Browsing by Author "Lopez Turley, Ruth N."

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    Color-Blind Racism among Non-poor Latinos in a Redeveloping Houston Barrio
    (2014-04-22) Korver-Glenn, Elizabeth; Chavez, Sergio; Cech, Erin A.; Howard Ecklund, Elaine; Lopez Turley, Ruth N.
    Accounts of urban inequality, which often focus on the urban poor, have also highlighted the centrality of non-poor minority actors in shaping poor inner-city neighborhood outcomes. This research suggests that non-poor minority actors may be particularly influential in the process of poor neighborhood redevelopment given their greater access to social, cultural, and political capital. Redevelopment in poor neighborhoods reproduces existing inequalities, at least in part through the legitimating power of color-blind racial ideology. Color-blind ideology privatizes inequality by silencing structural explanations for disparities. Additionally, color-blind ideology has also been shown to influence how minorities themselves explain inequality. Yet to date, no research has examined how non-poor minorities, redevelopment, and color-blind ideology may be linked in a single context. Relying on a year of ethnographic research and 38 in-depth interviews with non-poor Latinos, I ask whether and how these actors frame neighborhood inequality using color-blind ideology in a poor, redeveloping Houston barrio. I find widespread use of the cultural racism frame. I also ask what the implications of this finding may be, and theorize that widespread cultural racism among non-poor Latinos supports the conditions under which redevelopment stakeholders can pursue their projects without obstruction. I conclude by exploring what these findings may mean for issues such as socioeconomic integration, and offer suggestions for future research.
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    Incorporation of Conceptual Understanding of Chemistry in Assessments, Undergraduate General Chemistry Classrooms and Laboratories, and High School Classrooms
    (2012-11-02) Cloonan, Carrie; Hutchinson, John S.; Matsuda, Seiichi P. T.; Lopez Turley, Ruth N.
    The novel assessment models and studies developed in this work provided new insight on effective teaching practices in chemistry classrooms and laboratories through the framework of constructivism. Each project aimed to promote greater levels of understanding and inspire interest in chemistry, both of which are great challenges within the U.S. educational system. Assessment drives learning, so appropriate tests are essential to good courses. However, large classes often make written exams impractical. A multiple-choice test of conceptual knowledge in general chemistry was created and validated to provide the chemical education community with a reliable and functional tool that correlates with open-ended General Chemistry exams. Large classes make active-learning implementation challenging, as not all students can participate. Students in a large General Chemistry course taught via active-learning were studied through surveys and interviews. The data revealed that “silent” students are engaged in the active-learning experience, yet “vocal” students outperform silent students on measures of conceptual understanding in chemistry. The motivation behind being vocal suggested students participate in order to improve their grade, and while doing so, also see the benefit to their learning. Another mixed-methods study focused on the traditionally formatted General Chemistry Laboratories. Initial data on student expectations lead to the creation of a pilot lab section and ultimately a new format of the labs with the inclusion of a discussion session. The changes resulted in the students being better prepared, focusing on the content rather than the process of the labs, and reporting better understanding of chemistry due to labs. Two novel laboratory experiences were also developed to promote conceptual understanding, and their creation and use are outlined. The impact of a professional development program on high school chemistry courses was analyzed via interviews, teacher observations and a case study. The professional development exposed teachers to novel chemistry teaching practices of inquiry-based concept development and active-learning methods. The case study showed implementation of the instructional strategies to be successful within an existing exemplary chemistry classroom. Each of these projects advanced best practices in teaching chemistry by expanding the current understanding of teaching concepts and analyzing applications of research-based pedagogies.
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    Investigating the United States’ Racial Structure through the Evaluation of Residential Distribution
    (2013-04-22) Howell, Junia; Emerson, Michael O.; Lopez Turley, Ruth N.; Denney, Justin T.
    Diversification of the United States population over the past 45 years has sparked a debate about the contemporary racial structure. Some theorize Latino and Asian immigrants will eventually integrate into the White community, like the European immigrants before them. Others suggest their classification as “people of color” means they will integrate into the Black community. Still others theorize the United States is moving towards a three-tiered racial hierarchy. Racial residential segregation has been demonstrated to be an influential factor in reproducing racial classifications. Yet the use of residential distribution data to test hypotheses of racial structure has been limited because, I argue, segregation indexes are based on particular racial structures, none of which effectively capture multiple tiered hierarchies. Thus, this paper investigates the contemporary racial structure manifested through residential distribution by comparing computer simulations of hypothesized distributions to the observed distributions of Asians, Blacks, Latinos, and Whites in all census tracts in the United States in 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010. Finding that residential segregation contributes to the mounting support for Bonilla-Silva’s theory of a three-tiered racial hierarchy, this paper argues that future research on residential segregation needs to utilize an index that effectively measures segregation in multigroup populations. Through an evaluation of the most widely utilized indexes and conceptions of segregation, this paper introduces the Summary Index of Multigroup Segregation (SIMS), which builds off the Segregation Index to give an overall measure of segregation similar to Theil’s Information Index but that can be compared across populations with different group compositions. The SIMS calculates the proportion of the total population that would need to move for the area to be completely integrated. If commonly adopted, the SIMS can enable researchers to compile studies to further investigate the factors contributing to multigroup segregation and the implications of multigroup segregation.
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    Rethinking Schools as a Context of Reception: How Language Acquisition Programs and Reclassification Shape Latino English Learners' Educational Outcomes
    (2018-11-29) Alvear, Sandra Anna; Lopez Turley, Ruth N.
    Up to half of all Latino kindergartners enter school as English language learners (ELLs) and have access to various forms of language acquisition support until they formally reclassify as English proficient (Galindo and Reardon 2006). Once these ELLs meet rigorous performance standards to qualify for reclassification, their achievement outcomes are detached from the ELL community and absorbed into the Latino subgroup for academic research and state and federal accountability measures. This effectively disconnects successful long-term achievement narratives from the ELL community. One of the many goals of this dissertation is to reconnect ELLs with these lost achievement narratives, and to utilize segmented assimilation theory to highlight why we should expect promising achievement outcomes from Latino English learners over time. In particular, I characterize schools as a context of reception that sets a comprehensive climate for Latino student achievement (Portes and Rumbaut 2001). I argue that two fundamental ELL experiences in school—language acquisition programs and reclassification—are imbued with significance as assimilative processes that can both promote ELLs’ connection to cultural resources from their ethnic community, and bolster their acquisition of English-based resources. In this dissertation, I examine how these two critical experiences in school are associated with Latino ELLs’ educational outcomes that span middle school academic growth, dropping out of high school, and postsecondary entry. I developed three empirical chapters utilizing student- and campus-level data compiled and managed by the Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC). Each chapter highlights ever-ELLs, which includes ELL students who have reclassified as well as students who have yet to reclassify. Chapter 2 examines middle school reading and mathematics growth to determine whether there is an additive advantage linked to participation in language acquisition programs that pursue full bilingualism. Results show largely comparable reading and mathematics growth across language acquisition programs, with limited evidence of an additive advantage in reading growth for two-way bilingual program participants, and significantly lower growth across subjects for English as a Second Language participants. The third chapter examines reclassification timing as one of several dropout indicators for a cohort of 9th grade ever-ELLs and a reference group of Latino native English speakers. Findings show that reclassifying between grade 4 and the end of grade 5 is related to significantly lower dropout risk than native English speakers. Factors linked with an increase students’ odds of dropping out include a lack of advanced course taking, being overage, mobility, and measures of academic failure. School context also has noteworthy association with dropping out. Chapter 4 focuses on the role of reclassification timing in predicting enrollment in four-year colleges (relative to two-year colleges), and four-year college selectivity. I find that the reference group of native English speakers are more likely to enter four-year colleges than ever-ELLs regardless of reclassification timing. Ever-ELLs who reclassified early in elementary school have similar odds of entering increasingly selective colleges as native English speakers. Taken together, these findings reinforce that schools are influential contexts of reception for Latino youths; moreover, schools should take the limited but significant associations between reclassification and educational outcomes as a signal that greater attention should be paid to reclassification timing and the factors that influence students’ reclassification.