Dominant conceptualizations for family-school relations across U.S. educational research, policy, and practice continue to privilege the behaviors, experiences, and practices of white, upper- and middle-class families, while failing to address the race and class power-relations that permeate educational institutions and their neighborhoods. In the field of bilingual education, there is an emergent body of research that examines issues of language, race, and class within the experiences of families in two-way dual language bilingual education, where children from multiple racial, cultural, and economic groups are educated together with the goals of bilingualism and biliteracy. However, this scholarship has not related the experiences and relations in bilingual programs to the broader issue regarding the dominant and deficit discourse of family-school relations in the U.S. In response, this dissertation situates families’ experiences in a two-way dual language bilingual program within the broader ideological, political, and historical dimensions of U.S. family-school relations. A theoretical orientation informed by Critical Race Theory, Critical Poststructuralist Sociolinguistics, and Feminist Poststructuralist frameworks was used to highlight how racialized positionalities of families in schools reverberate beyond individuals’ identity construction, connecting to discourses about families at other societal scales. This study utilized participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and artifact generation. Data was analyzed using discursive and textual analytical approaches. Findings include (a) an investigation of how the legal and institutional contexts related to family-bilingual school relations contribute to the racialization of people and their languaging; (b) an analysis of how raciolinguistic ideologies are deployed to naturalize the designation of linguistic and ethnoracial labels upon families; and (c) a generation of portraits highlighting how families ruptured deficit positionings by reporting on systems of oppression, their dynamic language practices, and their expansive relations across groups of people, places, and temporal scales. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that despite individual efforts of stakeholders in bilingual programs to foster the wellbeing and development of families, the racist and classist foundations of schooling will ensure the reification of oppressive educational experiences for multiply minoritized families. At the same time, these families will continue to find ways to survive, resist their subjugation, and reimagine more liberatory worlds. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Despite the expressed need for bicultural teachers, research on teacher attrition has demonstrated that a growing number of bicultural educators are leaving the classroom. Bicultural male teachers, in particular, experience high rates of teacher attrition. Schools, unfortunately, are contexts in which Latino male teachers are constantly experiencing dilemmas related specifically to both their gendered and racialized positionality as males of color. Grounded in Antonia Darder’s critical bicultural framework, this autoethnographic study explored the complex factors that drive Latino male teachers out of the classroom, through an in-depth and grounded examination of a Latino male teacher who left the classroom. The study contributes to the conversation on bicultural teacher attrition, gendered relations, and their relationship to both teacher preparation and the education of bicultural students. Furthermore, the study explored how racism, sexism, classism, trauma, and heteronormativity mitigate the experiences of Latino male teachers, and how these manifest themselves through the hidden curriculum, asymmetrical relations of power, gendered essentialism, policing of behavior, the culture of silence, conditions of isolation, and disabling cultural response patterns. The implications of such factors in the life of one Latino male teacher are carefully analyzed and discussed, in an effort to consider their significance in rethinking teacher preparation programs, with respect to the needs of Latino males. Moreover, the study offers an engagement with critical autoethnography as a significant tool of reflection in the educational process and emancipatory process of bicultural teachers.