Examining the Educational Experiences of High-Achieving Lakota Youth.

Native American Education;Education;Social Sciences;Educational Studies

Hengen, Adam JosephRosario-Ramos, Enid M ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Native American Education;    Education;    Social Sciences;    Educational Studies;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/116694/ahengen_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

To date, the bulk of the scholarly research on Native American educational achievement has focused on explaining the underachievement of Native American youth. While these studies are valuable in identifying the barriers that students face, they are problematic in that they are built upon theories that would suggest academic struggles for all students who encounter these barriers. Thankfully, we know that there are Native American students who, in spite of these barriers, achieve academic success. Given this fact, the purpose of this research was to examine the academic resilience of high-achieving members of one specific tribe, the Lakota, and to make sense of how these high-achieving Lakota students navigate potentials risk factors to their success. In order to understand the experiences of these academically resilient students, I conducted interviews with 42 high-achieving juniors and seniors from high schools located across one of the five Lakota Reservations in South Dakota. These interviews spanned a variety of topics, including students’ perceptions of racism and discrimination, their connectedness to their Lakota identity, their perceptions of culturally relevant pedagogy, their belief in the value of education, and their aspirations for the future. Through these interviews, I found that these academically resilient students were similar in many ways outside of school. They all had strong support systems, believed in the value of education, and were confident that racism and discrimination were not going to keep them from meeting their goals. However, their schooling experiences varied in important ways, with each school possessing different risk and protective factors that worked to shape students’ resilience. While each of these students successfully navigated the potential risk factors to their academic success, their beliefs in their future opportunities differed based on the academic expectations within their school and the post-secondary support that they received. As a result, these students, who were similar in a number of ways outside of school, left school feeling very differently about their preparation for college. These findings add important insights into the dynamic nature of resilience and the role of schools in shaping the educational experiences and aspirations of their students.